Research & reports

Daniele Belleri, Carlo Ratti · Architectural Design · Global

This paper notes that the conceptual dichotomy between city and countryside has historically hindered architects and urban planners. While many attempts have been made to integrate cities with nature, often more modest experiments yielded better results than grand-scale ones. Daniele Belleri, a partner at CRA‐Carlo Ratti Associati, and Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, explore contemporary options for urban farming.

Lena Katharina Mietz, Bárbara Civit, Alejandro Pablo Arena · Environmental & Socio-economic Studies · Argentina (Mendoza)

This study investigated vegetable consumption patterns, interest in vegetable production, opinions on urban agriculture, and barriers in the metropolitan city of Mendoza, Argentina. Using quantitative research methods and a citizen survey, the results showed strong interest from citizens in urban agriculture, but also identified barriers such as lack of time and resources.

Maria Sulimma · Ecozon European Journal of Literature Culture and Environment · Global

This article examines "feminist gentrifier memoirs," specifically Anne Elizabeth Moore’s Gentrifier (2021) and Vikki Warner’s Tenemental (2018), focusing on gardening practices. It explores the writers’ conflicted positions in gentrifying neighborhoods and their complicity in processes of displacement and real estate speculation, despite benefiting from urban sustainability measures like urban farms and gardens. The texts engage with complex emotions arising from their white privilege and homeownership.

Yurisandra Sierra Reyes, Ana de Dios Martínez, Jorge Pereda Mouso, Manuel Francisco Rodríguez Saldaña · Cuadernos de Administración · Cuba (Camagüey)

This article proposes indicators for urban agriculture planning in Camagüey, Cuba, aiming to contribute to urban sustainability and food sovereignty. The methodology involved theoretical analysis and synthesis, a mixed focus group for variable delimitation, and the IADOV method for validation. These indicators are presented as a useful tool for decision-making, enabling the diagnosis and characterization of urban agriculture and its integration into territorial planning.

Maede Hedayatifard, Mitra Azimi · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Iran

This research assessed the feasibility of initiating a community garden in Pardis New Town, Iran, through a qualitative approach involving interviews, focus group meetings, and an online survey. Findings revealed favorable conditions due to residents' background in local communal activities, adequate agricultural skills from previous residences, and their readiness to engage in volunteer activities. The study also identified strategic requirements for the design and management of community gardens.

Carlos Novaes, Rui Cunha Marques · Sustainability · Global

This study points out the potential importance of urban stormwater in the circular economy (CE) when treated as a useful resource. Urban stormwater can replace part of the water supply from distant sources, reducing energy consumption and emissions. Urban agriculture can also benefit from using green infrastructures. The main gap lies in implementing an efficiency mentality and aligning policies, institutions, regulations, urban planning, and water cycle efficiency.

Seongeun Lee, Seongmin Shin, Hansol Lee, Mi Sun Park · International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · Global

A systematic review of urban agriculture (UA) case studies identified conditions enabling and constraining UA development across different country income groups. For high-income countries, a lack of farmers' knowledge and urban development are significant challenges to UA implementation. Common requirements for all income levels include motivation, labor, policy, social capital, and arable land.

Francisco Tomatis, Monika Egerer, Adriana Corrêa-Guimarães, Luis Manuel Navas-Gracia · Agriculture · Global

This study systematically reviewed 72 academic documents published from 2000 to 2022 to investigate the relationship between climate change and urban gardening. The analysis showed that climate change can have negative impacts on cities, people, and urban food. Suggestions for building urban gardens' adaptation capacity include rainwater collection, changing plant selection, adjusting planting times, and applying vegetative soil cover. Community and allotment gardens contribute to urban adaptation, mitigation, and resilience by regulating microclimates, reducing urban heat island effects, buffering floods, capturing carbon, and fostering social networks.

Emelie Larsson, Katarina Giritli Nygren · Journal of Risk Research · Global

This study analyzed strategy documents and municipal website information to examine how municipalities frame urban gardening as a risk-reduction strategy, using critical discourse analysis. It identified two discourses: an eco(no)logical risk discourse addressing ecological risks within a capitalist market logic, and a social risk discourse focusing on gardening for work training. The findings reveal that top-down urban garden initiatives highlight contemporary inequalities in urban spaces.

