Research & reports

Fátima Rodríguez Marín, María África Portillo Guerrero, María Puig Gutiérrez · Revista eureka sobre enseñanza y divulgación de las ciencias · Global

This study presents an experience carried out in a classroom with three-year-old children, where the school garden was used as the central axis of a didactic proposal based on the school research model. The results showed that this resource favors environmental literacy, while also serving to articulate didactic proposals that contribute to the population's resilience.

Salvatore Engel‐Di Mauro, George M. Martin · · Global

This chapter examines urban cultivation across diverse global contexts, finding that global South cities often experience declining food production due to displacement by financiers and landowners. It notes that urban cultivation is frequently associated with unacknowledged pollution problems, and its overall ecological impacts are not necessarily positive. Furthermore, urban food production, with the exception of Cuba, does little to reduce social inequality and can sometimes exacerbate it.

Innocent Awasom · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

Urban and peri-urban agriculture is considered a creative method of food production to address increasing urbanization and food insecurity. Urban food gardens are noted to have the potential to mitigate hunger and food insecurity, offering health, socio-cultural, environmental, and economic benefits.

Roberta Moraes Curan, Paulo Eduardo Moruzzi Marques · Estudos Avançados · Global

This article presents a systematic literature review on the multifunctionality of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), conducted using Science Direct, Scielo, and Capes databases. Fourteen articles were selected, and their data were analyzed to identify UPA typologies and functions. The study classified UPA functions into sociocultural, economic, and environmental dimensions, concluding that UPA offers benefits and can be a tool for achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

Lucas Leite Costa, Cláudia Maria Arcipreste, Tito Flávio Rodrigues de Aguiar · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Global

This work uses an architectural project methodology to reflect on the demands for rationalizing industrialized construction processes using metal components for buildings dedicated to food production in large urban centers. It studies the potential of modular buildings in metal construction for urban agriculture, exploring strategies for flexibility and adaptability of spaces to diverse implementation contexts. This approach aims to reduce steps in the food production and distribution chain.

Salvatore Engel‐Di Mauro, George Martin · · Global

Claims that urban food production raises food security and creates a more just society are questionable and contradicted by data from the Global North. Urban land is insufficient, sunlight is often inadequate, and soil pollution is widespread. Technological attempts like vertical and rooftop farming have limited feasibility, may worsen environmental and social problems, and do not address major food sources, access, or waste. Furthermore, urban gardens are increasingly linked with socially devastating gentrification.

S Priyadharshina, V. Sumitra Devi, Sheeba Chander · · Global

This paper explores urban agriculture as a solution to the increasing urban population's reliance on rural areas for food. It defines urban agriculture as developing, processing, and distributing food in or around metropolitan areas, including various practices like animal cultivation and agroforestry. The paper suggests that urban agriculture can enable cities to implement sustainable practices, reduce carbon footprints, and foster self-sustainability.

Christina Ergas · · Global

This concluding chapter summarizes lessons from urban agriculture and ecovillages, defining radical sustainability as socially and ecologically transformative and regenerative. It identifies tools for radical sustainability, including community care and skill sharing. The chapter offers practical, community-oriented solutions for socioecological crises, particularly for those unable to implement urban farming, and discusses the potential for large-scale structural change or collapse.

Magdalena Grochulska-Salak, Aleksandra Nowysz, Anna Tofiluk · Buildings · Global

This research reviews urban agriculture as green and blue infrastructure solutions, evaluating modern hybrid units that combine biomass and food production with water retention in urban areas. It defines criteria and typology for urban resilience solutions, analyzing the correlation between water production, management, retention, and reuse within sustainable urban agriculture systems in compact cities. The study describes a typology for cultivation and production in modern cities, contributing to discussions on synergy in urban planning, architecture, and engineering for city resilience.

Mennatallah Hamdy, Rovena Plaku · Civil Engineering and Architecture · Global

This paper frames pocket parks as a potential first step towards both sustainable urban regeneration and equal access to public spaces in dense cities. It hypothesizes pocket parks as a solution to economic crisis, food production pressure, run-down communities, and the lack of development land for communal spaces, highlighting their key implementation challenges. The study also investigated the influence of communities' contextual needs on pocket parks' size, design, activities, and funding by comparing selected international projects.

