Research & reports

· Hart Publishing eBooks · United Kingdom (England and Wales)

This paper explores the phenomenon of people in England and Wales returning to the land for various food-growing projects, including over 1,000 community gardens and 82 school farms. It examines the legal frameworks regulating these diverse projects and finds that the legal framework is fragmented, poorly signposted, and often absent, with projects sometimes depending entirely on landowner goodwill. The study concludes that there is little coherency in the law regarding these initiatives.

Veguita de Graná · · Spain (Andalusia)

Urban gardens from Andalusia will meet in Bujalance, Cordoba, with the objective of forming a network. Manuel Cala, President of GRAECO, provides information about this event and also introduces other agricultural, livestock, and environmental activities taking place in Bujalance.

Wojciech Sroka · Wieś i Rolnictwo · Poland

This article addresses the concept of urban agriculture in Polish economic and agricultural literature. It aims to develop a definition of urban agriculture, operationalize it, and present its main forms. The study reviews research from various countries and proposes a definition suitable for Polish socio-economic conditions, describing key actors, products, functions, and distinguishing two main forms: urban farming and urban horticulture.

Edward Duś · Environmental & Socio-economic Studies · Poland

This analysis examines the recreational use of allotment gardens in the industrial Katowice conurbation, Silesia, southern Poland, considering their historical development. Allotment gardens serve as a primary base for recreation for their owners, offering both physical activities and passive leisure. Recreational use is seasonal and varies daily, influenced by weather and available free time, with socio-economic changes impacting utilization methods and types of recreational use.

Chiara Tornaghi, Barbara Van Dyck · Local Environment · United Kingdom

This paper explores the "spheres of influence" and contradictions that shaped the trajectory of the Edible Public Space project in Leeds, UK, drawing on the authors' personal experience. It analyzes the dynamics and contradictions at play in the formation of an urban gardening group stemming from scholarly and committed action ambitions. The study focuses on the role of spatial interventions in fostering social innovation in the public food and land agenda, aiming to capture learning elements for scholarly activism, political gardening, and radical urbanism.

Eric Vaz, Marco Paìnho, Peter Nijkamp · European Planning Studies · Europe

This paper presents a spatial analysis integrating agricultural land use data inventories for Portugal with CORINE Land Cover data to assess change in the Algarve region. By overlaying the appropriation of agricultural land for urban use with population and urban data, it focuses on the consequences of specific regulations for the dynamics of land-use change. An integrated assessment of agricultural land loss found that agricultural land was being undermined by the consequences of urban sprawl. Building on this finding, the paper reviews existing decrees supporting sustainable development in the region, provides a qualitative assessment of future roles based on ethical values and economic efficiency, and offers a framework for policymakers regarding trends in the urban/agricultural dichotomy.

Wojciech Sroka · Zeszyty Naukowe SGGW - Ekonomika i Organizacja Gospodarki Żywnościowej · Poland

This article analyzes changes in the agrarian structure of Poland's provincial (voivodeship) cities from 2002 to 2010, spanning the period before and after Poland's EU accession, based on identification of urban agriculture's productive significance. It found a 25% decrease in the number of farms of up to 1 hectare and an almost threefold increase in farms above 20 hectares across provincial cities, with the average size of farms above 1 hectare in cities growing five times faster than the national average.

Bruno Ronchi, A. Amici, Carlo Maía Rossi, Riccardo Primi, Rita Biasi, Maria Nicolina Ripa · Hábitat y Sociedad · Italy

A 2014 study performed a multi-temporal analysis of land use change over the past 80 years in two small medieval towns in central Italy (Viterbo province, Lazio region), using photogrammetric restitution of historical aerial flights. Results showed that within the city walls a variable number of green spaces and small backyards remained as of 2010, and that in the suburban areas residual agricultural activity persisted, mainly fruit and vegetable cultivation, likely for local markets and/or home consumption. It states that urban planning should account for the functional links between urban and agricultural areas that sustain urban gardening and subsistence economies.

Serge Bonnefoy · SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología · France

This paper traces the historical trajectory of peri-urban agriculture in France, starting from the history of the Town/Country dualism and the phases of politicization of peri-urban agriculture, and examining the development of agglomeration policies into which agriculture has become embedded, identifying five distinct types of agricultural agglomeration policy. It describes the movements currently renewing peri-urban agriculture policy: the pursuit of sustainable cities (including opposition to urban sprawl), the food issue (strengthening agriculture's production function), and a return to a territorial economy. The paper focuses on the uncertainty of this policy argument and how it is exploited by different policies.

