Research & reports

Cecilia Herbón, María Teresa Barral, Remigio Paradelo · Applied Sciences · Spain (Santiago de Compostela)

The concentrations of trace elements Cu, Pb, Zn, Ni, Cr, and As were investigated in 55 urban soils in Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain. While most soils showed higher trace element concentrations than regional backgrounds, they were not classified as contaminated according to Spanish regulations. However, geoaccumulation index values indicated low to moderate pollution levels in most soils, with Cu, Pb, and Zn highest in city center green areas, and Cr and Ni linked to parent material lithology.

김명식 · 한국문화공간건축학회 논문집 · Germany

This study analyzes German cases of reduction-type remodeling for aging apartment housings to provide implications for Korea. It finds that reduction-type remodeling should align with urban regeneration plans, involving demolition of upper floors or vertical sections, and integration of units. Improved characteristics include private gardens for ground floor residents, rooftop gardens, and customized spaces after resident consultation.

Alessandra Piccoli, Adanella Rossi, Angela Genova · Sustainability · Italy

To understand the potential of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model in Italy, two investigations were conducted in 2019 and 2020, analyzing structural and organizational aspects, and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Findings indicate that CSAs represent a radically innovative experience capable of redefining production and consumption practices, demonstrating remarkable resilience due to their common value basis and strong interdependence and solidarity among members.

Mario Jordi Sánchez, Antonio Luis Díaz Aguilar · Sustainability · Spain (Seville)

Through observation and qualitative analysis of community urban gardens in southern Spain (Andalusia), this paper notes that the people who cultivate allotments within these community gardens attribute a wide variety of different meanings to their practices. This plurality of meanings moves beyond the rational-technical dimension of the act of growing, while at the same time redefining the act of consuming organic food, because of its connection with productive and social activities.

Jana Ambrožič‐Dolinšek, Dane Katalinič, Patricija Utroša · Revija za elementarno izobraževanje · Europe

This study examined school gardens in the Pomurje region of Slovenia, finding that half (19 out of 38) of primary schools have them. The establishment of these gardens relies on the goodwill of school management and the voluntary interest of teachers. The research suggests that including school gardening in science curricula is necessary, as garden-related activities contribute to the region's agricultural development.

Juan-Francisco Álvarez-Herrero, María Encarnación Urrea Solano, Rosabel Martínez-Roig · IJERI International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation · Spain

This study examined the presence and visibility of school gardens on social media in Spain by analyzing the last 100 posts with #huertoescolar on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Educational centers primarily documented school garden activities on Twitter, followed by Facebook and Instagram. School gardens were mainly used for practical application of academic content and fostering environmental awareness, but greater integration with Sustainable Development Goals is still needed.

Damian Maye, Paul Swagemakers, J.S.C. Wiskerke, Heidrun Moschitz, James Kirwan, Ingrid Jahrl · European Urban and Regional Studies · Europe

This study utilized the 'sustainable innovation journeys' concept to trace urban food initiatives in Rotterdam (Netherlands), Vigo (Spain), and Zurich (Switzerland) over a six-year period from 2013 to 2018. While micro-level innovation practices can induce sustainability shifts, particularly when aligned with policy interests, the study also observed potentially negative impacts due to a lack of alignment at the initiative or city-region levels.

Ángela Barrón Ruíz, José Manuel Muñoz Rodríguez · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Spain (Salamanca)

This proposal combines university teaching with social responsibility through service learning, aiming to integrate environmental education for sustainability into schools in Salamanca, Spain. Following a pilot project and the establishment of a network of community school gardens, the pedagogical validity of this training approach has been demonstrated over six academic years for both university and school students.

Gina Patricia Suárez‐Cáceres, Víctor M. Fernández‐Cabanás, José Lobillo-Eguíbar, Luis Pérez‐Urrestarazu · Aquaculture International · Spain

This study aimed to determine the profile and motivations of aquaponic producers, the characteristics of facilities, and production performance in Spain and Latin America. The average producer is a middle-aged man, motivated primarily by producing high-quality, healthy food, environmental concern, and autonomy. Facilities were mainly for education, self-consumption, and hobbies, many located on rooftops, adapting well to urban agriculture. Generally, there is a lack of proper knowledge and expertise to efficiently operate these complex systems.

Sam Ramsden · Local Environment · United Kingdom (England)

This article analyzes a charity-led community gardening project in a disadvantaged northern English community, which operated for three years with external funding. While it successfully engaged marginalized people, leading to increased skills, confidence, reduced isolation, and improved wellbeing, the project faced significant challenges requiring professional management. Crucially, after the funding ended, the community garden's future was fragile, and the long-term sustainability of outcomes for marginalized participants was vulnerable due to economic viability issues.

