Research & reports

Fabio Aislant Moreno · GACETA DE PEDAGOGÍA · Global

This documentary review analyzed 18 articles published between 2018 and 2022 to examine agroecological school gardens as a didactic strategy for sustainability. The analysis found that such gardens, when oriented towards education for sustainable development, should involve cooperative learning processes from a transversal perspective. It concluded that agroecological school gardens are key to developing socio-critical skills in students through theoretical and practical work, enhancing their sensitivity to environmental problems.

Lisa‐Marie Hemerijckx, Gloria Nsangi Nakyagaba, Hakimu Sseviiri, Katarzyna Janusz, Michelle Eichinger, Shuaib Lwasa, Julian May, Peter H. Verburg, Anton Van Rompaey · npj Urban Sustainability · Uganda

This paper quantitatively analyzed the spatial extent of the food provisioning area for consumers in Kampala, Uganda, using a foodshed lens and primary survey data from households and food vendors. The study found that 50% of food consumed in Kampala originates within a 120 km radius, with 10% coming from within the city itself. Urban agricultural activities are currently twice as important as international imports for the city's food supply. High-income urban dwellers exhibit a more local foodshed due to their broad participation in urban agriculture, whereas low-income newcomers depend significantly on retailers sourcing food from rural Uganda.

Filippos Evangelou · European Journal of Education Studies · Greece (Ioannina)

This paper analyzes the design and implementation of a teaching scenario for creating a school garden using the inquiry method, implemented by students aged 6 to 12 years old at the 9th Primary School of Intercultural Education in Ioannina, Greece, from September 2018 to June 2019. The main purpose of the scenario's implementation is to create the school garden through practical daily teaching and learning activities and an inquiry approach, forming a culture among students about sustainability and sustainable development.

Karolina Zubel · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Jordan

This policy paper explores the potential of urban farming in Jordan to address pressing issues of food security, climate-induced risks, and socioeconomic vulnerability in urban centers. Urban farming is identified as a crucial solution to feed vulnerable groups, enhance cities' resilience and employment opportunities, act as a center for community engagement and youth education, and provide ecological benefits. The paper also examines stakeholders' perceptions, beneficiaries, inclusivity in decision-making processes, and governance challenges related to urban farm development.

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.

Valentina Cattivelli · Sustainability · Global

This paper examined people's motives for urban gardening during the pandemic waves of 2020 and 2021 through a literature review. Analyzing relevant articles published from early 2020 to mid-2022, findings revealed that the most widespread motivations were related to personal and community wellbeing, as well as food supply security, including the opportunity to spend time having fun outside the home. Additionally, community resilience emerged as a new motivation not previously detected.

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.

Véronique Saint-Gès, Hugo de Vergès · Frontiers for Young Minds · Global

This article introduces urban agriculture, explaining what it is, how it is practiced, and the benefits it provides. It highlights urban agriculture as a way to provide fresh, local food for city residents and to reintroduce nature into urban environments.

Laura Amelia López, Juan Pablo Ayala, Nicoll Yeliltza Parra, Adriana Alejandra Vargas, Juan Sebastián González, John Manuel Silva · Encuentro de Ciencias Básicas · Colombia (Bogotá)

This study presents a project by students from the Catholic University of Colombia, focusing on community-oriented urban agriculture to promote food security in vulnerable populations. An experimental strategy was used, employing a vertical module with an ESP 32 board and sensors to observe variables such as temperature, humidity, and pH. Prototype development, device design, and the production and growth of Batavia lettuce seedlings were achieved, followed by field piloting of the sensor application in community urban farming modules.

Paul Suski, Alexandra Palzkill, Melanie Speck · Frontiers in Sustainability · Global

This article argues that sufficiency, often underestimated, is a suitable strategy for achieving a sustainable circular economy. It proposes shifting research and policy focus from product-centric approaches to consumption patterns guided by sufficiency. The case of urban gardening illustrates how small interventions can transform consumption by challenging the logic of availability. The authors advocate for using social practice theories to develop effective circular economy strategies.

Claudia Wiese, Bernd Pölling, Wolf Lorleberg · Frontiers for Young Minds · Global

This article discusses how cities, despite covering only 2-3% of land, consume 75% of global energy and produce 80% of CO2 emissions, making them dependent on distant food sources. It describes how urban agriculture can help cities address climate change and environmental problems, while simultaneously improving living environments for urban populations.

Pekka Ilmari Niskanen · Ruukku Studies in Artistic Research · Global

This paper examines three gardens—a Sahrawi sandoponic garden in Algerian refugee camps, a Helsinki Sandoponic Garden, and the Jardin Truillot in Paris—as sites for community gathering and addressing trauma. The Helsinki garden, a project by PHOSfate, highlights injustices faced by the Sahrawi population and the Baltic Sea, linking refugee status to phosphate mining and eutrophication. The study argues that recognizing injustice is central to the activism in these gardens and related practices.

Catherine Simpson, Cade Coldren, Ioana A. Coman, Caitlyn E. Cooper, Gad Perry · IntechOpen eBooks · Global

This review focused on urban vegetation, whose importance is growing with expanding urban environments, examining its multiple uses, significance for urban wildlife conservation and sustainability, and media portrayal. Previously, the importance of urban vegetation was often emphasized in narrow literature niches related to horticulture and landscape architecture. This study surveyed diverse uses of urban horticulture and considered the role urban vegetation plays in urban ecosystem services and biodiversity.