Javier Calatrava Requena · Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros/Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros · Spain

A study on the growing interest in urban agriculture in both developing and industrialized countries, examined through the case of the Granada urban agglomeration in Spain, where interstitial agrarian spaces exist within the urban ecosystem. It points out that greening indicators of urban sustainability based on green-space density can misrepresent these urban agricultural spaces by failing to account for them, and argues for the need to institutionalize a high level of protection for such agro-urban spaces.

Danutė Butkienė · · Europe

This paper examines the regeneration of community gardens in Lithuania, focusing on the transformation of former "sanitarian zones" into community spaces. It identifies two dominant forms of resident participation — developing material resources such as sports grounds, playgrounds, and resting places, and organizing community gatherings and neighbor parties — and argues that residents' collective action drives further development of these garden communities, with mediators such as elderate members or active citizens playing an important role.

Timm Bliss, IM Dickinson · Leeds Beckett Repository (Leeds Beckett University) · United Kingdom

This is a descriptive account, not an empirical study, of the Leeds Edible Schools Sustainability Network, an unconstituted, informal group of organizations and academics based in the Leeds district in the UK. It is described as sharing values around wellbeing and sustainability and supporting educational establishments in growing and consuming food on school premises, promoting resilient and healthy practices including outdoor work, and teaching sustainability.

Rute Sousa Matos, Desidério Batista · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · Europe

A philosophical essay (RCAAP, Portugal, 2014), drawing on landscape theorists Rosario Assunto and Ferriolo, examines allotment gardens as landscape spaces combining lived and contemplative experience, using Lisbon's allotment gardens as a case study of efforts to regulate, develop, and integrate such spaces into city planning. It situates allotment gardens historically in Portugal's 1960s-70s rural-to-urban migration, discussing them along both ethical dimensions (social, environmental, emotional, economic) and aesthetic dimensions (urban regeneration and city design), without reporting empirical measurements.

Francesca Cognetti, Serena Conti · SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología · Italy

A paper on Milan, Italy (2014) interprets the rising interest in urban agriculture in Milan as driven both by a desire to revive city design and by concrete attempts to realize it. Constructing a taxonomy of experiences to compose a hypothetical scenario of a "cultivated Milan," it focuses on initiatives that use cultivation not just as individual satisfaction or environmental reflection but as a tool for addressing urban issues and organizing common life; it argues that the English term "community gardens" — despite perhaps overemphasizing the community aspect — better describes these practices than the conventional Italian term "urban orchards," since the observed projects, in different ways, all aim to rediscover shared urban space, both physical and relational, through small projects that offer tangible immediate satisfaction while implicitly pointing toward wider horizons.

Elżbiata Słabińska · Res Gestae · Poland

In 1930s central Poland, national policy to mitigate the effects of unemployment was expanded into so-called "special actions" providing full or partial employment support, comprising efforts to create bases for independent livelihoods, social and educational assistance, and support for employing white-collar workers. These were coordinated by the Labour Fund (Fundusz Pracy) together with national and local authorities and numerous economic and socio-cultural organizations. Allotment gardens and vocational training drew considerable interest among the unemployed. The paper concludes that although these were innovative measures, they were introduced too late to produce visible effects before the end of the interwar period.

Oliver Moore, Olive McCarthy, Noreen Byrne, Michael Ward · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Europe

This paper examines one of the earliest and most prominent community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives in Ireland, focusing on its organizational restructuring under productivity pressure. CSA is built on sharing risk and reward, and some uncertainty is treated as acceptable, but in this case the realized risk of insufficient produce, once pushed to its limits, became in fact unacceptable to members. The process by which this member-owned and member-operated CSA critically self-assessed and restructured after this shortfall is termed "reflexive resilience" — a description of an initiative that had to acknowledge a real produce shortfall and rebuild, not merely one that anticipated shocks in the abstract.

