Research & reports

Roman Szkup · Journal of Geography Politics and Society · Poland

Changes in the ways of using plots in allotment gardens in Poland were investigated. A direct inventory and questionnaire survey were conducted among users of five gardens: one in Łódź and four in its suburban zone. Analysis revealed that the farther from the center of Łódź, the less dominant the leisure and recreational model was. Additionally, users' professional activity and age were identified as socio-demographic features currently determining the way plots are used in these gardens.

Anastasia Nikologianni, Alessandro Betta, Mattia Andreola, Angelica Pianegonda, Gian Antonio Battistel, Anna Ternell, Alessandro Gretter · Athens Journal of Sciences · Europe

This paper explores urban farming models and their role in climate change adaptation within urban environments, drawing on the SATURN project's collaboration across Gothenburg (Sweden), Trento (Italy), and Birmingham (UK). It presents Gothenburg's entrepreneurial model, where municipal management leases allotments to farmers to scale businesses and provide sustainable food. Trento combines bottom-up and institutional processes to foster short local supply chains, potentially benefiting from a land lease scheme. Birmingham's model views urban farming primarily as community support for mental health and awareness, rather than an entrepreneurial activity. The research demonstrates how abandoned and underutilized land can be regenerated through these diverse European urban agriculture models.

Catalina Cruz-Piedrahita, Charlotte Roscoe, Caroline Howe, Daniela Fecht, Audrey de Nazelle · Frontiers in Public Health · United Kingdom

A cross-sectional analysis of 204,478 UK Biobank participants examined the association of fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, and greenspace exposure with health and wellbeing markers. Meeting recommended levels for fruit/vegetable intake and physical activity was linked to better health and wellbeing. However, participants in greener areas who were physically active were more likely to feel alone and report poor health, and evidence for three-way interactions was weak.

Phil Nichols, Sara Heitlinger · interactions · United Kingdom (London)

Spitalfields City Farm, an urban farm in Inner East London, has served as a site for participatory design collaborations with researcher Sara Heitlinger for over 10 years. This article presents an exchange of views between Heitlinger and farm manager Phil Nichols regarding the farm's work and their ongoing collaboration in the context of social and environmental sustainability.

Edyta Janus, Bożena Szewczyk-Taranek, Agnieszka Smrokowska-Reichmann · Folia Horticulturae · Poland

A questionnaire survey of 203 allotment garden owners in three Silesian cities, Poland, explored perceived functions and importance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents over 61 years observed a generational shift from food cultivation to recreation, while no age group noted technological progress or new crops. Allotment gardens were crucial during the pandemic as a private, restriction-free space and a coping strategy for lockdown stress.

Janina Wittenberg, Maria Gernert, Hamid El Bilali, Carola Strassner · Sustainability · Germany (Münster)

This paper explores the role of grassroots initiatives in the transition towards a sustainable urban food system in Münster, Germany, using questionnaires, interviews, and desk research. Results indicate that many initiatives in Münster focus on education and information, raising awareness, rather than offering material alternatives. Policy, education, networks, and communication were identified as key leverage points.

Bianca Minotti, Angela Cimini, Gabriella D’Amico, Davide Marino, Giampiero Mazzocchi, Simona Tarra · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Italy (Rome)

This study analyzed food policy processes in the city of Rome, Italy, focusing on the Agrifood Plan, Food Policy for Rome, and Community Gardens Movement. Using a conceptual framework combining policy integration and governance innovation, the research showed that each process performs a different form of governance based on the actors and backgrounds involved. The study demonstrated a strong link between governance innovation and policy integration, with the conception and application of policy integration varying according to the process's governance vision.

Dorota Winnicka-Jasłowska, Sabrina TKACZUK · Architecture Civil Engineering Environment · United Kingdom

This study conducted qualitative research on three rooftop gardens in London, investigating their way of use, attractiveness, maintenance, and popularity levels. Surveys were carried out among visitors, alongside two non-participant observational surveys during warm and cold months. The research established a profile of users visiting such public spaces and determined characteristic architectural features that make these spaces accessible, attractive, and willingly visited.

Friederike Well, Ferdinand Ludwig · Land · Germany (Munich)

A design strategy for blue-green architecture (BGA) was applied and evaluated in a practical project at a school garden in Munich, Germany. Architecture and landscape architecture students designed and implemented a BGA, building a nature-based system where school garden greywater is treated in a constructed wetland and combined with rainwater to feed a redesigned pond. This increased biodiversity, contributed to the environmental education of pupils, and demonstrated high learning success for the students.

Sandrine Simon · Educação Sociedade & Culturas · United Kingdom (Bristol)

This article explores three types of climate change activism expressed through urban agriculture: 'proximities', 'disruptive dissent', and 'participatory urban governance'. It analyzes how urban agriculture, as a form of grassroots climate change activism, can help in taking action, using illustrative examples from Bristol, UK, and Lisbon, Portugal. The paper suggests that citizens are exploring ways to participate in combating climate change by changing economic and productive systems in their daily lives and lifestyles.

