Research & reports

Maria Dankowska · Protection of cultural heritage · Poland

This study examines a design proposal, the Green Ring of Tradition and Culture, for a system of attractive spaces surrounding the city centre of Lodz, Poland, incorporating green areas such as parks and allotment gardens, greenery along the Lodka and Jasien rivers, cemeteries, and post-industrial buildings including factories and owners' villas, with Piotrkowska Street and its adjacent buildings serving as the connecting element. The Green Ring is currently not implemented but is presented as a system of public spaces that could highlight and preserve the city's most valuable cultural and natural heritage elements.

Tainan Messina, Rui Figueira, José M.L. Santos · Ecosystem Services · Europe

A study in intensive farming systems of Central Portugal developed a methodology integrating species, trait and crop data, pest predation indicators and local farmers' expertise to estimate pest consumption by birds. Using point count data and each species' energy requirements and life-cycle characteristics, it estimated birds' daily invertebrate consumption and examined the relationship between birds and service provision along a tree gradient. Relating habitat requirements to pest control services via species guilds, the study found higher predation in annual crops close to trees or woody vegetation than in crop-only plots. After analyzing the methodology's main challenges and strengths, the study concludes that farmers' participation improved the accuracy and results of the analysis and that the methodology's holistic character can guide stakeholders and policymaking more effectively.

J. Meyer, Markus Hassler · Sustainability · Germany

A qualitative study applied the "leverage points" concept, which holds that rethinking how knowledge is produced and used within systems is a key lever for transformation toward sustainability, to community-supported agriculture (CSA), an application not previously made. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at 22 CSA farms in Germany to gather detailed insight into the production and flow of knowledge among stakeholders and to analyze the degree to which these CSAs hold potential to leverage transformational change toward sustainability. The data indicate that CSAs bear substantial potential to leverage sustainability transformation with regard to rethinking agriculture, with a highly cooperative, participatory and transparent structure identified as the characteristic that allows the creation and exchange of information to flourish.

Н.А. БУЛХОВ, С.Л. МОИСЕЕНКО, Н.П. Малышева · Экономика и предпринимательство · Europe

This article examines raising the level of food security in a Russian region through the development of urban agriculture, using the Bryansk region as its example. It considers the mechanism for ensuring food security and identifies its key elements at the present stage, reviews approaches to assessing food security levels, and substantiates possible and significant criteria for such assessment. Using the methodology of D. G. Olovyannikov, it calculated the influence of a proposed measure on the food security level of the Bryansk region, though the abstract does not report the specific resulting figures.

Lara Houston, Sara Heitlinger, Ruth Catlow, Alex Taylor · Bristol University Press eBooks · United Kingdom

This piece asks under what technoscientific conditions food scarcity might be understood as contingent on heterogeneous actors, and how the possibility of food abundance might be approached as a reparative project revaluing those manifold relations, framing blockchain as an infrastructure offering both productive imaginaries and challenges to such work. A series of workshops critically experimented with these possibilities and challenges, working with diverse participants — community growers, organizers, artists and technologists — who used playful methods to act out fictional scenarios set in 2025, a speculative future in which all of London had been transformed into a city farm. For the organizations and participants involved, reparation meant working in the aftermath of social and environmental collapse to bring into being more-than-human value systems that radically decentered human knowledge and experience.

J.E. Jansma, Sigrid Wertheim‐Heck · Environment and Planning B Urban Analytics and City Science · Netherlands

This study examined Oosterwold, a peri-urban area of Almere, Netherlands, where a top-down policy goal of producing 10% of future urban food needs was delegated to residents' self-organisation under a rule requiring 51% of each plot to be allocated to urban agriculture. Using a social practice theory-informed analysis combining an online survey (n=111) with an analysis of aerial photographs (n=199), the study found that it takes residents time to adopt urban agriculture as a substantial practice within their heterogeneous lifestyles, and that a bottom-up, self-organised approach does not mean planning and policy can adopt a laissez-faire stance — a balance among policy goals, planning instruments, and practitioners' needs is required.