Nerea Morán Alonso · · Europe

Framed by the need for new processes to regenerate urban space amid the current ecological crisis, this study positions urban gardens as instruments that help close urban metabolic cycles and improve residents' quality of life, and it analyzes three European cases -- London, Berlin, and Madrid -- to identify the legal and regulatory conditions most favorable to the development of urban garden projects.

Marian Simón Rojo, Nerea Morán Alonso · E.T.S. Arquitectura (UPM) eBooks · Spain

This paper argues that the resurgence of interest in urban and peri-urban agriculture is tied to a rediscovery of the importance of food security and local production, which has led to the development of the first local sustainable food plans. It states that this resurgence often comes with an aura of renewed modernity, whether through its creative and social-mobilization potential or through the dazzling technological innovation linked to new building-based production systems (vertical farming), and notes that professional and academic urban-planning circles have begun incorporating debate on organizing local agricultural systems, framed as strategic reserves in an energy-transition scenario, into reflection on the city's future.

Javier Calatrava Requena, Requena, Javier Calatrava · Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros/Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros · Spain

Against a backdrop of rising interest in urban farming in both developing and industrialized countries, this study analyzes the Urban Agglomeration of Granada, Spain, as an example of intercalated farming areas existing within an urban ecosystem. It notes conceptual confusion around urban agriculture often causes errors in calculating environmental sustainability indicators based on green-space density, because some agricultural activities clearly carried out within the urban ecosystem are not counted as "urban." The Granada case analysis showed inaccuracies in the use of conventional "greening" indicators based on urban green density, and the study concludes that strong institutionalized protection is needed for these intercalated agro-urban spaces.

Landesabstimmungsleiterin Berlin, Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg · Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg · Germany

The official final result report for Berlin's 25 May 2014 referendum on preserving Tempelhofer Feld. Of 2,491,365 eligible voters, 46.1% (1,149,145) participated. The citizen-initiated bill (question 1) passed with 739,124 'yes' votes (64.3%), while the Senate's counter-proposal (question 2) was rejected with 588,586 'no' votes (51.2%), resulting in a law preserving at least 230 hectares as permanent public green space.

Barrow Cadbury Trust · Barrow Cadbury Trust · United Kingdom

Published 7 August 2014, reporting results for the first cohort of 1,000 prisoners in the Peterborough Social Impact Bond: an 8.4 per cent fall in reconviction relative to the comparable national baseline. The figure was produced for the Ministry of Justice by independent assessor Professor Darrick Jolliffe with Qinetiq and the University of Leicester using propensity score matching, finding 142 reconvictions per 100 prisoners at Peterborough against 155 per 100 in the control group. Payment required a reduction of more than 7.5 per cent, so the project did not qualify at this stage; outcome payments were due to be decided in 2016.

Henderson S. R. · Peter Lang (Studies in Modern European History, vol. 64) · Germany

A comprehensive history of Ernst May's New Frankfurt initiative within the Weimar context, covering housing settlements, construction and material innovations, the parks-and-garden-colony program, the Frankfurt Kitchen, and reforms in schools and medical facilities.

David Adams, Michael Hardman · Urban Studies · United Kingdom

This paper uses ethnographic data from 'F Troop', a guerrilla gardening group in an English midland city, to re-examine urban guerrilla gardening practices. It argues that these practices may not be as "resistant" or "celebratory" as often suggested in existing literature. The study highlights that the social backgrounds and motivations of participants, along with their relationships with other users of the space, are important but largely unacknowledged aspects of guerrilla gardening.

Marta Bobowski · Facta Simonidis · Germany

This article addresses the phenomenon of urban gardening, with a specific focus on Germany. Part I defines and categorizes the main forms of non-economically motivated gardening in urban public space, outlining its core attributes and historical background. Part II indicates how the culture of a historical period affects the shape of green areas and clarifies the correlation between urban gardening and present political, social, and ecological discourses.

María Antonia Fernández Nieto, Eduardo Zamarro Flores · Arte y Ciudad · Spain (Madrid)

This study presents a case of urban recovery through citizen participation in mural painting at Aliseda18, an urban garden on the outskirts of Madrid. Various age groups participated transversally in the mural's creation, transforming previously identity-less walls into a backdrop that provides identity to the urban garden and its neighborhood. This case demonstrates processes of public space reappropriation and urban landscape generation at the local level, responding to inhabitants' initiatives.