Research & reports

CONQUITO · CONQUITO (Agencia Metropolitana de Promoción Económica) · Ecuador

CONQUITO's presentation page for its AGRUPAR participatory urban agriculture programme, stating that more than 4,500 farmers participate each year, 84% of whom are women heads of household, and that around 105 organic products are handled through the programme.

Jorgelina Hiba · Infobae (América/Soluciones) · Argentina

Twenty years after launching amid Argentina's 2001 economic crisis, Rosario's Urban Agriculture Programme now supports 360 jobs, this article reports: 30 hectares of urban gardens plus 120 hectares of peri-urban plots, over 300 gardeners (60% women) growing agroecological produce across 7 Park Gardens, sold through 39 outlets, with about 400 heirloom species and varieties held in the CAR seed bank.

Bárbara Corneli Colombatto · enREDando · Argentina

Built around interviews with huerteros (urban gardeners), this piece presents both the achievements and the limits of Rosario's urban agriculture: 7 Park Gardens and 6 group gardens involving over 250 people, 25 hectares producing 2,500 tonnes a year, and a $250,000 international prize won in 2021. It also documents organizational fragmentation among gardeners, a lack of secure land-loan agreements (comodatos), the absence of sustained public investment matching the programme's international recognition, and unresolved conflicts with neighbors that the municipality does not intervene in. It cites a regional statistic that only 18% of farms in Latin America and the Caribbean are run by women.

Appolloni E., Orsini F., Specht K., Thomaier S., Sanyé-Mengual E., Pennisi G., Gianquinto G. · Journal of Cleaner Production 296:126556 · Global

Systematic review of rooftop agriculture cases worldwide, mapping diverse business forms including commercial and social models, and their integration into urban food policy and planning.

Cattaneo, A., Nelson, A., McMenomy, T. · PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) 118(2) · Global

The foundational paper on the Urban-Rural Catchment Areas (URCA) typology, mapping the urban-rural continuum worldwide as 30 classes (7 city sizes × 3 travel-time bands) and showing unequal access to services.

Cattaneo A., Adukia A., Brown D.L., Christiaensen L., Evans D.K., Haakenstad A.M., McMenomy T., Partridge M., Vaz S., Weiss D.J. · World Development / World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9756 · Global

About 25% of the world's people live in the peri-urban areas of small and mid-size cities. Proximity to large cities is strongly correlated with lower poverty, while mid-size-city fringes face a 'peri-urban penalty'. Establishes URCA as a core policy framework.

FAO, RUAF · FAO / RUAF · Global

A casebook on strengthening COVID-19 resilience of urban-rural food connections through the City Region Food Systems (CRFS) approach, demonstrating the interlinkage of food distribution, waste, food security and farmer livelihoods.

Apostolopoulou E., Kotsila P. · Urban Geography, 43(2), 293–319 · Greece (Athens)

Examining the Hellinikon self-organized guerrilla garden that emerged as resistance to real estate redevelopment of the former Athens international airport, the paper argues that community gardening can embed grassroots opposition to neoliberal urban transformation and assert the right to urban space.

Hammelman C., Shoffner E., Cruzat M., Lee S. · Agriculture and Human Values · Argentina (Rosario)

Drawing on interviews with 30 stakeholders in Rosario, the study applies assemblage and urban political ecology frameworks to reveal how institutionalized agroecology constructs valued socio-natures amid land pressure and economic marginalization.

Sponsler D. B. · People and Nature · Global (review)

A socioecological perspective on urban apiculture examining whether urban beekeeping serves cities, bees, or beekeepers, and its implications for wild pollinator conservation and management.

Puppim de Oliveira José A., Ahmed Abubakari · Journal of Cleaner Production · Ghana (Accra)

Empirical study of urban-agriculture governance in Accra. Finds UA marginalised by a lack of policy directives, fragmented institutions, and unfair land-use and tenure decisions, so government neglect leaves urban farming informal and unable to realise its potential benefits.

Helen Toxopeus, Friedemann Polzin · Journal of Environmental Management · Global

A systematic review of academic literature identified key barriers and strategies for financing urban nature-based solutions (NBS), including urban agriculture. Two overarching barriers were found: a lack of coordination between private and public financiers, and difficulties in integrating NBS benefits into valuation and accounting methods. The review concluded that an integrated accounting and valuation framework for NBS is currently lacking, and strategies often focus on encouraging co-financing from private beneficiaries.

Helena I. Hanson, Emma Eckberg, Malin Widenberg, Johanna Alkan Olsson · Urban forestry & urban greening · Sweden (Lund)

This study explored private gardens' contribution to urban biodiversity and garden owners' wellbeing (in terms of cultural ecosystem services) in Lund, Sweden, through a garden land-use inventory and interviews with 35 garden owners. Results showed that urban development influences gardens' biodiversity potential by limiting available space or garden vegetation, with new properties having small gardens containing few biodiversity features and large trees. Important cultural ecosystem services included social bonds, recreation, nature experiences, and relaxation, which were influenced by age and gender.

Tolessa Deksissa, Harris B. Trobman, Kamran Zendehdel, Hossain Azam · Sustainability · Global

This study reviews literature on integrating urban agriculture (UA) and stormwater green infrastructures (GIs) within a circular economy framework. It explores how cities can combine these developments to overcome barriers and enhance ecosystem services. The findings indicate that integrating UA with GIs can improve urban food production while simultaneously protecting urban water quality.

