Research & reports

Mohammad Enamul Hoque, Abdullah Al Mamun, Perengki Susanto · International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management · Bangladesh

A study collected data from 352 households in two major Bangladeshi cities to predict organic food production intention and behavior in urban rooftop gardens using the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory and theory of planned behavior (TPB). Findings showed that biospheric and egoistic values improved ecological worldview, which, along with awareness of consequences and social norms, predicted personal norms. Personal and social norms forecasted the intention to produce organic food in rooftop gardens.

Elin Montelius · Journal of Risk Research · Sweden

This paper analyzes the utopia of self-sufficiency as a response to risk and uncertainty, particularly focusing on the growing interest in gardening and cultivating vegetables in Sweden. Using intersectional risk theory, it examines how narratives of self-sufficiency function to address ecological risk and uncertainty, and how utopian narratives can contribute to undoing risk.

Godwin K. Naazie, Isaac Agyemang, Anthony Mwinilanaa Tampah-Naah · Discover Environment · Ghana

This study investigated climate change adaptation strategies among 191 urban crop and livestock farming households and 13 key informants in Ghana using mixed methods. Findings revealed a significant link between farmers' educational status, gender, and climate adaptation information sources. Strategies include cultivating improved crop varieties, rearing exotic animal breeds, and treating animals with vaccinations and chemicals, but access to agricultural extension services remains a primary challenge.

María Virginia Maiza, Joan Muñoz‐Liesa, Anna Petit‐Boix, Verónica Arcas‐Pilz, Xavier Gabarrell · Resources Conservation and Recycling · Global

A life cycle assessment compared three human urine management strategies for nitrogen fertilizer production: an artificial wetland, an on-site lab-scale aerobic reactor (S2), and a centralized wastewater treatment plant. S2 showed the highest environmental impacts in 6 out of 8 categories, including high energy demand (750 kg MJ-eq) and ecotoxicity (602 kg 1.4-DCB-eq), although it offered an advantage in marine eutrophication. Upscaling S2 could reduce impacts and lower payback time, with nitrogen production exceeding 2.3 times the yearly demand for building tomato production.

Anusha Ghimire, Sunil Ojha, Srijana Saud, Sanju Aryal, Anjali Thapa, Prabina Bhandari · INWASCON Technology Magazine · Global

This review summarizes the need for urban horticulture, its challenges, opportunities, and new trends. Urban horticulture addresses threats to food security, environmental quality, and community well-being in urban settings by providing local produce, improving green spaces, and fostering human-nature connections. It faces obstacles such as plant selection and nutrient recycling, but new techniques like aeroponics and vertical farming are emerging.

Anushi Anushi, A. Krishnamoorthi, Jitendra Chaurasia, Bijay Kumar Baidya, Abhishek Singh, ­ Sapna, Vijay Kumar, Anushka Singh · Journal of Scientific Research and Reports · Global

This review explores the historical evolution and diverse models of urban farming, highlighting their contributions to food security, environmental sustainability, and community resilience. Challenges faced by urban farmers include limited space, soil contamination, regulatory hurdles, and access to resources.

Paolo Paolo · International Journal of Neutrosophic Science · Global

This study used a neutrosophic multi-criteria approach to evaluate the impact of biostimulants and organic additives on soil quality, plant growth, and crop yields in urban agriculture. Biofertilizers like Chromococcus and Azotobacter improved nutrient availability and plant health, while mineral additives like zeolites enhanced soil fertility. Three scenarios were analyzed: one showed exceptional plant growth and high sustainability (Very Very High), another highlighted challenges in vegetative growth and sustainability (Low), and a third combined good plant growth with high sustainability and climate change mitigation (Medium High).

Zzimbe, Adrian, Fuoss, Kylie, Armas, Joelle, Blubaugh, Carmen · SPARK Scholarship at Parkland (Parkland College) · Global

This experiment examines how water stress and vermicompost interactively shape pest attraction in urban agriculture, which faces challenges like water access and pest pressure. Vermicompost is hypothesized to mitigate water stress by enhancing organic matter and humic acids to improve water retention, and to relieve pest pressure by enhancing plant defensive chemistry.

Andrea Baier, Christa Müller, Karin Werner · Neue Ökologie · Global

This study discussed the significance of the new urban garden movement for sustainable urban restructuring, focusing on community garden practices over the past two decades. It examined how the movement is integrated into the governance of urban climate crisis policies, how it utilizes this framework, and to what extent the autonomy of gardens as free spaces and commons can be maintained under these circumstances. The findings suggest that the autonomy of urban gardens may be difficult to maintain when integrated into climate crisis policy governance.