Viktoria Shchurova · Current problems of architecture and urban planning · Ukraine (Kiev)

This article highlights the problems of the negative impact of the agricultural sector integrated into the central and middle zones of large cities. A critical view was formulated on the practical implementation of scientific and legislative documents, using the example of the city of Kiev, and strategies for reorganization, restrictions, or a complete ban on estate development in urban environments were analyzed. Specific plots of estate development in Kiev were identified as requiring reconstruction or complete renovation in accordance with the city's strategic development concept.

Bianca Cavicchi, Atle Wehn Hegnes · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Europe

This paper explored elements of sociocultural adaptation (SCA) to innovation and climate change in European urban agriculture through a scoping-exploratory review of existing literature. The elements were categorized into three main categories. Key results indicate that socio-technical and socio-ecological innovations are critical to SCA, and some identified SCA elements are more central to the adaptation process than others.

Susana Toboso‐Chavero, Cristina Madrid‐López, Xavier Gabarrell, Gara Villalba · Environmental Research Communications · Spain (Barcelona)

Implementation strategies for food-energy-water production systems on urban rooftops were evaluated in a typical housing estate in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, comprising 201 buildings and 13,466 inhabitants. Residents tended to choose strategies providing energy and water over the food production potential of rooftops. However, environmental assessment indicated that vegetable production alternatives were the least impactful, meeting 42-56% of residents' fresh produce demand and reducing environmental impacts by 24-37 kg CO2 eq m-2 per rooftop per year. This suggests residents were primarily concerned with energy expenses rather than food insecurity or social cohesion.

Joanna Wiśniewska-Paluszak, Grzegorz Paluszak · Agriculture · Poland

This study investigated how nine urban and peri-urban farms (UPFs) in Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland, formed business relationships in food networks, surveying managers and owners in 2019 and 2020. The research identified UPF business relationships and key features of their networks, leading to the development of a conceptual relational UPF model. This model indicates that diversification of activities, competitiveness of resources, and formality of organizational structures form the basis of farm businesses, while integration of activities, sharing of resources, and collaboration among actors form the basis of relationships.

Caitlin K. Kirby, Kathrin Specht, Runrid Fox-Kämper, Jason K. Hawes, Nevin Cohen, Silvio Caputo, Rositsa T. Ilieva, Agnès Lelièvre, Lidia Poniży, Victoria Schoen, Chris Blythe · Landscape and Urban Planning · Europe; United States

This study quantitatively assessed motivations and social impacts across different urban agriculture types using survey data from 74 sites in Europe and the US. It identified four scales: general wellbeing, nutritional health, economic interests, and socialization motivations. Multivariate analysis revealed significant differences in motivations and reported impacts across urban agriculture types. Participants with stronger economic interests, socialization motivations, or who were plot owners/operators reported greater general wellbeing impacts.

Åsa Ahrland · University of Vienna · Europe

A historical study by the University of Vienna focused on Södermalm, a central part of Stockholm, Sweden, that for a long time combined industrial production, trade, craft and cultivation. It shows that agricultural fields there did not disappear until after World War II, challenging the common assumption that nineteenth-century rectilinear town planning was the main factor that ended urban agriculture. The study argues that the view of agriculture as incompatible with modern city life, together with the "green city" concept built on parks and other green spaces, was tied to interpretations of modernity in the Swedish welfare state's emphasis on rationality and efficiency, which produced a dichotomy between urbanity and rurality.

Elisabeth Ziss, Wolfgang Friesl‐Hanl, Sophia Götzinger, Christoph Noller, Markus Puschenreiter, Andrea Watzinger, Rebecca Hood‐Nowotny · Sustainability · Europe

In the "Heavy Metal City-Zen" citizen science project, community members in urban gardens in Vienna, Austria collaborated on collecting soil and plant samples to assess heavy metal contamination risk. Trace metal concentrations were generally below guideline thresholds, but at a few garden sites soil concentrations of lead, cadmium and zinc exceeded Austrian recommended limits, and at two sites plant trace metal concentrations exceeded European food standard limits; the project proposes expanding the citizen-led sampling to all of Vienna so new gardens can assess local soil risk before planting.

Clare Jackson, Sara Ronzi · Health Education & Behavior · United Kingdom

A 2021 study used photovoice methods to explore residents' perceptions and experiences of "The Grange," a community-led, multifaceted intervention incorporating a community hub and garden in a small, high-deprivation, poor-health area of North-West England. Through photographs, semi-structured interviews, a focus group, and a photo exhibition, it engaged intensively with six residents, who identified positive and negative aspects of activities such as the community garden and community shop and communicated recommendations directly to policymakers at the exhibition event. Participants reported valuing the culture of inclusivity and friendship associated with The Grange more than the specific activities themselves.