Barbora Duží, David Fanfani, Stanislav Martinát · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Europe (Italy)

A case study of Prato Province (Tuscany, Italy) analyzing how urban and peri-urban farming is embedded in local community life. Methods combined spatial analysis, semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders (N=9), field observations and discussions with local farmers (N=17). The study identified a diversity of locally rooted agrifood initiatives and food networks connecting individual farmers with local residents, with farms varying in how re-embedded they were in the urban space of Prato and its inhabitants. Cooperation among local agrifood initiatives was found to contribute to a more sustainable territorial agrifood system, and a tendency toward more sustainable land management was observed in the region. The authors argue that coordinated local food governance and innovative territorial planning instruments could contribute to sustainable agrifood systems elsewhere.

Fürüzan Aslan, Yaşar Menteş, Oğuz ATEŞ · Turkish Journal of Agriculture - Food Science and Technology · Europe

This study examines strategies for integrating agriculture with the city of Kirklareli, Turkey, and its surrounding area to address problems arising from rapid population growth and irregular urbanization, using a four-stage method. Following a literature review, it collected and examined natural and socio-cultural data for the province, identified through field observation which neighborhoods were most suitable for applying an urban agriculture model, and set out implementation strategies and recommendations aimed at human health, environmental health, food safety, urban aesthetics, social integration and urban sustainability.

Beatriz Pineda Revilla, Sarah Essbai · · Europe

A chapter examines how community-led initiatives contribute to institutionalizing alternative food practices against a backdrop of urban-rural divide reinforcing growth-oriented food production and consumption. It analyzes two Amsterdam community-led food initiatives—a food co-op and a Community Supported Agriculture farm—in terms of their social, organizational, infrastructural, and institutional capacities, identifying two major organizational and institutional challenges, while arguing that the initiatives are increasing awareness of rural-urban interdependencies and laying groundwork for a shift toward a post-growth food system.

Neven Tandarić, Charles Watkins, Christopher D. Ives · Urban forestry & urban greening · Europe

Interviewing users of community and allotment gardens in Zagreb, Croatia, this study explored motivations for gardening and how different forms of garden management shape the generation of cultural ecosystem services (CES), supplementing and contextualizing responses with interviews of urban planners, academics, and gardening activists. Using the Fish et al. (2016) framework to identify CES in interviews, the study grouped gardeners' motivations into six categories: escape, usefulness and tradition, home-grown produce, socializing, wellness, and private oasis. Food production was found to be only of secondary importance as a motivator of urban gardening.

Ana María Bartolomé Sualdea, Beatriz Urbano · Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros/Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros · Spain

A case study of Palencia, in Castilla y León, Spain, analyzes urban agriculture's potential to address new challenges facing cities. It examines the challenges set out in the city's Sustainable and Integrated Urban Development Strategy (EDUSI) and urban agriculture's possible contribution to them, calculates the potential from recovering abandoned horticultural land using geographic information system agricultural data, and conducts semi-structured surveys and site visits with managers of urban agriculture initiatives. Results show a drastic decline in horticultural land in Palencia city alongside large multifunctional recovery potential, but existing urban agriculture experiences indicate a need for dedicated managers, detailed analysis of usable agricultural land, resolution of land allocation, and greater support and regulation to develop urban farming models serving social, occupational, leisure, participatory and productive functions.

Celia Martínez Hidalgo, Jesús Ángel Martínez, Germán Camino · Institutional Repository of the University of Granada (University of Granada) · Spain

This is a description of the LIFE Lugo + Biodinámico project in Lugo, Spain, which uses a climate-adaptation urban-planning strategy intended to let Lugo — and, by extension, other mid-sized European cities — adapt resiliently to climate change. Framed around UN environmental objectives for resilient and sustainable cities, the project's actions include establishing an urban forest, designing Spain's first "multi-ecological neighborhood," constructing Spain's first public building built with Galician timber, and compiling a catalog of sustainable urban design solutions intended for export to other European cities. Among its 28 interrelated actions, the urban-agriculture component involves creating ground-level and vertical vegetable-garden zones within the neighborhood as spaces for both social interaction and food production, and a pilot initiative called "Impulso Verde" examines construction and planning measures intended to contribute to passive carbon sequestration.

Clive L. Spash, Andreas Exner, Stephanie Arzberger, Livia Cepoiu, Carla Weinzierl · WU Research · Europe

A study analyzing how edible city initiatives emerge, who creates, supports or impedes them, and how they develop, focusing on the relationships between city administration/government actors and civil society. Based on interviews with city administration, government and civil society actors and case comparisons drawing on media reports from Austria, Germany and France, it found that unlike community gardens, the City of Vienna does not yet substantially support the edible city idea. It concludes that edible city initiatives emerging from joint activity between city administrations/governments and civil society actors have the greatest potential to foster civic action and collective empowerment.