Laura van Oers, Giuseppe Feola, Hens Runhaar, Ellen H.M. Moors · Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions · Europe

This study qualitatively documents the conversion to a solidarity payment system at two Dutch community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms, combining conceptualizations of "organizational unlearning" from organization, business, and management theory with "pedagogical unlearning" drawn from postcolonial and feminist approaches to education, to build a fuller understanding of unlearning in sustainability transitions. The solidarity payment system increases CSA access for low-income members and fosters solidarity with farmers to secure fairer income. The results indicate a generative function of unlearning during processes of change, along with the strategic and pedagogical relevance of unlearning in this specific case.

D Kozáková, M. Jebavý, M. Kunt, K. Čechová · Scientia Agriculturae Bohemica · Europe

A study in Prague, Czech Republic (Scientia Agriculturae Bohemica, 2023) tested bulbous plant species for suitability in vertical and rooftop gardens under a temperate climate, recording bloom timing, duration, and resilience by cardinal direction across multiple years. Narcissus performed best in the south-facing section of the vertical garden and was found most suitable for both garden types; Scilla siberica was the worst choice for south-facing gardens in bloom length and quantity of flowering plants; Muscari armeniacum showed balanced bloom results across all cardinal directions; Galanthus woronowii did not show promise for either garden type; and Crocus 'King of Striped' was found unsuitable for vertical gardens.

SUEDANUR ÖZDEN, ESRA ARSLANTÜRK, MEHMET SENEM, İmdat As · Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ) · Europe

Focused on a planned future city for 50,000 residents on the European side of Istanbul, Turkey, this study (2023, Europe) explores a virtual reality (VR) gaming environment that lets citizens experience smart-city topics including innovative mobility approaches, drone delivery, and urban farming. It frames VR as offering a testing ground for ideas, performance simulation, and crowdsourcing input before a city is physically built, with gamification intended to incentivize citizen participation in the design process and generate a feedback loop for shaping the future city. Citizens can experience the city design through four circulation modes — walking, biking, driving, and flying — within the VR environment, and earn points by engaging with smart-city topics such as urban farming, solar energy use, and carbon neutrality. The project comprises three phases — an immersive head-mounted-display VR version of the city, edutainment/gamification, and integration into Meta's multi-user space — and the paper presents early findings, the methods and tools explored, and a discussion of VR's utility in architecture and urban planning design processes.

Nancy Harlet Esquivel-Marín, Leticia Myriam Sagarnaga Villegas, Octavio T. Barrera-Perales, Juan Antonio Lugo Machado, José María Salas González · Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Agriculture and Environment · Europe

This bibliometric review analyzes the systemic structure of multifunctional agriculture (MFA) and its relationship to sustainability, based on a sample of 432 documents published on the Web of Science platform. Using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer to map scientific collaboration networks, the review identified the authors, journals, and countries shaping the current knowledge structure and four thematic clusters: (a) MFA and sustainability, (b) ecosystem services and biodiversity, (c) European public policies, and (d) governance and urban agriculture. It concludes that, despite an increase in publication rates, research remains concentrated in Europe with few collaborative networks across disciplines, indicating that SDG 17 (partnerships) is not being achieved.

Miguel Borja Bernabé-Crespo, Jorge Olcina Cantos, Antonio Oliva Cañizares · Water · Spain

This paper proposes the concept of a "wastewater use basin" as a smaller-scale working unit than a traditional river basin, aimed at better managing sewerage-network water and urban stormwater in semi-arid and arid regions where water scarcity drives competition among urban, agricultural, industrial, and tourism demands. It is a geographically-focused proposal for integrated management of wastewater and stormwater that ultimately reaches a treatment plant for treatment and reuse. The study area is the southeastern Iberian Peninsula, Spain — the Campo de Cartagena–Mar Menor district (Murcia) and the Vega Baja district (Alicante). Analysis of recent torrential rainfall episodes in the Segura river basin found a clear tendency for these episodes to occur in coastal and pre-coastal areas, meaning the water does not reach the headwaters where the reservoirs are located. Based on the capacity of existing and planned environmental tanks, the study estimates that four cubic hectometers of additional water could be incorporated into the hydrological planning of the Segura basin. It concludes that rainwater collection adds a supplementary water volume that complements resources from treatment plants, serves as an adaptation measure to climatic extremes such as droughts and floods and to climate change, and supports circular management of water resources.

