Research & reports

Fernando Richter Iturregui · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Spain (Basque Country)

This study aimed to understand the current significance of urban agriculture in Spain and the Basque Country as an emerging leisure experience and expanding social phenomenon. It employed a dual-pronged investigation, quantitative to assess the magnitude and qualities of urban agriculture in the Basque Country within the Spanish context, and qualitative to understand how users interpret the practice. The research sought to identify the characteristics describing urban agriculture as a leisure experience.

Nadia Tecco, Federico Cóppola, Francesco Sottile, Cristiana Peano · Future of food: journal on food, agriculture and society · Italy (Turin)

This paper, based on fieldwork in two urban communal gardens in Turin, Italy, examined the spatiotemporal dimension of urban gardening, focusing on governance and the impact of regulations. It found that urban garden management is problematic due to the complex relationship between gardeners and allotments. Local government and promoting associations face challenges in adapting to and managing the evolving phenomenon, encountering internal conservative resistance and external pressures for change. These governance aspects have not been sufficiently considered.

Zohreh Hamrang · · Italy

This study indicates that peri-urban territory provides a wide range of functions and services for surrounding urban areas, contributing to the quality of life in urban regions. These include food production, recreational services, and other services related to cultural landscape management, which in turn contribute to the ecological capacity of the landscape. Peri-urban agriculture (PUA) is characterized by two elements: intensified production with high productive value, and an extensive lifestyle with environmentally guided land use.

Myles McGregor‐Lowndes, Frances Hannah · QUT ePrints (Queensland University of Technology) · United Kingdom

On August 14, 2017, the First Tier Tribunal, General Regulatory Chamber (Charity) in the United Kingdom, ruled on the case of Densham v The Charity Commission For England And Wales. An allotment holder in a community garden failed in their claim that the allotments were not a charity, and the existing Scheme was allowed to stand.

Alessandro Scuderi, Luisa Sturiale, Claudio Bellia, Vera Teresa Foti, Giuseppe Timpanaro · RIVISTA DI STUDI SULLA SOSTENIBILITA · Italy (Catania)

This study addresses the proposal by the Municipality of Catania to create one of Europe's largest urban gardens in a marginalized, socio-economically degraded area of the city. Starting from an analysis of urban agriculture at the European level, the work aims to highlight the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of this new form of urban green space through a participatory SWOT analysis.

Sarah Kumnig · transcript Verlag eBooks · Europe

This study, titled "Between green image production, participatory politics, and growth pressure: urban agriculture and gardens in the context of neoliberal urban development in Vienna," was published in Umkämpftes Grün on page 139.

Byoungwook Min, Yoonchun Jung · · Europe

This research is an urban design project focusing on Groot-IJsselmonde, a post-war housing area in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It explores how a landscape approach can contribute to regenerating a decrepit residential district, proposing to add productive functions to unused green areas and meaningless landscapes to enhance the community's economic and social elements.

Elena Domene Gómez, Francesc Coll, Marta Garcia-Sierra · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Spain (Barcelona)

Informal vegetable gardens have proliferated in Barcelona's urban periphery since the 1980s, serving as leisure spaces and food sources, and are a relevant form of agriculture. However, these "unregulated" spaces are not considered in urban and peri-urban agriculture promotion policies. A GIS methodology mapped these gardens in the Barcelona metropolitan area for 2009 and 2015, showing an increase in occupied surface during the recent economic crisis. The study evaluates contradictions leading municipal managers to eliminate or regulate these informal spaces, attributing them partly to the subjectivity of the urban and peri-urban agriculture concept and its supposed multifunctionality.

Ana Espinosa Seguí, Barbara Maćkiewicz, Marit Rosol · ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies · Spain

This article, based on a study of allotment gardens in Alicante province, Spain, explains their specific histories which differ from North American and Northern European contexts. It shows how urban allotments provide insight into economic, land-use, and urban-rural changes during crises. Initially for leisure and greening, these projects shifted after the 2009 economic recession to target people at risk of poverty, focusing on productive, therapeutic, and educational functions, though land speculation remains a concern.