Concepción Santiago Cubas, Concepción Paredes Gil · Modern Environmental Science and Engineering · Spain

A study on Gran Canaria, Spain co-composted municipal and agricultural plant residues with three manure types — chicken, goat and cow — in an open dynamic windrow system of three trapezoidal piles (1.5 m high, 2.5 m wide, 16 m long), mixed at 37.6% straw, 32.7% manure and 29.7% pruning residue by fresh weight. Temperature, humidity and physico-chemical parameters were tracked through the process. All three piles reached the sanitation threshold required by regulation (≥60°C for at least 7 days) and produced compost suitable for agricultural use.

Monika Egerer · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems · Germany

Researchers documented Lasioglossum limbellum, a bee species not previously recorded in the Berlin, Germany region, in a community garden built on concrete slabs and planted with annual and perennial vegetation. The species nests in cavities in soft rock cliffs, a habitat that does not functionally exist in urban areas, making its presence in the garden notable; the report presents the discovery as a basis for further research on wild-bee diversity and distribution changes in urban areas.

Lucia Masón, Lucia Manzione, Angelica Ronconi, Francesca Pazzaglia · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Europe

A within-subjects study of 65 second- and third-grade students in Europe compared a single regular lesson taught in a green school garden with a similar lesson taught in the classroom. Cognitive measures were selective and sustained attention and math calculation performance; affective measures were positive/negative mood and perceived environmental restorativeness. After the green-space lesson, children showed greater selective attention and better math calculation performance on two tasks than after the classroom lesson. Children with higher self-reported emotional difficulties showed a larger increase in selective attention, a statistically significant increase in positive affect, and a near-significant decrease in negative affect. Students also rated the green space as more restorative than the classroom.

Christopher Young, Nicole Bauer · Urban forestry & urban greening · Europe

This mixed-methods study examined the experience and effects of allotment garden loss among gardeners in Zurich, Switzerland, using field conversations with gardeners from an area slated for clearance and a natural experiment surveying the same gardener population before (2018) and after (2019) the clearance to measure effects on social networks, social support, and general and mental health. Qualitative analysis showed the (imminent) loss of the garden was a distressing experience for most participants, corroborated by descriptive survey results; ANCOVA models of the quantitative data supported a negative effect of garden loss on the number of social contacts and on emotional well-being, but not on other factors measured.

Kübra ÇAKMAK, Aykut Emre Bozdoğan · DergiPark (Istanbul University) · Turkey

A mixed-methods study of 24 fifth-grade students at a public school in Sivas, Turkey, during the spring 2020-2021 term, examining a "lamp brightness" activity conducted in the school garden as part of the "Electrical and Circuit Elements" unit. Using a dependent t-test for quantitative data and content analysis for qualitative data, the study found the activity significantly increased academic achievement in the "Physical Phenomena" learning area and significantly reduced students' science anxiety; interviews indicated students enjoyed the lessons and understood the material better.

Ghozlane Fleury‐Bahi, Jean‐Michel Galharret, Colin Lemèe, Inga Wittenberg, Pablo Olivos, Ana Loureiro, Yvette Jeuken, Pauline Laïlle, Óscar Navarro · Applied Psychology Health and Well-Being · Europe

A survey of 1,343 residents across seven European cities, combined with satellite-imagery indicators of the objective quantity of urban natural space, examined how the amount and perception of nearby nature relate to well-being, moderated by respondents' connectedness to nature. Regression models linked well-being to perceived amount of nature, accessibility to a community garden, and level of connectedness to nature, and found perception of nature to be a better predictor of well-being than the objective satellite-based measure; connectedness to nature had a moderating and negative effect on the association between perceived quantity of nature and well-being, meaning the link between perceived nature and well-being weakened as connectedness to nature increased.

Luís Loures, Ana Pereira, Rui Alexandre Castanho · WSEAS TRANSACTIONS ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT · Europe

Using urban agriculture in Porto (Oporto), Portugal, as a guiding case study, this article works to recover and re-establish a continuous productive urban landscape. It expands existing urban planning policy and proposes new policy for protecting and inserting this continuous productive landscape into urban design while accounting for the urban/agricultural dichotomy and its processes, flows, and systems. Drawing on research focused on recovering Oporto's ancient rural ring, the article defines urban agriculture as a method for reliably integrating it into urban space planning, concluding with a newly defined urban farming network for Oporto that connects rural areas within the city to rural areas outside it.

Eugenio Antonio Climent López, Raúl Lardiés Bosque, Samuel Esteban Rodríguez · Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles · Spain

Since the 2008 crisis, alternative economic practices to the dominant system have proliferated, especially in urban areas where new social movements have taken stronger root. This study examines Zaragoza, Spain, governed in the previous legislative term by a new-left coalition, one of the so-called "councils of change." It selected practices operating at the local scale through unconventional procedures: community urban gardens, agroecological consumption markets and groups, community currencies (time banks, barter markets, and social currency), and self-managed social centers. A qualitative methodology combined semi-structured interviews with closed questionnaires and participant observation. These practices were found dispersed across the urban space and linked to urban social movements and local politics. The study concludes that their impact is limited in quantitative terms, but that they hold broad transformative potential owing to the characteristics of their practitioners and the support of local administration.