Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
9074 results(21 / 363)
From seed to profit: a comparative economic study of two Italian vertical farms
2025Amici A. S., Appicciutoli D., Bentivoglio D., Staffolani G., Chiaraluce G., Mogetta M., Finco A. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 9:1584778 · Italy
Assesses the profitability of two microgreen-producing vertical farms in northern Italy using semi-structured interviews, applying operational margin and cost-revenue ratios to show these systems are economically profitable under current Italian conditions.
EconomicsPerceived Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Engagement: Organizational Identification and Corporate Volunteering Climate
2025Zuo J., Huang L., Minami C. · Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management · Japan
Using social identity theory and data from 226 Japanese employees, shows that perceived CSR boosts job and organizational engagement through organizational identification, moderated by the corporate volunteering climate.
WelfareCommunityEconomicsCommunity-supported agriculture and allotment gardens as collective forms of food production – Investigating the effect of social capital on perceived benefits
2025Neumann V., Schmid B., El Benni N., Finger R. · Land Use Policy · Switzerland
Survey of 500 members of community-supported agriculture and allotment gardens in Switzerland showing social capital has a significantly positive effect on members' perceived benefits, highlighting the social value of collective urban food production.
CommunityEconomicsWelfare(Not) in my backyard: Access to community gardens, neighborhood characteristics, and food deserts
2025Chen H., Wang H., Bora F., Hu Y. · Cities 166:106226 · United States
Analyzes 1,874 community gardens across 24 US cities. Neighborhood race and poverty predict garden presence, but most gardens lie outside designated food deserts, limiting their capacity to address food access gaps.
WelfareCommunityPolicyThe roles of urban agriculture to household food security: a case study in Kirkos sub-city, Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia
2025Alene F.D., Aga M.A. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 9:1444320 · Ethiopia
This case study in Addis Ababa's Kirkos sub-city examines urban agriculture's role in household food security, finding 48.2% of respondents food secure and about a third reporting urban agriculture helped meet their daily food needs.
WelfareEconomicsUrban Agriculture Interventions in Refugee and Immigrant Communities: A Scoping Review
2025Langerman S., Juarez N., Magan I. M. · Journal of Urban Health 102:857-871 · Global
Scoping review of 42 studies (1990-2024) on urban agriculture interventions for refugees and immigrants, identifying five domains (well-being, physical health, ecological, economic, sociological), with social outcomes most common.
WelfareCommunityHealth都市と地域をつなぐ「BRANZ オーナーズファーム」開始
2025東急不動産株式会社, 株式会社マイファーム · 東急不動産 プレスリリース資料 · Japan
Tokyu Fudosan launches an agriculture experience project for Branz owners in Higashimatsuyama using solar-sharing farmland, an official developer-led rental-garden initiative linking resident food education, exchange, and regional revitalization.
CommunityEconomicsHealth市民農園って楽しい！
2025名古屋市 東部・緑農政課 · 名古屋市 市民農園調査・広報資料 · Japan
Nagoya outreach and survey material cataloguing municipal allotment types — Nogomi, community, partitioned and Minori farms — with plot sizes, fees and recruitment timing, showing the reality of publicly operated rental gardens.
CommunityFood educationEconomics令和7年度版さいたま市の農業
2025さいたま市 · さいたま市 農業統計・振興報告書 · Japan
Saitama's annual agricultural report summarising publicly supported urban agriculture including the urban agriculture council, land-coordinator programme and 79 public/private citizen farms with supply statistics.
PolicyCommunityFood educationEconomics市民農園開設状況調査の結果について（令和7年3月末時点）
2025農林水産省 · 農林水産省 統計調査 · Japan
MAFF nationwide survey of citizen farm counts, plots, area and operator-type trends, providing baseline statistics on publicly and institutionally supported urban gardening across Japan as of March 2025.
PolicyEconomicsCommunityAssessing the sustainable development potential of rooftop agrivoltaics: A case study of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration
2025Liu Q., Chen T., Zhang N., Lin Z., Ye Z., Jiang K., Gao Y., Guo Y., Weng A. · Energy (Elsevier), 320:135191 · China (Yangtze River Delta)
A quantitative assessment of rooftop agrivoltaics (RAV) — co-locating solar PV and crops on building rooftops — against the SDGs. For the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (~10,720 km² of rooftops) it estimates ~93.1 TWh/year of electricity (6.3% of regional demand), ~43.6 Mt/year of lettuce, large job creation, and ~127 Mt/year of CO2 reduction, positioning RAV as a multifunctional urban land-use that pairs 'zero food miles' food production with clean energy.
EconomicsPolicyOrganic cycleA Modular Agrivoltaics Building Envelope Integrating Thin-Film Photovoltaics and Hydroponic Urban Farming Systems: A Circular Design Approach with the Multi-Objective Optimization of Energy, Light, Water and Structure
2025Zhang Y., Chen T., Gasparri E., Lucchi E. · Sustainability (MDPI), 17(2):666 · Australia (Sydney)
Proposes a modular agrivoltaics building envelope that physically integrates thin-film PV and hydroponic farming into the building skin itself, rather than treating solar and agriculture as separate systems. Using a circular design approach with multi-objective optimization of energy, light, water and structure (case study: Sydney), it extends food-plus-energy production from rooftops to walls and facades, highlighting space-utilization and system-integration gains for net-zero urban architecture.