Angelia Sia, Puay Yok Tan, Kenneth B. H. Er · Plants People Planet · Singapore

This opinion article discusses the role of urban horticulture in Singapore, focusing on four national-level programs. It illustrates how these initiatives contribute to cultivating community ownership, fostering community ties, and promoting interest in horticulture among urban dwellers. The programs include community gardens, allotment gardens, the Gardening with Edibles program, and therapeutic horticulture programs.

Samuel Ikendi, Michael S. Retallick, Gail R. Nonnecke, Donald R. Kugonza · Journal of Agricultural Education · Global

This study investigated the influence of a school garden-based service-learning program on the academic development of alumni (n = 274) from 2006-2019. A self-administered questionnaire, completed by 94.2% of alumni, revealed three components of program activities: community engagement (including school gardening, bi-national team projects, farmer field visits, and school teaching assistance), reflexive actions (such as journaling, critical reflections, and presentations), and social life (including co-curricular activities, tours, and social parties). The findings suggested that alumni could benefit from more instructor-led cognitive development activities.

Yichen Ma · International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Protection · Global

This article explores participatory community gardening theory and practices, using an old community as an example, to find ways to establish and grow community gardens for residents. It aims to provide a reference for establishing community gardens and exploring sustainable methods within urban micro-renewal, especially in response to challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic affecting residents' access to necessities.

Guilherme Raj, Giuseppe Feola, Hens Runhaar · Agriculture and Human Values · Portugal

This comparative case study of three Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives in Portugal analyzed how power shapes transformations to postcapitalist work relations. Results showed that while CSA creates non-alienated, non-monetized, and care-filled postcapitalist work relations, they insufficiently unmake unbalanced power relations established in capitalist work relations. The selected CSA initiatives could benefit from actively deconstructing internal hierarchies, decentralizing decision-making power from farm owners, and addressing oppressive power relations ossified in their local and cultural context when establishing postcapitalist work relations.

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."

Govinda Prasad Devkota · Pragyaratna प्रज्ञारत्न · Nepal

This participatory action research in a public high school in Nepal explored the applicability of urine diversion toilets for organic vegetable production and sanitation improvement. It found that urine diversion toilets prevent surface water pollution and improve students' hygiene. Additionally, using human urine as fertilizer increased vegetable production by 40% compared to animal fertilizer in plots of the same area.

Juan Camilo Ochoa Céspedes · Entorno Geográfico · Colombia (Medellín)

This paper critically analyzes peri-urban and peri-urban agriculture, addressing problems of territorial tension resulting from the accelerated expansion of real estate into peri-urban areas due to low urban land availability. The discussion questions the economic, environmental, and social risks of this expansion, highlighting tensions and resistance. The paper illustrates these issues with examples from the peri-urban area of Medellín and its metropolitan area.

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.

Ryan Fraser Kirwan, Farhat Abbas, Indriyati Atmosukarto, A. W. Y. Loo, Jong‐Hwan Lim, Sang-Soo Yeo · Frontiers in the Internet of Things · Global

This study, conducted with a Singaporean urban farming company, presents an IoT-based automated farming system consisting of an agnostic growbox and a web dashboard for monitoring crop growth. Using an image analytics approach to classify crop disease phenotypes — specifically chlorosis and tip burn — in lettuce, the researchers compared it against a machine learning approach on the same dataset. The image analytics approach showed scalability, time efficiency, and accuracy in disease detection, with advantages over the machine learning approach in time and cost efficiency.

Santosh Kumar · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Global

This review describes microgreens — tiny edible greens harvested from grains, herbs and vegetables shortly after cotyledons form, typically 1–3 inches tall and ready 7–14 days after sowing — as a category that gained popularity during and after the COVID-19 pandemic for its flavor, color and nutrient content. It characterizes microgreens as typically grown hydroponically and well suited to urban gardeners and small-space growers, without presenting new experimental or nutritional data of its own.

Rachael Walshe, Lisa Law · Cities · Global

This paper presents a novel research method combining the "walking interview" method with a "free listing technique," applied with teachers at a north Queensland primary school in a rapidly urbanising neighbourhood, as part of a larger project exploring the barriers and opportunities of incorporating community gardens -- as important green spaces -- into schools. It reflectively analyses how simple factors such as weather, noise and interruptions shaped 20 minutes of a teacher's day, and considers how conditioned and situational temporalities and more-than-human influences affect the knowledge produced in such rapid walking interviews.

Madhvi Chulet, Sahil Fadia, Shweta Suhane · · Singapore

A paper on future master planning for the Punggol District in Singapore, revisited every 25 years, structured around five systems: green, water, public spaces, energy, and food. Set against Singapore's sustainable-architecture policies for climate mitigation and the way COVID-19 reshaped design at the urban and building scale, the paper argues that a systems-thinking approach produces positive outcomes for architectural form and site planning, and it synthesizes guidelines for blue-green infrastructure in the Punggol District.