Research & reports

Pascale Scheromm, Louis Cretin · Cahiers ESPI2R · Europe

Against the backdrop of the spread of shared gardens across European cities, this article focuses on their insertion into residential projects led by private property developers rather than municipalities, examining what issues this raises. It frames municipally driven shared gardens as well studied while noting that their development within private developers' residential programs has received less research attention.

Paola Branduini, Elena Colli · Landscape Research · Italy

A qualitative sociological analysis examined a policy tool used by public landowners in peri-urban Milan, Italy, who introduced new lease agreements transferring the maintenance costs of built rural heritage to tenants, aiming to avoid degradation and add value to unused buildings. Analyzing the tool through the lens of social justice and its impact on quality of life, the study found that the same policy tool produces very different outcomes for landscape preservation and quality of life depending on the implementation strategy used, and on the elements of social justice considered along with contextual and individual characteristics.

Peter Bengtsen · Street Art & Urban Creativity · Europe

This editorial for the journal Street Art and Urban Creativity reports that since 2015 the journal has published six issues comprising 84 research articles along with essays, working papers, and book reviews. It cites the journal, the annual Urban Creativity conference in Lisbon, and the Urban Creativity Lund research network as signs that the field of urban creativity studies is becoming increasingly established. The field is described as covering a broad range of interests including, but not limited to, street art, graffiti, urban foraging, parkour, skateboarding, and guerrilla gardening, with the editorial noting that as a field settles, a dominant paradigm tends to emerge. As part of the issue's call for submissions, it invites contributions reflecting on the current status and future of this transdisciplinary academic field, which has developed over the past two decades.

Tatiane de Jesus Marques Souza, Mamen Cuéllar Padilla · RACO (Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert) (Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya) · Spain

Food crises directly influence children's development across different social contexts, and school gardens are proposed as one response to this issue. This study presents an analysis tool for the innovative contributions a school garden can make by combining educational processes with social inclusion in impoverished contexts. Developed through a thorough review of the scientific literature, the tool was applied to a case study to demonstrate its usefulness. The main conclusion is that while school gardens per se have high innovative potential as an educational tool, whether that potential is realized depends on the garden's origin, its design, and the development process that accompanies it.

Nora Gavare · Landscape architecture and art · Europe

In Sigulda, Latvia, the community garden "AUDZ," open to everyone, was created as a local, small-scale response to 21st-century problems including the depletion of natural resources, air pollution, rising industrial production, waste and an aging society. Designer Nora Gavare took part in an ERASMUS+ international training mobility visit on "Development of urban environment" in Hong Kong, where she gained insight into overpopulation, rapid urban growth at the expense of natural habitat, and rising food product demand. Photo mapping of Sigulda's public environment across different periods led to the conclusion that, given the town's rapidly growing population, fostering a sense of community and education processes is needed because opportunities for interaction among different social groups are lacking.

András Halbritter · Évkönyv · Europe

Following its boom period in the 19th and 20th centuries, Hungary's school garden movement is described as undergoing a new phase tied to sustainability education, with the number of school and kindergarten gardens growing rapidly. Knowledge sharing takes place through the Hungarian School Garden Network across the Carpathian Basin, and in 2019 the Ministry of Agriculture launched a School Garden Development Programme; school-garden pedagogy has been added to teacher and vocational-teacher training curricula, with further support from international projects.

Kristine Valle, Eli Mari Øverdahl, Stephanie Degenhardt, Kim Weger, Wendy Fjellstad, Sebastian Eiter · Duo Research Archive (University of Oslo) · Europe

Participating in a neighbourhood and community garden produces positive social and emotional effects along with satisfaction from growing food. Adults and teenagers participating in gardening activities at Linderud farm in Oslo, Norway, most commonly reported positive experiences related to social networks, growing food, feelings/emotions, and aesthetics.

Lovisa Ekvall · · Europe

A study examines how social capital is generated within community gardens through semi-structured qualitative interviews with members holding board positions, drawing on the theoretical framework of prior studies by Firth et al. (2011) and Kingsley and Townsend (2006). The findings indicate that the professional roles and education of those in administrative positions are important for building social capital, and that good relations with municipal and public authority representatives strengthen it further. The study identifies the creation of a "third place" for unconstrained interaction among participants, and working in smaller groups, as factors that open opportunities for inclusion and new relationships.

Ines Peper · University of Vienna · Europe

A paper on Eisenheim, a company housing settlement founded in 1844 near Oberhausen in Germany's Ruhr region by the mining company Gutehoffnungshütte, historically situates today's discourse on urban agriculture. It examines urban gardening and agricultural facilities at Eisenheim, then places the case within the broader development of urban agriculture from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, comparing it to four other "model villages" — including those of Krupp, BASF, and Farbwerke Höchst — with differing ideological and socio-economic backgrounds. The analysis centers on how access to land was organized and what property regimes affected long-term preservation of agricultural land use, how subsistence agriculture affected residents' food resilience, diet quality, and household income formation, and how subsistence gardening and settlements' green-space layout contributed to residents' community life.

Hüseyin Berk TÜRKER · Opus uluslararası toplum araştırmaları dergisi · Turkey

This study surveyed the opinions and attitudes toward urban agriculture of 40 third-year undergraduate students from various departments at Uşak University, Turkey—which had recently launched the country's first undergraduate-level urban agriculture course—using an online questionnaire with 19 multiple-choice, yes/no, and fill-in-the-blank questions, analyzed with descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. The results showed students' opinions of the course were positive, its content and materials were considered sufficient, the course was judged suitable for e-learning, and awareness of urban agriculture increased by the end of the course.