G. C. Moore Smith, Gilda Berruti · · Italy

This chapter explores Italian community gardens and the multiple policy frameworks that govern these activities, framing urban and peri-urban horticulture as part of a long tradition carrying social, environmental, and health benefits. It states that the drive for locally produced food is part of a recurring theme in public discussion; while few advocate national self-sufficiency, the widespread presence of locally based civic horticulture is said to raise awareness of food-production factors and to have a beneficial impact on patterns of food consumption and procurement. The chapter presents results of an investigation carried out in various parts of the country — Turin, Venice, Bologna, Siena, Rome, and Palermo — and also explores the special case of urban horticulture in greater Naples.

Verónica Arcas‐Pilz, Xavier Gabarrell, Francesco Orsini, Gara Villalba · The Science of The Total Environment · Europe

A literature review mapped technologies for recovering nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from urban waste sources for use in urban agriculture (UA), distinguishing (1) food, organic and biowaste sources, for which 7 recovery strategies were identified, from (2) wastewater, for which 11 were identified, and assessed the potential for the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Recovering nutrients through composting and anaerobic digestion of organic waste, composting of wastewater sludge, struvite precipitation and ion exchange in wastewater effluent could, depending on the strategy, meet current and prospective UA phosphorus demand 2.7 to 380.2 times over and nitrogen demand 1.7 to 117.5 times over. Despite this technical potential, the review concludes that current perceptions, legislation and implementation and production costs relative to existing markets do not facilitate the actual application of these nutrient recovery strategies.

Ada Górna · Prace i Studia Geograficzne · Europe

A discussion piece examines vineyards as a specific form of urban agriculture, focusing on their spatial and functional dimensions through a case study of Vienna. Drawing on data from the Austrian Wine Marketing Board and field observations conducted in April 2022, it analyzes Vienna — described as "the king of urban viticulture" — to determine the spatial distribution of vineyards within the city, their production structure, and the functions they perform. It concludes that viticulture and winemaking in Vienna display a multifunctionality that combines production with recreational, tourist, landscape and cultural functions, which contributes to the preservation of vineyards within the city's space.

Anni Turunen, Riikka Aro, Suvi Huttunen · Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics · Europe

A qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews, observation and visual material from a citizen-led Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group in Finland examined the role of materiality in constituting food citizenship. It found that materialities such as the field, time and body play a central role in CSA activities, and concluded that food citizenship should be understood not as an individual human trait but as a collective, active form of doing produced through intra-action with material-discursive arrangements.

Caroline Verfuerth, Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Barbora Adlerová, Amy Dutton · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United Kingdom

Failures of the current food system are described as sitting at the core of multiple overlapping crises, shaping both consumption choices and food production, with low-income households disproportionately affected—their food security and access to healthy, sustainable food impacted as a result. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is framed as a bottom-up response toward agri-food system transformation, an alternative food system built on locally sold, agroecologically grown food rooted in social values, and, alongside other food citizenship movements and alternative food networks (AFNs), driven by a vision of a democratic, socially and economically just, environmentally sustainable food system. Yet low-income households are underrepresented in the CSA community. This paper reports findings from a co-produced intervention between the research team, four CSA farms in Wales, United Kingdom, and two food aid partners, seeking ways to improve CSA membership accessibility for food-insecure households: 38 households received a weekly vegetable bag for two to four months, and 16 household members were interviewed at the project's start and at the end of the harvest season. Using a food well-being framework, the study found that CSA membership holistically improved food well-being by strengthening producer-consumer relationships, increasing availability of healthy foods, helping people care for their own and their families' well-being, and building place-based food capability and literacy—results the authors use to support calls for prioritizing food well-being interventions to benefit financially excluded, food-insecure households within localized AFNs.

