Research & reports

Alberto Matarán-Ruiz, David Fanfani, Josefa Sánchez Contreras, Miguel Ángel Escalona Aguilar · · Central America; Europe

This chapter examines bioregional food systems and territorialization processes in peri-urban agricultural areas, using three case studies from Central America and Europe. It notes that the historical co-evolutionary relationship between cities and surrounding farmlands weakened in modernity due to the global capitalist market, which reduced food to a commodity. The study highlights current problems while exploring how inherited relationships are being revived to adapt urban bioregions to climate emergency and resource scarcity.

Adriana de Paula Cavalcante Fraga, Ana Moraes Coelho, Jéssica Castro Chryssafidis, José Geraldo Barreto Monteiro de Andrade, Maíra Bombachini Silva, Maria Luiza Sevilha Seraphico de Assis Carvalho, Mariana Nicolletti, Nathan Debortoli, Samuel Santos de Souza Pinto · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil (Natal)

This case study of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Natal, Brazil, aimed to identify and characterize the benefits these initiatives provide to the territory and to overview three ecosystem services related to microclimate, soil, and water. Using a hybrid methodology combining biophysical modeling and listening to the voices of experienced protagonists, the study identified a significant potential for urban and peri-urban agriculture to contribute to urban development. This research deepens the understanding of the benefits urban agriculture can offer cities, including its potential to mitigate or solve typical urban problems.

Xiu-li LUO, Xiaobin Jin, Xiaojie Liu, Su-shu ZHANG, Su-chen YING, Yinkang Zhou · 自然资源学报 · Global

This study, based on symbiosis theory, proposes a mechanism and model of comprehensive land consolidation to promote integrated urban and rural development in peri-urban areas. It showed that main obstacles to symbiotic peri-urban systems are non-equilibrium development in symbiotic units, unequal mobility of elements in the symbiotic environment, and asymmetry and non-reciprocity of symbiotic models. Comprehensive land consolidation reshapes the symbiotic environment through element flow, reconstructs symbiotic units through spatial reconstruction, and drives the symbiotic model through functional promotion, leading to symmetric and reciprocal benefits in urban-rural systems.

Ion Martínez Lorea · Revista Española de Sociología · Spain (Pamplona)

This article uses Henri Lefebvre's concept of concrete utopia to analyze the practices of community urban gardens in Pamplona-Iruña, Spain. It interrogates their potential and limitations in responding to various situations of social vulnerability and rethinking the relationship between the rural and the urban.

Alexandra Zink, Paul J. CaraDonna, Kelly Larsen, Amy M. Iler · Ecosphere · United States (Chicago)

This study investigated how urbanization relates to pollination by growing 240 plants (squash and tomato) across six sites with varying urbanization levels in Chicago, Illinois. For tomatoes, the magnitude of pollen limitation increased with greater impervious surface, indicating more pronounced pollination deficits at highly urbanized sites. For squash, evidence of pollen limitation was found only at the most urban site, with a weak trend of pollen limitation of fruit set (but not seed set) increasing with impervious surface.

Wendy Davies · · Europe

A historical chapter exploring why monasteries were interested in acquiring gardens in the tenth century. It concludes the likely reasons included increasing the regular supply of garden fruit, legumes and medicinal herbs for expanding monastic communities, along with a regular supply of textile fibres. Some rural monasteries bought gardens in towns and operated shops there, supported by an available road network and plentiful draught animals as necessary elements of a distribution system. Textiles and plant dyes appear to have been supplied to urban communities, and the chapter suggests garden plots may have been acquired specifically to focus on textile and dye plants for cloth production and distribution, marking a new direction in monastic enterprise with a corresponding shift in garden output.

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.