Anastasiia Vesna · Current problems of architecture and urban planning · Global

This article considers global concepts of the post-industrial period, using the concept of the city of sustainable development as an example. Existing global concepts of a sustainable city were analyzed in four areas: ecology, economy, politics, and culture. Using content analysis, it was revealed that the concept of "the city of sustainable development" belongs to the category of "Architectural utopias" and coincided with "ideal cities" due to its attractive expectations of "Results" and vague descriptions of "Risks" and "Resource costs".

Jorinda Steenkamp, Elizelle Juaneé Cilliers, Sarel S. Cilliers, Louis Lategan · Sustainability · Global

This paper proposes urban agriculture as an intervention for planners to support sustainable food production and supply chains, addressing the neglect of food security in planning. A multiple-case study analyzed four urban agriculture examples in the Global South. The findings indicate urban agriculture's potential to improve food security for at-risk populations and mitigate urban risks like unemployment, community decline, and food deserts through its multifunctionality.

Pastory Salvatory Thomas, Wilbard Kombe, Aldo Lupala · Urban and Regional Planning · Tanzania

This qualitative study examined perceptions of urban agriculture among 60 urban farmers and officials in Arusha City, Tanzania, through interviews, observation, and literature review. Findings revealed that negative effects of urban agricultural activities influenced negative perceptions, which city officials seldom managed. While urban agriculture is acknowledged in policy, the critical effects of negative perceptions among stakeholders are considered less crucial in policy implications and formal governmental proclamations, despite their real-world impact.

Mariam Jibuti · Globalization and Business · Global

This research investigated the use of old and modern technologies for sustainable building, plant/tree medicines, non-timber forest products, water purity and rainwater harvesting, urban farming, and energy-efficient lifestyles. It argues that implementing these techniques can lead to economic awakening and improve current waste and unproductivity. The study states that stone building, the use of trees and herbs, rainwater collection, and urban farming contribute to people's daily lives, national self-reliance and health, and sustainable economic growth.

Joshua Amponsem, Nathalie Sänger, Marie-Claire Graf · Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · Global

This chapter presents youth perspectives on opportunities and barriers for green urban transformation (GUT) in urban centers. It highlights best-practice examples from Germany and Ghana to promote self-sufficient urban food production and zero-waste communities. The discussion focuses on overcoming barriers through youth governance, a post-COVID green recovery pathway, and making GUT knowledge accessible to young people.

Naser Mughrabi, Mayyadah Fahmi Hussein, Naila Hussien Alhyari · · Jordan (Amman)

This study aims to propose design indicators for rooftop gardens in Amman, Jordan, to illustrate their economic, social, and environmental benefits. It presents a conceptual framework for interior designers to adopt green roofs, developed by studying existing literature and demonstrating its applicability in Amman. The research used descriptive analytical methodology, qualitative surveys, and questionnaires for residential building inhabitants, with expected outcomes including indicators for rooftop garden utilization in Amman.

Teresa Rodríguez-Espinosa, José Navarro-Pedreño, Ignacio Gómez Lucas, María Belén Almendro Candel · Journal of Geographical Research · Global

This paper argues, without presenting new primary data, that as world population grows toward a projected 9.8 billion by 2050 and urban agglomerations expand across all continents by 2035, competition for land near cities with high agricultural potential will intensify; it proposes that land rehabilitation using constructed Technosols on brownfield sites and de-sealed soils can recover ecosystem functions, including food-supply services, as a substrate for urban agroforestry.

Aman Tejaswi, Saket Anand, Manoj Kumar Tiwari · WEENTECH Proceedings in Energy · Global

Reuse of wastewater is becoming progressively more common, but comes with a set of risks and challenges (2021). This paper analyzed and evaluated various non-conventional treatment options and on-site farm management practices for wastewater-fed irrigation aimed at growing safer produce, with fit-for-purpose treatment and effective farm practices seen as ways to enhance benefits and reduce risks. Treatment techniques assessed ranged from simple sedimentation ponds to sandbag, fabric-based and bio-sand filtration, natural and synthetic adsorbents, and microfiltration, with the advantages, risks, applicability and limitations of each system evaluated. Farm management practices, including various irrigation methods, were likewise assessed. Wastewater-fed drip irrigation was identified as a much safer practice, especially for producing leafy vegetables.