Filippo Oncini, Steffen Hirth, Josephine Mylan, Clare H. Robinson, David Johnson · Urban forestry & urban greening · Global North

This review evaluates the contribution of urban food forestry in the Global North to socio-ecological outcomes across climate change, biodiversity, food production, and relational aspects. The findings demonstrate multifactorial benefits of urban foraging and food forestry, but also identify potential risks and disservices from the literature. The study concludes that upscaling these spaces offers significant gains, requiring systemic changes.

J. V., Juan M. Corchado, Diana M. Giraldo, Sara Rodríguez-González, Fernando De la Prieta · Internet of Things · Global

This paper presents an Internet of Things (IoT) platform for monitoring urban gardens, aiming to mitigate hunger and promote food sovereignty. The platform includes a social design layer for knowledge transfer and a recommendation system based on evolutionary computation to optimize urban orchard productivity. Experiments in urban gardens validated the models, showing an increase in urban lettuce orchard productivity between 25% and 45%.

Lena Katharina Mietz, Bárbara Civit, Alejandro Pablo Arena · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Global

This review focuses on the present state and methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the sustainability of urban agriculture. It notes that while urban agriculture is seen as a potential alternative for a resilient food system, existing case studies are mostly incomplete and lack diversity. Further research is needed, especially the integration of social and economic perspectives, to achieve a comprehensive scientific understanding.

Yu Huan, Steffen Nijhuis, Nico Tillie · Urban forestry & urban greening · Global

This systematic literature review analyzed 70 empirical research articles on urban agriculture, ecosystem services, and design research to identify gaps in design knowledge. The review found that while "research for design" is prevalent and offers abundant design knowledge, the infrequent use of "research through design" hinders the transition from implicit to explicit design knowledge, leading to a shortage of operational guidelines. The study proposes a framework for systematic design knowledge of urban agriculture to address these gaps and facilitate knowledge transformation.

Agnès Fargue‐Lelièvre, Jason K. Hawes, Benjamin Goldstein, Lidia Poniży, Erica Dorr · Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists · Global

This 2024 essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists states that urban agriculture brings many benefits to its participants but is not guaranteed to be more climate-friendly than conventional agriculture. It adds that there are some specific steps urban farmers can take to cut carbon emissions.

Shan He, Primož Poredoš, Hao Qü, Xinge Yang, Mengjuan Zhou, Lulu Bai, Jiadong Shi, Wenshuai Chen, R.Z. Wang, Swee Ching Tan · Advanced Functional Materials · Global

A composite adsorbent combining manganese(II)-ethanolamine complexes with a hierarchical, interconnected polypyrrole-doped matrix was developed to reduce vapor diffusion resistance, a key factor limiting scale-up kinetics, achieving water uptake of 2.54 g per gram at 90% relative humidity with 62% of the water released within 30 minutes, enabling multiple daily capture-release cycles. A hybrid desorption mode combining photovoltaic electrical heating and solar heating achieved stable, high-yield water production, and simulation and feasibility verification showed that an atmospheric-water-irrigated rooftop farm could produce 879.9 g of water per square meter of sorbent per day and 1.28 kg of food per square meter of device within 14 days, without human intervention and independent of external water inputs.

Akpınar, Musab Talha, Korkut, Cem · Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) · Global

This chapter surveys how the basic sciences -- physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics -- contribute to Sustainable Smart Cities. It states that physics underlies energy efficiency and structural design, chemistry drives sustainable materials and pollution control, biology supports green space, biodiversity and ecosystem services including urban agriculture, and mathematics/data science enable real-time monitoring and resource allocation, arguing for continued interdisciplinary investment in research and education.

Albin Mathew -, Sanu K Thekkath -, N Sneha · International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research · Global

This paper is a review that surveys various forms and definitions of urban farming and discusses its role in implementing circular economy strategies and strengthening urban food security. Drawing on case studies within institutions such as schools and Anganwadi centres, it argues that urban farming initiatives can promote sustainability, community engagement and equitable participation, that urban farming and neighbourhood development are interconnected in ways that support an inclusive society and sustainable urban design principles, and advocates positioning urban farming as central to urban planning.