Wirda Rohmah, Marina Ramadhani, Ghulam Fathul Amri · Jurnal Bengawan Solo Pusat Kajian Penelitian dan Pengembangan Daerah Kota Surakarta · Indonesia

Using a literature-study method, this research examined food security conditions in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia — a rapidly urbanizing city — and their implications for urban sustainability and resilience, covering food availability, access, utilization, and stability. It found that urbanization in Surakarta has increased food demand, altered food supply chains, and created distribution and affordability challenges, with urban land-use change, economic inequality, and the effectiveness of existing food policies and programs identified as the main factors shaping food security, and argues for an integrated approach combining improved urban agriculture, strengthened local food systems, and better coordination among stakeholders.

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.

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.

Essi Lamberg · The Journal of Architecture · Africa

A case study of the Tanga, Mbeya and Moshi master plans (1973-1975) in Tanzania, developed with Finnish technical assistance, challenges the conventional narrative that Nordic countries acted as neutral, benevolent foreign aid agents. The analysis shows Finnish planners operating in an ambivalent environment combining colonial heritage, decolonial policy and neo-colonial practice, developing a planning approach that translated travelling concepts of suburbanization, neighborhood models and urban gardening into the language of Tanzanian decolonial policy. The three master plans used garden city planning ideas to extend planning principles formerly reserved for the white European elite to the entire urban population, in service of the socialist ujamaa project.

Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space (APOPS) · Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space (APOPS) / Municipal Art Society of New York · United States

New York City's 1961 zoning resolution created incentive zoning, letting private developers earn floor-area bonuses in exchange for providing public plazas and similar spaces. From 1961 to 2000, developers built more than 500 POPS, gaining about 16 million square feet of bonus floor area while providing roughly 80 acres of public space. However, a 1998–99 field survey found about half of POPS out of legal compliance, and a 2000 study rated 41% as of limited quality.

· The Dirt · United States

Published July 31, 2024 by local outlet The Dirt, this article reports that Spork Food Hub announced the immediate closure of its farmstand at The Cannery agrihood in Davis, California. In a Facebook post, the operator said that after two years of operation it had been unable to grow its customer base enough to make the stand profitable, and would instead focus its community outreach on other farm and food-hub events.

CapitaLand · CapitaLand · Singapore

The rooftop of Singapore's Funan mixed-use development hosts an approximately 18,000-square-foot urban farm operated by Edible Garden City, growing more than 50 types of fruits and vegetables including mushrooms, edible flowers, and watermelon. CapitaLand frames this and its other greened properties as delivering functional benefits — reduced energy consumption, improved air quality, and enhanced employee wellness — beyond aesthetic appeal.

千島土地株式会社 · 千島土地株式会社 · Japan

Chishima Land Co. launched the 'Kitakagaya Creative Farm Project' in 2011 in Suminoe Ward, Osaka, and opened 'Minna no Uen Kitakagaya' (Farm No. 2, at Kitakagaya 5-2-29) the following year, 2012. Conceived as a way to activate vacant land for community revitalization, the urban farm combines art and agriculture and emphasizes communication among participants; it is currently operated by the general incorporated association Goodluck.

農林水産省 · 農林水産省 · Japan

This MAFF document chronicles the institutional history of urban farmland policy in Japan. The 1968 City Planning Act (Showa 43) defined 'urbanization promotion areas' (shigaika kuiki) as areas that should be urbanized preferentially and systematically within roughly 10 years. In 1970 an Agricultural Land Act revision changed farmland conversion in these areas from a permit system to a notification system, and in 1972 fixed asset tax began being assessed at residential-land rates on farmland there. The 1974 Productive Green Space Act (Seisan Ryokuchi Ho) exempted farmland designated as productive green space from that residential-rate taxation, and a 1975 inheritance-tax deferral system (with a 20-year deferral period) was created. In 1991, the tax deferral for the three major metropolitan areas' designated cities was narrowed to apply only to productive green space.