Deni Permana · ANTASENA Governance and Innovation Journal · Global

This analysis evaluated the impact of school garden programs on students' nutritional status and nutritious food intake, using surveys, interviews, and nutritional status measurements before and after program implementation. School gardens positively impacted students' nutrition knowledge and increased fresh fruit and vegetable consumption, contributing to a reduction in malnutrition prevalence with significant increases in children's weight and height. However, the program's success was constrained by budget limitations and a lack of training for educators, highlighting the need for adequate training, stable financial support, and curriculum integration.

Camilo Espitia · · Argentina (Buenos Aires)

After the 2001 national economic crisis, Buenos Aires, Argentina, faced increased food insecurity due to higher local product prices and difficulties for low-income families. This chapter describes the city's urban development and food security challenges, discussing urban agriculture as a mitigation strategy implemented by Buenos Aires to reduce dependency on national food production. The city uses zoning and land use ordinances, with community engagement, to bring food closer to people.

Olalekan A. Uthman, Rachel Court, Seun Anjorin, Jodie Enderby, Lena Al-Khudairy, Chidozie Nduka, Hema Mistry, G. J. Meléndez‐Torres, Sian Taylor‐Phillips, Aileen Clarke · Health Technology Assessment · Global

A systematic review of 54 simulation-based studies investigated the potential effect of structural interventions on preventing cardiovascular disease. The studies indicated a prospective decrease in cardiovascular incidents from interventions in areas such as diet, tobacco, and alcohol control. However, significant heterogeneity in models prevented output data comparisons, and no models considered interrelationships between multiple policies.

Georges Flexor · Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural · Global

This article explored various technological paths that can emerge in response to rising food prices and the need to preserve land. Based on a diagram analysis of the economic model of technological change, it indicated through specialized literature that the hypotheses derived from the model already exist. It also investigated the potential geopolitical effects of these technological shifts on the global agri-food industry, stating that changes aimed at conserving land must encourage urban food production.

Catharina Any Sulistyowati, Suraya Afiff, Muhammad Baiquni, Mia Siscawati · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Global

A literature study conducted from October 2021 to June 2022 identified challenges in the development of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Farmers face expenses for sustainable practices and labor shortages, while CSA members encounter issues with time commitment, cost, and adapting food consumption habits. Organizational challenges include member recruitment and retention, competition, and CSA sustainability.

Victorine Dréau · EcoRev · Colombia

In Bello Oriente, Medellin, Colombia, displaced peasant communities resist extractivist expansion and neoliberal territorial reconfiguration through practices like urban agriculture, reasserting collective land use. This research reveals a struggle to reclaim land from the control and speculation logics of criminal gangs and urban planning institutions, indicating critical governance issues.

Katarzyna Świąder, Dražena Čermak, Danuta Gajewska, Katarzyna Najman, Anna Piotrowska, Eliza Kostyra · Sustainability · Global

This review analyzed opportunities and constraints for creating edible cities and accessing wholesome functional foods sustainably. While urban food production methods like controlled-environment farms and home gardens exist, significant constraints include pollution, a lack of government support, and economic challenges for urban farms. These issues must be resolved for edible cities to become widespread.

Leila Babaei, Mohammad Hossein Niksokhan, Ali Torabian, Masoud Negahban‐Azar · International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology · Iran

This study proposed sustainability measurement indicators to evaluate the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus sustainability in urban agriculture. Focusing on Varamin, a semi-arid city in Tehran, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to identify crucial indicators across social, environmental, and economic dimensions. Results indicated that water-related components are critical in arid and semi-arid regions, and pollution prevention holds a 52.8% priority as an environmental sustainability indicator.

Amartya Deb · · Global

This chapter examines the multi-layered social construction of "ambivalent landscapes" in wild green spaces, connecting them to concepts like age-value in heritage conservation and guerrilla gardening. It argues that plant-built assemblages offer novel imaginations of urban nature and contribute to environmental justice. The chapter also explains that the isolation of spontaneous nature on buildings from a city's metabolic processes makes it difficult to value as green infrastructure, yet microsites of wild vegetation hold potential for greening resource-scarce neighborhoods.