Assyifa Fauzia, Evi Frimawaty, Hadi Susilo Arifin · Holistic Journal of Tropical Agriculture Sciences · Global

This literature review examines the role of urban agriculture as an ecosystem services provider in mitigating urban environmental deterioration. It states that urban agriculture adds various functions across different landscape scales and can provide numerous benefits when managed correctly. The review method compiled literature on urban agriculture and ecosystem services across provisioning, regulating, and cultural service categories. Results describe urban agriculture as taking diverse forms, from private gardens to community plots, addressing limited public funding and promoting greening initiatives; it is described as contributing to biodiversity conservation and to regulating the urban microclimate, including reduced urban heat island effects, wind protection, and pollutant absorption. It is also described as adding aesthetic value to urban spaces, promoting cultural integration, and functioning as a multifaceted strategy for sustainable urban development addressing food security, resilience, and well-being. Amid challenges including threats to urban biodiversity and the need for proper green-space management, the review frames urban agriculture as a holistic approach contributing to cities' visual, cultural, and environmental fabric.

Godwin K. Naazie, Isaac Agyemang, Anthony Mwinilanaa Tampah-Naah · Heliyon · Ghana

A quantitative survey of 362 urban households across diverse neighborhoods in Ghana used descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and binary regression to examine socioeconomic factors behind urban agriculture participation under climate stress. Household size and income were significant at the 0.05 level, middle- and high-income households participated more than lower-income ones, and land was acquired mainly through purchase, which the study identified as a barrier to participation.

Francesco Orsini, Giuseppina Pennisi, Giorgio Gianquinto, Michael Martin · International Journal of Vegetable Science · Global

This paper argues that widely publicized figures on urban agriculture's environmental impacts lack the methodologically sound evidence needed for valid comparison, before conclusions can be drawn. It addresses problems in comparatively assessing environmental performance between rural and urban farming and argues for the need for specifically designed indicators capable of comprehensively assessing multifunctional urban agriculture.

Górna, Ada · · Global

A book examines the position of urban agriculture within the spatial and functional structure of cities in the Global South through case studies of three cities: Havana, Singapore and Kigali. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in each city, it documents the diverse characteristics of urban agriculture across differing socio-economic, spatial, political and environmental conditions and identifies constraints on its development.

Haochen Zhao, James T. O’Connor, Sarah Zou, Zakaria M. Solaiman, Bede S. Mickan, Nanthi Bolan · Soil Use and Management · Australia

At six community gardens across three soil mapping units — calcareous deep sands, coloured sand and pale sands — in the Perth metropolitan area, Australia, soil samples were compared between cultivated raised beds and adjacent bare ground used as a control. Raised-bed soils showed lower bulk density, higher pH buffering capacity, more available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, greater cation exchange capacity, total carbon and microbial biomass than surrounding urban soil, and were estimated to have accumulated 0.55 kg of carbon per square meter (5.5 t/ha) in the top 10 cm, with no significant heavy metal contamination detected in any of the garden soils. The improved soil health and carbon storage were attributed mainly to regular application of compost produced within the gardens.

Madison Powers · · Global

This chapter surveys the food-security implications of agricultural land use, unsustainable features of widespread food production practices, and the debate over agricultural intensification versus extensification, then examines land use's consequences beyond the land itself for groundwater, surface water, oceans, ambient air quality, and planetary systems. It explains the causes of forest destruction and fragmentation driven by the global expansion of land used for "high-risk commodities," the linkage between deforestation and declining terrestrial biodiversity, and the global market dynamics driving both crises. It assesses socioeconomic and ecological shortcomings in some proposed nature-based solutions, showing that they perpetuate an unsustainable business-as-usual approach, and summarizes how these land-use issues are conceptualized as human-rights concerns and translated into policy proposals.

Tarek Ben Hassen, Hamid El Bilali · · Global

This book chapter combines bibliographical and topical analysis of scholarly and gray literature with case studies from Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries to examine the state of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) amid regional climate pressures — rising temperatures and frequent droughts damaging limited water resources and threatening agriculture and food security. The chapter reports that UPA in the region lacks adequate infrastructure and resources, including access to water, suitable land and equipment, and that in many MENA cities, the absence of government initiatives combined with land tenure problems and high land prices makes UPA less prevalent and less viable; it concludes that improved policy support and enabling regulations — including zoning rules and financial and technical support — are needed to expand UPA in the region.

Bambang Tri Kurnianto · West Science Nature and Technology · Global

A review article examining urban farming practices — including rooftop gardens, vertical farms and community gardens — as approaches to the land scarcity and food-security pressures of rapid urbanization. Drawing on case studies from cities worldwide, it discusses their reported role in improving food access, reducing carbon footprints and fostering social cohesion, and argues for integrating urban agriculture into urban planning together with supportive policy and community engagement. The article does not report original data, a defined study site, or quantified outcomes.