東京都 · 東京都例規集 · Japan

Article 6 of the enforcement rules for the Tokyo nature protection ordinance sets the detailed greening standards: ground-level greening must cover 0.2-0.35 times (site area minus building footprint), depending on site size (Appended Table 2); building-top (rooftop) greening must cover 0.2-0.35 times the rooftop area (Appended Table 4); street-facing greening ratios range from 3/10 to 8/10 (Appended Table 3); and planting density is set at 1 tall tree, 2 medium trees, and 3 shrubs per 10 sqm. Enacted in 2001, most recently amended in March 2024.

国土交通省 · 国土交通省 · Japan

MLIT's national survey of rooftop and wall greening construction results for FY2023 found about 15.7 hectares of new rooftop greening (roughly three Tokyo Domes) and 5.0 hectares of new wall greening that year, bringing the cumulative totals since FY2000 to about 615 hectares of rooftop greening and 125 hectares of wall greening. The survey was mailed to 560 companies nationwide with 284 responses (a 50.7% response rate).

· Wikipedia · Singapore

According to the English Wikipedia article 'Vertical farming', Sky Greens Farms opened the world's first commercial vertical farm in Singapore in 2012. It is three stories high and currently has over 100 nine-metre-tall towers. It is cited as the starting point of commercialized urban vertical farming.

TechCrunch · TechCrunch · United States

TechCrunch reported that vertical farming company Bowery Farming ceased operations on November 4, 2024. The company had raised more than $700 million and was valued at over $2 billion in its 2021 funding round, but had gone through multiple rounds of layoffs in 2023. The article places this alongside the bankruptcies of AeroFarms and AppHarvest as evidence of a broader downturn in the vertical farming sector.

Stephanie Hinnershitz · The National WWII Museum · United States

Published 26 November 2024, this article from The National WWII Museum describes the U.S. Victory Garden movement of 1942-1945, during which Americans tended more than 20 million gardens, producing 42 percent of the nation's fresh produce (10 billion pounds) in 1943 alone. It also notes that 120,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans were made to garden in internment camps.

Yang Tingting · The World of Chinese · China

This article profiles Clover Nature School, led by Professor Yuelai Liu, which is converting abandoned urban spaces across China into community gardens. The initiative has established over 1,000 gardens nationwide, with Shanghai aiming for 2,040. In one Urumqi case, a neighboring restaurant's monthly revenue rose from 120,000 to 180,000 yuan after a garden was created.

Hanan Zaffar, Jyoti Thakur · Mongabay India · India

Across Indian cities, urban dwellers are turning rooftops, balconies and vacant plots into food gardens, driven by a desire for fresh organic produce as well as hopes of cutting air pollution and easing the urban heat island effect. Farmers in cities such as Ludhiana and Bengaluru are adopting shade nets and drip irrigation to cope with extreme heat, and research in Bengaluru suggests rooftop farming could reduce indoor temperatures by 2-8°C.

Reyes Tejada N., Kooy M., Zwarteveen M. · Water International · Mozambique (Maputo)

A study grounded in the Infulene Valley, Maputo's main green belt, showing that irrigated urban agriculture drawing on various water sources has been consistently present throughout the Mozambican capital's history. The authors trace how urban planning evolved from 1960 onwards and what those policies meant for urban farming and the livelihoods depending on it. Documenting the city's imaginaries across four eras of Maputo's development, they find that agriculture occupied a prominent place in the post-colonial city and remains significant despite its vague recognition within urban planning after the shift to neoliberalism, and argue for acknowledging urban irrigated agriculture as an intrinsic feature of the city.

· Corresponsables · Peru

Spanish-language CSR outlet Corresponsables reported on 1 November 2024 on the 20th anniversary of "Huertos en Línea" (Online Gardens), a project started in 2004 by neighborhood women under power transmission lines in Villa María del Triunfo, Lima, with support from transmission line operator ISA REP. Participating families harvest around 25,600 kilograms of vegetables per quarter, grow more than 40 agroecological vegetable varieties, and earn up to 350 soles a month from selling surplus produce.