Kamonashish Haldar, Katarzyna Kujawa-Roeleveld, Marco Schoenmakers, Dilip Kumar Datta, H.H.M. Rijnaarts, Jeroen Vos · Journal of Environmental Management · Bangladesh (Khulna)

This study assessed stakeholder awareness, perception, and willingness towards urban water reuse in Khulna City, Bangladesh, using a questionnaire with 385 urban respondents, 32 farmer interviews, one farmer focus group, and ten key informant interviews. It found an overall positive attitude among major stakeholder groups toward planned water reuse for peri-urban agriculture, with 53% of citizens willing to pay for wastewater treatment and 66% of farmers willing to pay for better-quality irrigation water. However, the public sector requires adjustments in rules and regulations, addressing issues like lack of transparency, coordination, and resources, to implement planned water reuse.

Chethika Gunasiri Wadumestrige Dona, Geetha Mohan, Kensuke Fukushi · Sustainability · Global

This systematic literature review analyzed 54 articles on urban agriculture, examining socio-economic context, agriculture models, opportunities, and challenges. The review found that academic literature favors community gardens in developed countries and gives comparatively less attention to identifying challenges, benefit groups, and government support for urban agriculture.

Carlos Tapia, Linda Randall, Shinan Wang, Luciane Aguiar Borges · Sustainable Cities and Society · Denmark (Aarhus)

This study presents a novel indicator-based evaluation framework for urban agriculture, tested in Fællesgartneriet Brabrand, a community garden in Aarhus, Denmark. The framework aims to capture the contribution of gardening practices to urban sustainability, acknowledging that urban agriculture may also have social and environmental externalities depending on prevalent farming practices.

Victoria Schoen, Chris Blythe, Silvio Caputo, Runrid Fox-Kämper, Kathrin Specht, Agnès Fargue‐Lelièvre, Nevin Cohen, Lidia Poniży, Konstancja Fedeńczak · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Global North

This 2021 paper, based on data collected in summer 2020 from five Global North countries (France, Germany, Poland, UK, USA), examined the effects of COVID-19 on urban farms and gardens. The pandemic presented multiple challenges, including loss of support services, lost income, and reduced output due to labor supply issues. It also created opportunities like new local markets and increased community cohesion, demonstrating how gardens adapted to become more resilient.

Christina Ergas · · Cuba

This chapter examines Cuba's urban agricultural food production, which developed through top-down government initiatives that later decentralized and subsidized local efforts in response to resource scarcity. While Cuban urban farmworkers' cooperatives enable local residents to sell produce at low costs, the program still faces social environmental stumbling blocks despite its successes in achieving high human development with a small ecological footprint.

Jamie Wang · Humanities · Singapore

This article explores the rise of urban farming in Singapore, following small- to medium-scale urban farms, including rooftop gardens, community farms, and organic farms, through the politics of localism and the notion of care. It investigates how localism, in some contexts, has been reduced to a narrow sense of geographic location. The study also examines what is being cared for in urban farming and how it might transform bio-cultural and social-technological relations.

Gianluca Di Fiore, Kathrin Specht, Cesare Zanasi · International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development · Global

This study conducted a literature review on different approaches to analyzing stakeholders' and farmers' perceptions of urban agriculture (UA). The review identified main approaches for assessing these aspects and designed an integrated framework to support the development of context-tailored analytical approaches for UA drivers and stakeholder perceptions. The research aims to address potential conflicts between UA practitioners and urban stakeholders and adapt UA implementation to contextual factors.

María Moreno Jaimes · Revista EDUCARE - UPEL-IPB - Segunda Nueva Etapa 2 0 · Venezuela

This qualitative action research study in Capachalito, Tovar Municipality, Aragua State, Venezuela, developed an action plan to improve residents' quality of life by encouraging parents, students, and teachers to resume school garden practices within the School Feeding Program. The study, based on a Socio-Critical Paradigm and Participatory Action Research, aimed to support food sovereignty and security. It highlighted the importance of endogenous development and sustainable community agriculture for reviving traditional knowledge related to family and school gardens.

Mitchell Klein, Bethany Cox, Kelsie Tuck, Tom Baker, Ryan Jones, Salene Schloffel‐Armstrong · New Zealand Geographer · New Zealand (Auckland)

This study examines how temporary urbanism contributes to the production of publicness, focusing on the Auckland Night Markets in New Zealand. It discusses how these events generate publicness through the attendees' experiences, control practices, and spatial configuration. The findings support the view of public space and publicness as pluralistic and dynamic.

Leandro Pessoa Lucena, Fernanda Mariano Massuia · urbe Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana · Singapore

This post-doctoral research investigated the evolution and impacts of urban agriculture models in Singapore as public policy for sustainability, food security, and ecological economy. The study used bibliographic investigations and field research at high-tech soilless urban farms to estimate CO₂ emission reductions from modern urban agriculture. Results showed Singapore intensively uses urban agriculture, including vertical, indoor, and rooftop farms, all demonstrating technological innovations, high productivity, organic certification, and contributions to CO₂ emission reduction.

Aleksandra Nowysz · Buildings · Global

This paper addresses the issue of food systems in urban development, describing residential area ideas that integrate cities with food production, particularly agrarian cooperatives. Historical projects aimed for self-sufficiency and sustainability, while contemporary projects demonstrate that urban agriculture performs key functions in residential architecture. Production in urban agriculture extends beyond private goods for market or own use.