Research & reports

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.

Victoria Dietze, Amna Alhashemi, Peter H. Feindt · Food Security · Global

Using the Urban Food Production Innovation System (UFoPrInS) concept, a 2024 study analyzed the urban contexts and enabling and impeding factors for implementing controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) in three contrasting locations — London, Nairobi and Singapore — based on document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews. Findings show Singapore as a favorable location because public policies support CEA implementation to reduce food import dependency and enhance the resilience of food supply. In London, high food import dependency is increasingly seen as problematic, but CEA implementation has been hampered by other policy priorities. In Nairobi, where over half the population lives in informal settlements without adequate food, water and sanitation, CEA is unlikely to make an economically efficient contribution to food security. The study concludes that CEA implementation is likely to be suitable in locations with ample capital and knowledge, stable political, social and infrastructure conditions, and limited space, where its value can be linked to hospitality and tourism and supported by favorable pricing for resource savings.

Shu Hua Teoh, Gwo Rong Wong, Purabi Mazumdar · Innovations in Agriculture · Global

A review combining scientific literature analysis and interviews with urban farmers examined urban farming models including community, indoor, rooftop and vertical farms using techniques such as aeroponics, hydroponics and aquaponics. It found that sustainability and yield remain major challenges to fully realizing urban farming's potential, identifying limited land and water resources, pest and disease incidence, financial constraints on setup and maintenance, knowledge and skill gaps among participants, and a lack of effective collaboration between universities, government and industry as the key barriers.

Mélanie Douziech, Stefan Mann, Stefan Galley, Jens Lansche · Agronomy for Sustainable Development · Global

Urban agriculture is often associated with sustainable practices, but the diversity of systems classified as urban agriculture and limited information on their sustainability call that link into question. Drawing on 91 scientific papers, a study proposes a holistic classification of urban agricultural systems combining technical, social and economic characteristics, with economic production intensity and the intensity of cooperation among actors as key axes. One end of the scheme covers ground-based, open, socially motivated systems with high cooperation and low production intensity; the other end covers building-integrated, quasi-closed systems with high production intensity. Mapping sustainability claims from the literature onto the scheme associated "urban farming" with job creation, food safety, water savings and higher yields, and "urban gardening" with educational potential, biodiversity improvements and lower yields.

Seng Boon Lim, Nur Wildaniah Syafiqah Mohd Razib, Imam Mukhlis, Na’asah Nasrudin, Isnen Fitri · PLANNING MALAYSIA · Malaysia

A mixed-methods single-case study evaluating early intervention in community gardening/urban farming initiatives under the Special Area Action Plan Section 13 urban regeneration project in Petaling Jaya City, Malaysia. The quantitative component analyzed 200 questionnaire samples using descriptive statistics, while the qualitative component thematically analyzed 8 interviews. Findings show respondents were skeptical about awareness, safety infrastructure and support services, caretaking, and land ownership concerns surrounding the proposed community gardening at the Sungai Penchala monsoon drain area. The study recommends that authorities plan more awareness-intervention campaigns, strengthen safety infrastructure design, provide policy support for appointing caretakers, and resolve land acquisition issues when revitalizing leftover urban public spaces.

Joanne Dolley, Michael Howes · Australian Planner · Australia

Drawing on interviews with participants across several types of community gardens in Australia, this paper examines how community gardens can contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 Target 7, providing universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible green and public spaces. Applying a broader definition of "inclusive" than the target currently suggests, it finds that community gardens improve the inclusivity and activation of public spaces through their design features, governance, and community involvement, contributing to Target 11.7. Community involvement in design and governance, secure land tenure, well-chosen locations, and sufficient resourcing were identified as factors improving gardens' ability to meet the target. Developing additional indicators to measure progress toward the target is identified as an area for further research.

Jessica Ann Diehl · · Global

This chapter investigates urban agriculture in Singapore through a political ecology lens, examining food security from the perspective of traditional commercial farmers. Growing urban food demand and risks inherent in reliance on the global food system have spurred city governments to implement diversified strategies for integrating urban agriculture at different scales; Singapore, a high-earning city-state that imports 90% of its food, has set a target of raising domestic food production to 30% under its Singapore Green Plan 2030 "30 by 30" Grow Local target. The chapter questions whether this level of food independence is achievable if food production shifts away from traditional farming toward high-tech operations such as rooftop or vertical farms. Semi-structured qualitative interviews covered four topics: general farm practices, social networks, benefits and barriers, and livelihood alternatives. Findings were examined in the context of a rising generation of high-tech entrepreneurial farmers facing the challenge of meeting consumer demand against land and labor scarcity. The in-depth case study demonstrates that technology is only one driver, among many, of the sustainability of the local food system in Singapore, and traditional commercial farmers face pressure on their livelihoods as policy shifts toward high-tech production.