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

A study of initiatives transforming the food system at both municipal and civil-society level in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), Portugal, aimed to characterize these initiatives, examine how they are proposing new food planning agendas, and draw lessons for future planning policy. Its method compared a scenario from a 2014 questionnaire of planning officials with the discourses of 80 public- and civil-society-sector initiatives surveyed in 2019, using an analytical framework grounded in the FAO and RUAF (Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security) recommendations.

Sovová L., Veen E.J. · Sustainability (MDPI), 12(12):5134 · Europe

A comparative study of food self-provisioning in allotment gardens in the Netherlands and Czechia, drawing on social practice theory. It argues self-provisioning is neither merely a poverty response nor a trend, holding significant potential for food provisioning that can be supported within alternative food networks and urban sustainability frameworks.

Daniels B., Jedamski J., Ottermanns R., Ross-Nickoll M. · PLOS ONE, 15(7):e0235492 · Europe

A study of pollinator diversity and plant-pollinator interactions in urban green spaces in Germany. Urban community gardens hosted significantly higher pollinator abundance than other park types, comparable to rural reference sites, showing that near-natural design and management, floral diversity, and even small green patches can make cities pollinator habitat.

Tharrey M., Sachs A., Perignon M., Simon C., Mejean C., Litt J., Darmon N. · BMC Public Health · France (Montpellier)

A quasi-experimental study in Greater Montpellier comparing 66 new community garden participants with 66 matched controls found no significant shifts toward more sustainable lifestyles (diet, physical activity, well-being) after one year of garden participation.

David R Beam, Aniko Szabo, Jared Olson, Lawrence Hoffman, Kirsten M M Beyer · Injury Prevention · United States (Milwaukee)

Using a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design, this study compared 53 vacant lots converted into community gardens with 159 matched control lots to assess effects on police-reported theft, violent, and nuisance crime in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It found violent and nuisance crime rates were lower near the garden-conversion lots, with the most consistent reductions in violent crime within 250 m (about 3.7%–6.4%), while no substantial effect was seen for theft.

Artmann M., Sartison K., Vávra J. · Journal of Cleaner Production · Germany

Proposes a conceptual multi-dimensional framework positioning the edible city as a nature-based solution for sustainability transformation, tested on a German case study.

Sartison K., Artmann M. · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening · Germany

An explorative study of urban food production in German cities, examining edible cities as a nature-based solution and the drivers and constraints of implementation.

Sieveking A., Schomerus C.-T. · Natur und Recht · Germany

Discusses the establishment of food policy councils (Ernährungsräte) in Germany as an advisory-council instrument for a food-system transition.

Bruni C., Akyol Ç., Cipolletta G., Eusebi A.L., Caniani D., Masi S., Colón J., Fatone F. · Sustainability · Italy

Reviews Italian legislation and implemented projects on decentralized community composting, arguing Italy can serve as a model for Mediterranean countries building decentralized composting programs.

· Sustainability · New Zealand; Germany

Using case studies in New Zealand and Germany, this study systematically analyzes the factors that support or obstruct the development of urban community gardens as placemaking.

Dobson M., Edmondson J., Warren P. · Landscape and Urban Planning · United Kingdom

A GIS analysis of historic maps shows UK allotment land declined by about 65% from its peak to 2016. The loss is inequitable: the most deprived urban areas experienced eight times the level of allotment loss as the least deprived areas.

· Urban Forestry & Urban Greening · London, UK

In London, allotments comprise the largest area of urban agriculture yet provision is under threat and fails to meet demand. Despite well-documented benefits, the opportunity for urban food growing is declining under development pressure while demand rises.

Panagiota Kotsila, Isabelle Anguelovski, Francesc Baró, Johannes Langemeyer, Filka Sekulova, James J. Connolly · Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · Spain (Barcelona)

This paper analyzes nature-based solutions (NBS) as discursive tools that create an inviting space for nature's neoliberalization processes, examining two city-initiated projects in Barcelona, Spain: the Passeig de Sant Joan green corridor and the Espai Germanetes community garden. The study found that urban nature can serve elite economic players at the expense of widespread socio-ecological benefits. It also noted that outcomes regarding neoliberalism and its contestation were very distinct between the two projects due to different forms of governance.

Annemarie Tabea Rost, Victoria Liste, Corinna Seidel, Lea Matscheroth, Marco Otto, Fred Meier, Daniel Fenner · Atmosphere · Germany (Berlin)

This study measured nocturnal air temperatures in 13 allotment garden complexes (AGCs) during the summer of 2018 in Berlin, Germany, comparing them to measurements in densely built-up urban areas, two large inner-city parks, and rural areas. On average, the assessed AGCs were 2.7 K cooler at night than urban areas, and most investigated AGCs (11/13) showed a larger mean nocturnal air temperature difference than urban parks. The nocturnal air temperature difference decreased significantly as the floor space index around AGCs increased, and shape complexity showed a significant positive correlation, while AGC size and distance to the city center significantly decreased with increasing nocturnal air temperature difference.

Christine Aubry, Anne Cécile Daniel, Baptiste Grard, Agnès Lelièvre, Nathalie Frascaria‐Lacoste, Claire Chenu · · France

Urban micro-farms in France are intermediate forms between community gardens and recognized vegetable farms, limited in number and too heterogeneous for a unique typology. This study developed an original reading grid, inspired by agricultural sustainability assessment tools, to understand their functioning. The 18-month participatory research included numerous producer surveys, follow-ups, and field data collection on production, costs, revenue, and working time.