Ronan Crézé · Lectures · Europe

This is a review of a book by geographer Flaminia Paddeu that presents an immersion into urban agriculture through observation of multiple field experiences, described as contributing to the institutionalization of urban agricultural commons. The book's central subject is the land, understood both as soil (urban and agricultural) and as the site hosting ecosystems. While this subject has already been explored by sociologists, agronomists, and anthropologists, the author develops her own reflection on it.

Ágnes Gagyi, Csaba Jelinek, Zsuzsanna Pósfai, András Vígvári · · Europe

This chapter examines the 2000s housing financialization wave in Hungary, analysing financial over-inclusion and exclusion -- alternating dynamics of reaping gains and externalizing costs. It shows that "intermediate" rural-urban transitional zones are prime areas for high-risk mortgage lending while also containing spaces excluded from institutionalized housing finance, using as its case study an allotment garden where households combine formal jobs and mortgage repayment with informal dwelling to reduce housing costs, arguing that such informal reproductive solutions function as a resource for capital accumulation through inclusion and exclusion.

Hanna Weber, David D. Loschelder, Daniel J. Lang, Arnim Wiek · Journal of Marketing Management · Germany

An intervention study with 136 consumers, recruited at a fair for sustainable products and lifestyles in Germany, compared three experiential marketing interventions—a promotional video, an in-person presentation, and a mindful tasting experience—designed to connect consumers with the producers of Teikei Coffee, an international Community Supported Agriculture coffee partnership. All three interventions, to varying degrees, created connections between consumers and producers and thereby fostered sustainable consumption behaviour.

Bethan R. Mead, Jessica Davies, Natalia Falagán, Sofia Kourmpetli, Lingxuan Liu, Charlotte A. Hardman · Emerald Open Research · United Kingdom

A cross-sectional online survey conducted during the UK national lockdown in March–April 2020 measured home food growing, perceived food insecurity, well-being and opinions of urban agriculture (UA). Participants were 477 UK-based adults (369 female, mean age 39.57 ± 13.36 years), of whom 152 had been engaged in home food growing before the pandemic; responses were compared with a separate sample collected before the pandemic (N=583). Participants who engaged in home food growing had lower food insecurity (U=19894.50, z=−3.649, p<0.001, r=−0.167) and higher well-being (U=19566.50, z=−3.666, p<0.001, r=−0.168) than those who did not grow food at home. Perceived food insecurity partially mediated the relationship between home food growing and well-being. Opinions of UA showed no difference compared with the pre-pandemic sample. Home food growing may have had a protective effect on perceived food security and well-being in the early stages of the pandemic, and opinions of UA remained positive and unchanged relative to pre-pandemic levels.

Elia Apostolopoulou · · Europe (Greece)

Focusing on the two largest Greek cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, this study examines why urban community gardening surged after the 2008 financial crash, drawing on urban political ecology, radical social and urban geography, and qualitative social research. Greece is treated as a distinctive case: it saw this post-2008 increase in community gardening without having a prior long history of the practice, unlike parts of the Global South. The author concludes that the creation of community gardens is tied to rising inequality in European cities in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, functioning both as an act of disobedience against the grabbing of public land and as a demand for reclaiming the urban commons.

Justyna Mokras-Grabowska · Konwersatorium Wiedzy o Mieście · Poland

A structured interview survey of 210 plot holders across four allotment gardens in Warsaw, Poland ("Pratulińska", "Obrońców Pokoju", "Kolejarz" and "Zelmot") examined current usage trends. Plot holders were mainly older, retired people, though the number of younger holders has been increasing in recent years, and most lived on large housing estates near the gardens. The main motivations for holding a plot were relaxation, gardening as a hobby and connection with nature; food production itself was not cited as a primary motivation. Most respondents held positive views on opening allotment gardens to local communities, but showed little eagerness to participate in integrational events organized by the Polish Association of Allotment Gardens (PZD) or others.

Henriques, Carolina Neto, Costa Pinto, Teresa, Costa, Pedro, Marat-Mendes, Teresa · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · Europe

This paper analyzes local actors driving food-system transformation in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), Portugal. It compares a 2014 questionnaire survey of planning officials with the discourses of 80 public- and civil-society-sector initiatives surveyed in 2019, characterizing the initiatives, examining how they are shaping new food planning agendas in the LMA, and drawing on a framework from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) to identify lessons for future planning policy grounded in inter-municipal cooperation and continuous mutual learning.