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.

J.A. Veraart, Cora van Oosten, Vincent Linderhof, Confidence Duku, Wilfred Appelman, A.M.E. Groot, Marjolein Sterk, Ilse Voskamp · International Journal of Water Governance · Global

With water-related problems from climate change threatening the future of food systems in both the Netherlands and Ghana, this comparative case study analyzed rainwater harvesting and wastewater reuse in the Rhine-Scheldt Estuaries (Netherlands) and the Bono East Region (Ghana). The analysis focused on identifying similarities in how experts and stakeholders use spatial information to remove barriers to, or foster enablers of, the uptake of nature-based solutions (NbS) in view of climate change. Both rainwater harvesting and wastewater treatment techniques were found to be available and ready for adoption by farmers and the food processing industry, but their uptake was hampered by multiple barriers ranging from biophysical and technical to social and institutional. Spatial information was concluded to be a potential enabler for NbS adoption if applicable to a wide range of possible solutions for water scarcity in food production, though both case studies showed difficulty making the future spatially explicit, and in both cases the effect on biodiversity of, respectively, effluent water reuse and rainwater harvesting did not play a direct role in stakeholder dialogue.

Assyifa Fauzia · Trend and Future of Agribusiness · Global

A descriptive literature review (2015-2023) and comparative analysis of urban farming management in Thailand's Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) and Indonesia's Jakarta. Since 2010 the BMR has pursued food self-sufficiency using canals for irrigation and transport, but urban farmers remain poorly connected to traditional markets. In Jakarta, high population density and conversion of agricultural land are serious problems; after the 1998 economic crisis residents expanded urban farming on available land, but industrialization has increased uncertainty over land rights. Both countries share a lack of coordination in urban agriculture regulation and infrastructure, which the paper suggests addressing through better communication among farmers, retailers and non-farming households.

Beata Sirowy, Deni Ruggeri · ˜The œGeojournal library · Global

An editors' introductory chapter to a book on urban agriculture research, situating the volume's thematic scope. The editors argue that, to achieve the greatest impact, opportunities to engage in urban cultivation should be widely accessible to all segments of the urban population and close to where people live. Because land in dense inner-city areas is scarce and costly worldwide, integrating urban agriculture into existing and planned public spaces is presented as the most feasible strategy for achieving this. The book aims to provide theoretical and practical insights on integrating urban agriculture into public space development, covering well-being impacts, design, organization, educational contexts, and urban planning.

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.

Jennifer C. Franco, Saturnino M. Borras · Oxford University Press eBooks · Global

This chapter examines the dominant convention in critical agrarian studies and agrarian movements — that land struggles are best captured by an agrarian-reform framework of expropriating land from large private monopolies for redistribution to landless and near-landless working classes. It argues that while this type of struggle remains important, it does not fully capture the range of land struggles of working people across rural and urban, agricultural and nonagricultural spaces. Over recent decades the working classes have fragmented, as the numbers of people combining agricultural/nonagricultural and rural/urban livelihoods have vastly expanded, decentering working people's land struggles from the classical treatment tied to agriculture and capitalism. Land struggles today are dispersed and multisited, with political leadership and power that are polycentric rather than unified, and span multiple scales.

M. S. (Mahmudova) Abdusattorovna · Neliti · Global

An article (Neliti, 2024) states that research examined how road, roadside, and building construction occurred at large scale as a result of the construction of cultural and recreational parks, landscape design, and public parks during the Timurid period. The abstract provides no further detail on data, methods, or specific findings.