EconomicsOrganic cycleDistinct Socio-Ecological Drivers Shape the Diversity of Plants, Birds, and Lepidopterans in Chicago Community Gardens
2025Domanus A., Smith A., Roberts M., Schnorenberg R., Doane M., Minor E. · Cities and the Environment (CATE), 17(2):9 · United States (Chicago)
A study of 24 community gardens in Chicago measuring not only cultivated crops but also spontaneous (wild/native) plants, birds, butterflies and bees. Gardens supported many spontaneous plant species (mean 8.4 per garden) alongside crops, which underpinned diverse fauna (18 bird species, 13 bee genera, 10 lepidopteran species). Socio-ecological drivers such as management type (allotment vs. communal) significantly shaped cultivated richness, the volume of spontaneous vegetation, and tree/shrub density — showing that how gardens are managed governs urban biodiversity.
BiodiversityPollinatorsCommunityHow has peri-urban research evolved towards sustainable urban planning in the last five decades: a quantitative analysis and systematic review
2025Mallick S., Paul S., Rout S., Behera R.N. · Frontiers of Urban and Rural Planning (Springer) · Global
A quantitative systematic review of five decades of peri-urban research, mapping its growing integration into urban planning and the diversity of its definitions, and positioning peri-urban agriculture's contribution to sustainable planning as a future direction.
PolicyPeri-Urban Land Transformation in the Global South: Revisiting Conceptual Vectors and Theoretical Perspectives
2025Tesfay S.M., Alem G., Ayele D.G. · Land (MDPI) 14(7), 1483 · Global
Theoretically revisits peri-urban land transformation in the Global South, organizing the change in agricultural land use around three vectors: capital, governance and revival (return to farming).
PolicyContribution of natural capital to quality of life of urban-to-rural migrants in Japan
2025Takahashi Y., Yoshida T., Johnson B.A., Shigeto S., Yamagata Y. · Sustainability Science (Springer) · Japan
Uses structural equation modeling on national survey and geospatial data to demonstrate the relationship between urban-to-rural migrants' quality of life and natural capital (farmland, greenspace), providing evidence for the effectiveness of rural in-migration policy.
HealthPolicyThe Transformation of Peri-Urban Agriculture and Its Implications for Urban–Rural Integration Under the Influence of Digital Technology
2025Lei J., Xie Y., Chen Y., Zhong T., Lin Y., Wang M. · Land (MDPI) 14(2), 375 · China
Through qualitative research (interviews, fieldwork) in Guangzhou, China, reveals how digital technology promotes rural-urban integration via the digitalization of peri-urban production management and the networking of produce sales.
Advanced technologies in plant factories: exploring current and future economic and environmental benefits in urban horticulture
2025Yuan X., Hu J., Marcelis L.F.M., Heuvelink E., Peng J., Yang X., Yang Q. · Horticulture Research (Oxford Academic) · Global
Systematizes the economic and environmental effects of innovation in plant factories and vertical farms, estimating future profitability improvements under a clean-energy transition and showing the feasibility of zero-food-mile production within cities.
Can smart rural construction improve agricultural products supply chain resilience? Empirical evidence from 31 provinces in China
2025Wang H., Zheng J., Ran H. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · China
Using panel data from 31 Chinese provinces, empirically tests how smart rural construction affects agricultural supply-chain resilience, confirming that digital infrastructure improves the reliability of rural-urban food connections.
Technological Innovations in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture: Pathways to Sustainable Food Systems in Metropolises
2025Fei S., Wu R., Liu H., Yang F., Wang N. · Horticulturae (MDPI) 11(2), 212 · Global
Systematizes technological innovations in metropolitan urban and peri-urban agriculture (IoT, AI, vertical farming, hydroponics) as pathways to sustainable food systems, including comparison with rural farming technology.
Global Health as Vector for Agroecology in Collective Gardens in Toulouse Region (France)
2025Wilkens J., Mombo S., Dumat C. · Urban Science · France (Toulouse)
Examines 11 years of collective urban gardens in the Toulouse region through the lens of global health—encompassing human well-being, soil health, and interspecies interactions—as a driver of agroecological transitions among gardeners.
CommunityHealthBiodiversityOrganic cycleFrom social innovation to institutional governance: Unveiling urban rooftop farming in Dhaka city using YouTube video analysis
2025Ashikuzzaman M., Swapan M.S.H., Zaman A.U., Song Y. · Landscape and Urban Planning · Bangladesh (Dhaka)
Analysis of 187 YouTube videos reveals urban rooftop farming in Dhaka is a growing grassroots movement with fragmented institutional oversight; farmers in mixed land-use neighborhoods show the strongest motivation and seek government policy guidelines.
PolicyCommunityImpact of home gardens promoted among urban residents in Dhaka, Bangladesh
2025Schreinemachers P., Kumar S.S., Uddin M.N. · Food Security · Bangladesh (Dhaka)
Panel data from 679 households across four Dhaka metropolitan city corporations shows that promoted urban home gardens significantly improved vegetable production and consumption, with 85% of participants being women.
HealthFood educationEconomicsUrban farming: the challenges of hydroponic and vertical farming in Malaysia
2025Yapp E.H.T., Jamil N., Lee L.S.G., Chooi Y.T., Chen C.O. · Cogent Food & Agriculture, Vol. 11, Article 2448601 · Malaysia (Penang, Johor, Sabah)
A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with urban farmers in Penang, Johor, and Sabah found that hydroponic and vertical farm operators face persistent challenges from government regulations, volatile markets, financial constraints, and environmental factors despite existing subsidy programs.
PolicyEconomicsUrban Agriculture for Post-Disaster Food Security: Quantifying the Contributions of Community Gardens
2025Liu Y., Chanse V., Chicca F. · Urban Science (MDPI), Vol. 9, No. 8, Article 305 · New Zealand (Wellington)
This study quantifies Wellington, New Zealand's community gardens' capacity to meet post-disaster vegetable demand in terms of weight and nutrient content, finding current gardens insufficient alone but identifying substantial potential through expanded urban agriculture land use.
CommunityFood educationHealthPolicy