Mareike Schwarz · Street Art & Urban Creativity · Global

This paper analyzes the intersection of urban art and community gardens to explore whether commons can emerge from this collaboration. Through a comparative study of two community garden projects in Berlin and Dakar, the research examines the impact of funding structures, accessibility, artistic concepts, and design on commoning. Findings reveal that the two projects differ significantly in their development context and underlying structures, affecting their ability to function as commons. Furthermore, the paper argues that the dependency of artistic involvement on third-party funding contradicts the principles of commoning.

Erich Wolff, Hanna A. Rauf, Perrine Hamel · Environmental Science & Policy · Global

This study analyzed past Nature-based Solutions (NbS) projects in informal settlements across Southeast Asian and Pacific countries, utilizing both grey and academic sources. Six main types of NbS were identified, used to address various social, ecological, and cultural challenges in these settlements, including traditional community gardens and constructed wetlands, some differing from those in the Global North. NbS are often framed as grassroots initiatives led by local communities or as technical systems implemented within "upgrading programs."

Josep Pueyo‐Ros, Joaquím Comas, Ina Säumel, Joana Castellar, Lucía Alexandra Popartan, Vicenç Acuña, Lluís Corominas · Nature-Based Solutions · Global

A paper addressing the problem that serious games proposed as a tool to foster civic participatory processes often fail due to lack of funding or design skills, presenting a new framework for designing serious games for participatory planning of nature-based solutions, with guidance on definition, content, and evaluation steps. The framework's usefulness is illustrated through the design of the Edible City Game (ECG), a digital serious game for participatory planning of edible city solutions (urban nature-based solutions with a food component), which was implemented on Tygron, a platform providing a graphical interface for urban-planning serious games. The paper argues that while Tygron provides user-friendly software for designing serious games, the final product still requires a proper design-oriented process to fulfil its purpose.

Grace Gardner, Wendy Burton, Maddie Sinclair, Maria Bryant · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Global

A scoping review following Arksey and O'Malley's methodology searched Scopus and grey literature to identify interventions aimed at strengthening the environmental sustainability of school food systems; of 6,016 records screened, 24 were included. The most common intervention types were sustainably designed school lunch menus, school food waste reduction, sustainability education delivered through school gardens, and dietary interventions with an added environmental component, and the review concluded that further research is needed to establish the effectiveness of these interventions.

Michael Hardman, Katherine C. R. Baldock, Stuart Connop, Kenny Taylor, Ross Stirling · · Global

Against a backdrop of high interest in blue-green infrastructure (BGI), this chapter examines how developers, planners, engineers, architects, and other actors are incorporating BGI into urban and rural environments. It notes that evidence shows approaches are often basic, relying on traditional landscaping methods that fail to explore BGI's possibilities, and reflects on advances in more radical approaches. The chapter begins with a review of how pollinator biodiversity can be enhanced through innovative BGI systems, then addresses incorporating food growing into BGI strategies and co-benefits with low-carbon energy.

Tufan Özsoy · International Journal of Agriculture Environment and Food Sciences · Global

Starting from the premise that population growth, environmental change, urbanization, shifting consumption patterns, waste, geopolitics and infectious disease strain global food security, this paper proposes a model for promoting rooftop farming on residential, commercial and public housing as a way to build regional self-sufficiency in a transition toward a green economy. It frames rooftop farming as a strategic tool for strengthening local economies, reducing inequality, internalizing responsible production and consumption, and improving urban quality of life, and cites real cases, though it does not report specific figures or measured outcomes.

CHRISTINA FELIX KIFUNDA · Asian Journal of Agriculture · Tanzania

Combining 30 years of temperature and rainfall data from the Tanzania Meteorological Agency with a questionnaire survey of 386 urban-agriculture households across five wards of Kinondoni City (Bunju 118, Kunduchi 42, Mabwepande 102, Mzimuni 28, Wazo 96), plus focus group discussions, key informant interviews and direct observation, this study examined climate change's effects on urban crop production and farmers' adaptation strategies. More than 70% of surveyed smallholder farmers were aware of climate change indicators, consistent with the meteorological data, citing rising temperature (76%) and declining rainfall (73%); pests and diseases were ranked highest (88%) among significant climate-change effects. Land scarcity was also identified as a significant challenge for urban agriculture, and pesticide and fertilizer use was the most commonly cited adaptation strategy (65%).