Héctor Ávila Sánchez · Investigaciones Geográficas Boletín del Instituto de Geografía · Global

This conceptual article examines periurbanization as one of the most dynamic territorial expressions in contemporary society, discussing the reconfiguration of food-production spaces in peri-urban areas that form part of metropolitan systems as a social and territorial process. It addresses proximity, the consolidation of short supply circuits, and new territorial forms such as city-region food systems and "agrarian parks" (parques agrarios) — a form found mainly in Europe that the article frames as a territorial innovation countering the disarticulation of peri-urban agrarian space under growing metropolization. It discusses the spread of cooperative-based forms (food hubs, cooperative supermarkets, shared workshops) and the roles of social movements, producer organizations, and public institutions in shaping peri-urban territorial governance, framed through solidarity economy and social justice.

Iman Mamnoon · GeoFocus Revista Internacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Información Geográfica · Global

Using a GIS-based risk assessment methodology, this study develops a quantitative food-insecurity scale for the most vulnerable urban populations, calculating risk as a combination of social vulnerability and hazard (difficulty of access to food distribution), and applying the model to two case studies: southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States and Puente de Vallecas in Madrid, Spain. A Social Vulnerability Index was computed from average income, education level, unemployment rate, and age, while hazard values were derived from proximity to supermarkets. The analysis identified high-risk food-insecurity areas in both neighborhoods requiring urgent intervention measures. In Puente de Vallecas, census tract 07913143 was identified as a high-risk hotspot with a Social Vulnerability Index of 1.646495 (range 0.901–3.223) and a risk value of 3 (range 3–10); in southeast D.C., tracts 7601 and 7605 were selected as high-risk zones for further study, with Social Vulnerability Index values of 2.221 and 1.737 (range 1.040–3.525) and risk values of 2 and 5 (range 0–10), respectively. The study also identifies a general shortage of areas combining residential and commercial use and limits on public transport availability in the food-insecure urban areas studied.

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.

Agnieszka Gralińska–Toborek · Journal of AESTHETICS & CULTURE · Global

A discussion piece categorizes guerrilla gardening — the grassroots activity of planting vegetation in public spaces — into four types: gardening, activism, art and farming, each further subdivided into areas such as beautifying urban spaces, promoting social change, providing food, advancing education and building community. It notes that empirical research increasingly points to a discrepancy between the modest practice of gardeners and the more expansive expectations of theorists, symbolized by the movement's use of military terminology, and observes that research on guerrilla gardening lacks in-depth aesthetic reflection.

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.

Rosli Muhammad NAIM, Maisarah Abdul MUTALIB, Aida Soraya SHAMSUDDIN, Mohd Nizam LANI, Indang Ariati ARIFFIN, Shirley Gee Hoon TANG · Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering · Global

A review article on sustainable agriculture and food systems characterizes sustainable agriculture as farming practices that meet immediate needs while preserving future generations' capacity to meet theirs, with sustained productivity, pollution reduction, and economic viability as primary aims. Drawing on existing research, it reports benefits including climate resilience, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved water quality, enhanced biodiversity, improved soil fertility, and stronger rural livelihoods, alongside challenges such as substantial transition costs, conflicting policy objectives, and the persistence of conventional methods. The review identifies strategies including agroforestry, agroecology, urban agriculture, farmer knowledge exchange, ecosystem-service payments, and shorter supply chains as ways to accelerate progress, contingent on appropriate policy and incentive support.

Neetu Choudhary, Alexandra Brewis · Journal of Urban Health · Global South

A narrative review of 169 papers on food and nutrition in cities of low- and middle-income countries. Urban agriculture is the most common theme, and studies report gains in dietary diversity and food expenditure — but the review notes it is the relatively well-off, not the poor, who are found to practise urban agriculture, and land-access constraints exclude the poorest from those benefits. It also documents the nutrition transition toward processed, high-fat and high-sugar foods and a resulting double burden of malnutrition. Cash assistance shows promise during crises, but social protection alone is insufficient against food insecurity. Four evidence gaps are named: gender dynamics, WASH linkages, equity and intersectionality within cities, and the role of local government.

Government Outcomes Lab, University of Oxford · Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab), Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford · Global

Published 5 November 2024, announcing that the INDIGO Impact Bond Dataset run by Oxford's Government Outcomes Lab had reached 300 projects, described as the world's largest open-access resource of its kind. It lets governments, practitioners, investors and researchers share standardised data on outcomes-based contracts. The outcomes-based financing pipeline has more than tripled over the past three years, and eight practitioners from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the UK describe using INDIGO to inform programme design and research.