Veronica Sebald, Julia M. Schmack, Monika Egerer · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems · Germany

This study surveyed the occurrence of poisonous plant species in 30 urban community gardens across two German cities, Berlin and Munich, and examined concerns around poisonous and highly poisonous plants in urban garden settings. It found that plants producing substances toxic to humans occur in these gardens while also potentially holding ecosystem-functioning and biodiversity-conservation value, creating a trade-off with the ecosystem service of human health promotion, and concludes that poisonous plants should be carefully monitored and managed—depending on garden participants and the goals of the garden organization—to mitigate health risks while still supporting biodiversity conservation.

Ministère de la Transition écologique · Ministère de la Transition écologique (France) · France

France's Ministry of Ecological Transition's official page on the mandatory source-sorting of biowaste (food and garden waste). Per EU law and France's 2020 anti-waste law, source-sorting became mandatory nationwide for all professionals and households from January 1, 2024. Biowaste is described as making up one-third of unsorted household waste; the government's 'Fonds vert' has supported local authorities' sorting infrastructure since 2023.

Fields in Trust · Fields in Trust · United Kingdom

The UK charity Fields in Trust protects parks and green spaces permanently for sport and recreation by entering a legally binding agreement with the landowner — a Deed of Dedication in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or a Minute of Agreement in Scotland. The process runs through 10 steps, and the deed must be registered with the land registry within three months of signing. The charity states it has helped save almost 3,000 parks and green spaces to date.

· Wikipedia (Italian) · Italy

Cascina Chiesa Rossa is a farmhouse-and-church complex built between the 9th and 13th centuries, acquired by the City of Milan in 1960. Since 2009 it has operated as a public park including an orchard and wooded area, a bar, and a library, with a preservation committee founded in 1988 overseeing conservation and cultural activities. It is an example of a historic agricultural building repurposed as public civic space.

Josephine Rother · Stadt und Grün 11/2023 · Germany

An article that traces the history of German allotments through one site in the Linden district of Hannover. The Linden association first appears in lease records in 1909, had more than 1,000 members by 1925, and saw its first colony building erected in 1926. On the municipal side it notes the establishment of an office for allotment construction (Amtsstelle für den Kleingartenbau) in 1919 and the merging of the clubs into the Reichsverband der Kleingartenvereine in 1921. Plot numbers rose to 20,000 in the five years from 1927 to 1932 and peaked at 26,000 in 1935. In 1983 the land was secured by permanent-allotment designation; Hannover today has roughly 20,000 gardens on 1,048 hectares, about 5 per cent of the city's area, or one garden per 28 residents.

Eugenio-Gozalbo M., Ramos-Truchero G., Suárez-López R., Romanillos M.S.A., Rees S. · Education Sciences (MDPI), 12(3):168 · Europe

A study assessing a garden-based teaching unit on 'Food and Nutrition' against a traditional textbook-based unit. The garden-based sequence produced more comprehensive student understanding and better preparation for real-life dietary decisions, representing an educational improvement over traditional teaching.

Wood C. J., Barton J. L., Wicks C. L. · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(20):13166 · United Kingdom

A longitudinal study tracking 53 people with mental illness referred to the therapeutic community garden 'Growing Together' in Essex, UK, showing that participation improved wellbeing, reduced loneliness and raised life satisfaction. Benefits held even across the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the value of green social prescribing.

Tripodi P., D'Alessandro A., Francese G. · Frontiers in Plant Science 13:1031776 · Italy

Integrated genomic and biochemical analysis of heirloom tomatoes linking fruit shape and size to sugars, organic acids, and aroma compounds. Demonstrates heirlooms as germplasm resources for high food quality and sustainable agriculture.

Cichocki J., von Cossel M., Winkler B. · Agronomy 12(12):3182 · Germany

Assesses technical requirements, productivity and economic viability of a 'Smart Office Farm' indoor unit based on a five-week production cycle of lettuce, pak choi and basil, comparing indoor vertical production with field and greenhouse cultivation in Germany.