Jassen Callender · · Global

This essay frames city sustainability as a lifecycle question centered on end-states, arguing that water and soil are essential supports for urban farming — water comprising three interlinked cycles and soil representing a phase of nutrient cycling — and that lifecycle concerns intersect with cities' basic, "physiological" needs in Maslow's sense. It presents a conceptual discussion rather than original data, measurements, or a defined study population.

Aamir Mehmood Shah, Gengyuan Liu, Fanxin Meng, Qing Yang, Jingyan Xue, Stefano Dumontet, Renato Passaro, Marco Casazza · Energies · Global

This review article examines knowledge gaps regarding small-scale urban green-blue infrastructure (GBI) from the perspective of the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus, focusing on the literature on urban ecosystem services (positive effects) and dis-services (negative effects) associated with different GBI typologies. It found that GBI can contribute environmentally, socially, and economically to FEW security and urban sustainability, but that these positive effects must be weighed against ecosystem dis-service tradeoffs: urban food production is commonly connected with heavy water and energy consumption, particularly under dry climate conditions, and is sometimes linked to excessive use of manure, pesticides, or fertilizers that can pose risks to water quality and local insect survival, or to enhanced mosquito breeding from irrigation. The review also found that few nexus modeling techniques have been discussed in terms of their benefits, drawbacks, and applications.

Johan Colding, Stephan Barthel, Robert Ljung, Felix Eriksson, Stefan Sjöberg · Social Inclusion · Global

A conceptual paper drawing on the authors' prior research on urban commons to examine their role in climate-proofing activities. It distinguishes three types of environmentally oriented urban commons: "urban green commons" such as allotment and community gardens, which the authors say contribute to environmental learning that supports climate-change mitigation and adaptation; "coworking spaces," framed as reducing commuting and domestic transportation through a sharing economy; and "community climate commons," where local communities pool resources to create shared low-carbon assets. The paper closes by identifying determinants for scaling up such commons, without presenting original empirical data.

Global Methane Pledge · Global Methane Pledge / Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) · Global

Launched at COP26 in 2021 by the EU and the US, the Global Methane Pledge is a voluntary initiative to cut global methane emissions at least 30% below 2020 levels by 2030, with 159 participating countries plus the European Commission. Methane is described as responsible for 30% of total warming since the Industrial Revolution, and without action, emissions are projected to rise by up to 13% between 2020 and 2030.

WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities · WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities · Argentina

Rosario, Argentina launched an urban agriculture program in response to the 2001 economic crisis, evolving through a 2004 ordinance allowing temporary use of vacant land, two flood-mitigating 'Parques Huerta' opened in 2007-2008, and a 2011 ordinance designating 800 hectares of peri-urban land as a green belt. The program now covers 75 hectares of agroecological production plus the 800-hectare peri-urban belt, yields 2,500 tons of produce a year, involves more than 2,400 participating families, and has created 7 new permanent market spaces. Locally produced vegetables are estimated to cut associated greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95%, and the project won the WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities 2020-2021 grand prize.

Giuseppe Pulighe, Flavio Lupia · Sustainability · Global

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the fragility of large cities to global risks and the importance of food availability. Border closures and movement restrictions increased food losses and export costs, particularly for perishable goods. This paper suggests fostering urban agriculture in developed countries with practices like vertical farming, hydroponics, and rooftop greenhouses to mitigate uncertainties from global systemic risks.

Muhammad Mumtaz Khan, Muhammad Tahir Akram, Rhonda Janke, Rashad Qadri, Abdullah M. Al‐Sadi, Aitazaz A. Farooque · Sustainability · Global

This study reviews contemporary urban horticulture, illustrating traditional and innovative developments, as a response to global concerns about food supply and environmental protection in urban settings, exacerbated by factors like population growth and the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights how current urban cropping systems can be enhanced with modern techniques like vertical gardening and hydroponics. These methods are presented as eco-friendly, energy-saving, and capable of ensuring consistent fresh food supplies and more sustainable agriculture.