Kaduna‐Ève Demailly · Géographie et cultures · France

This article examines shared gardens in the Île-de-France region of France as territories of environmental transition. Based on a study of 48 shared gardens in the Parisian metropolitan area, the analysis of user and political actor discourses and practices highlights their role in improving living environments and raising awareness of environmentally friendly practices that promote urban biodiversity.

Lesley Acton · Archives The Journal of the British Records Association · United Kingdom

This paper documents how archives were used to write a history of the twentieth-century urban allotment movement in England. Beginning with a case study of allotments in Ilford (now London Borough of Redbridge), 100 years of council minutes were used as a foundation. A demographic profile of plot holders in Ilford/Redbridge showed that, contrary to established narratives, they were not necessarily from poor and working classes but reflected their communities.

Nerea Morán Alonso, Ícaro Obeso Muñiz, Agustín Hernández Aja, Felipe Fernández García · Moravian Geographical Reports · Spain

This paper analyzed the evolution of peri-urban agriculture in Spain's Madrid and Oviedo metropolitan areas to identify revitalization opportunities. Using aerial images and cartographic bases, the study found that peri-urban agriculture has suffered from urban occupation and internal changes in crops and agricultural uses, experiencing a process of decline. Innovative initiatives are explored as potential revitalization opportunities.

Ana Cristina Torres, Sophie Nadot, Anne‐Caroline Prévot · Ecology and Society · France

This study used participant observation and semi-structured interviews to explore motivations, practices, and processes in French community gardens, relating them to environmental stewardship. It found that environmental, social, and self-motivations drive gardener participation, fulfilling needs through processes like nature contemplation, environmental education, and renewing social-ecological relationships. French community gardens provide new experiences of nature and foster environmental stewardship by cultivating relational values, offering opportunities for creative conservation.

Delgado, Cecília · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · Europe

This study analyzed a set of gardens in Vienna and Lisbon, plus 29 relevant experiences in Portugal, to verify the argument that women are protagonists in urban agriculture. The results demonstrate a favorable evolution towards a greater presence of women in gardens, women's hegemony as process managers and facilitators, and their emergence in social entrepreneurship projects.

Matthew Reed, Daniel Keech · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems · United Kingdom (Bristol)

This study investigated how urban food activists related to the media, represented themselves, and how others represented their agenda during 2015 when Bristol was the European Green Capital. The research found that mass media primarily focused on topics other than food, and urban food was not a salient issue in their coverage. The self-representation of urban food networks revealed a narrow focus of interest, which may have contributed to a lack of connection between potential allies within the city, indicating limited connections of urban food networks to circuits of power and influence.

Julia Dahlvik, Yvonne Franz, Myrte Hoekstra, Josef Kohlbacher · ISR-Forschungsberichte · Europe

A record of practitioner reflections from a final discussion event held in Vienna in May 2017 by the ICEC research project. It presents quotes from Nathalie Binder, co-initiator of the "Matznergarten" community garden in the 14th district, Florian Brand of the Urban Renewal Office for districts 7/8/16, and Markus Rumelhart, district mayor of the 6th district, on their neighbourhood-level practices and effects. The reflections describe the community garden as built around a "growing together" motto that fostered relationships among members and neighbours, the provision of "neutral ground" space as a key tool of the Urban Renewal Office's work, and local politicians' aim of helping resident initiatives become self-sustaining.

María Hernández Hernández · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Spain

A book chapter on Spain examines the historical shift in city-countryside relations, analyzing the factors behind the paradigm change since the late 20th century and the strategies (agri-food policy, local development, governance, land stewardship) and tools (agrarian parks, social agriculture, urban gardens) used to sustain farming in peri-urban areas, based on a literature review of scientific publications, regulatory frameworks, and initiatives. It concludes that quality, authentic local farm production represents an opportunity for peri-urban territories and historic agricultural landscapes.

Salvatore Pinna · Kobra (Universitätsbibliothek Kassel) · Spain

This study examines a municipal rural park in the Madrid region, Spain, established to promote local and seasonal produce, and analyzes its role in agricultural landscape enhancement using in-depth interviews and website analysis. Drawing on the European Landscape Convention's definition of landscape, it shows how spatial, ecological, and social outputs of farmer-led multifunctional and peri-urban agriculture interact with the park's management framework. The results are discussed in relation to Spanish environmental and landscape law, particularly regarding the connection between food, territory, and traditional landscape.

Maria Frangos, Thomas D. Garvey, Irena Knežević · The Design Journal · Europe

This case study used participatory mapping, group interviews and document analysis to examine two urban gardening projects in Europe, exploring how participants engage in place-making as part of a broader shift toward peer-to-peer, digitally mediated participatory spatial practices and the commons. It found that citizens play an important role in creating, designing and maintaining the commons, and shows how individuals and community groups working outside a professional urban-design context expand placemaking into a vehicle for social change.

David Arredondo Garrido · ZARCH · Spain

This study analyses initiatives developed over the past decade in the centres of four Spanish cities with significant historical heritage -- Seville, Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza -- as responses to the growing homogenisation of the urban landscape that leaves little room for uniqueness, unregulated activity or public participation. These projects use urban agriculture and gardening to escape prevailing banality and create spaces for culture, social relations and imagination, but the study notes that their management faces difficulties and their impact remains minor.

Esther Gramsbergen · Repository hosted by TU Delft Library (TU Delft) · Europe (Netherlands)

A historical study of the Plantage, created in the northeastern corner of Amsterdam in 1682, examining it as a public project rather than simply an early allotment garden complex. It focuses on the public function of the botanical garden that formed part of the site, the unusual location within the city walls, and the detailed design by municipal engineer Jacob Bosch. The study traces how the "Hortus Medicus," an educational garden for apprentice apothecaries, was transferred to the Plantage and transformed into the "Hortus Botanicus," a botanical garden open to the general public, showing that the city council invested not only in a knowledge institute for public health but also in a cultural institution for the "education and delight" of Amsterdam's citizens.

Stephanie Stephanie Kartika Lestari · · Europe

A case study of two urban farming organizations in the Netherlands developed a set of indicators to assess factors hampering the diffusion of radical innovation. Urban farming is characterized here as a radical innovation aiming for fresh and sustainable food supply in urban areas that has yet to achieve large-scale diffusion, and the study proposes a non-static conceptual model that lets commercial firms rationally assess barriers to diffusion and revisit their niche strategies as internal and external conditions change.

G. Y. Afanasyev · Nauchnyi Dialog · Europe

This historical study examines the emergence of environmental problems in major cities of the Russian Empire during the industrial revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on water pollution in Saint Petersburg. Using statistical archival data, it traces the growing share of industrial pollution in total emissions and argues Saint Petersburg was among the most polluted cities in Europe, noting that addressing water pollution and urban redevelopment became relevant to urban agriculture and drew attention from municipal to national levels by the turn of the century.

Antoni F. Tulla i Pujol, Ana Vera, Natàlia Valldeperas, Carles Guirado González · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Spain

This study examines Social Farming (SF), using local agricultural and natural resources to promote health, employment and empowerment among groups at risk of exclusion, including people with disabilities, those in poverty, with dependencies, in the penitentiary system, survivors of gender violence, older people, at-risk youth, immigrants and homeless people, as a sustainable alternative to urban agriculture around Barcelona. Amid conflict over land demand for housing, infrastructure and facilities in Barcelona's peri-urban areas, protected agricultural land (agricultural parks) and natural parks have facilitated SF projects linked to social movements and the Third Sector; the study built a database of 161 SF projects in Catalonia and used quantitative and qualitative methods, including the CANVAS method for structural and economic viability and the SROI method for social return on investment.

Tanja Mölders, Pia Kühnemann · Urban studies · Germany

A study reinterprets Henri Lefebvre's concept of the "right to the city" as a demand for a "right to the garden." It first sets out how social ecology theoretical approaches define the relationship between "nature" and "society," linking this with Lefebvre's reflections on three dimensions of "space" as the basis for an empirical case study. Using the NordStadtGarten urban gardening project in Hannover as its case, the study examines to what extent this project can be interpreted as a deliberate critique of prevailing spatial relations. Drawing on the authors' own observations and statements from the initiating group, it shows that the act of appropriating space and the idiosyncratic use and shaping of the garden serve as instruments of critique while also functioning as occasions for experimenting with alternative forms of communal spatial and social life.