Research & reports

Giuseppe Cinà · PORTO Publications Open Repository TOrino (Politecnico di Torino) · Italy

This paper examines Italian planning, highlighting an unresolved discrepancy between urban and agricultural policies due to a long-standing separation of urban and rural worlds. It outlines how this historical gap results in two inconsistent and low-effective policies. The paper discusses agricultural parks as an attempt to overcome this planning backwardness by integrating spatial planning and agricultural activity, documenting three Italian examples.

Hillary J. Shaw · · United Kingdom (Birmingham)

This chapter describes four stages by which people have become divorced from the origins of human food: industrialization, globalization, supermarketization, and dromology. Ashram Acres, established in 1981 in Birmingham, England, exemplifies many merits of urban agriculture, aiming to utilize the agricultural expertise of local migrants from South Asia, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

Attila Tóth, Ľubica Feriancová · Acta horticulturae et regiotecturae · Spain (Barcelona)

This study investigated squat farming as a typology of urban agriculture, focusing on the case study of Can Masdeu, a squatted and cultivated land at the northern city border of Barcelona, Spain. It aimed to understand how landscape and urban structures are influenced by land cultivation and how the social dimension of squat farming is structured. Spatial and perceptual analyses were applied, and users were interviewed through discussions and questionnaires, with results describing the spatial and social characteristics of squat farming at Can Masdeu.

Davide Olori · Archivio istituzionale della ricerca (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna) · Italy

This publication aims to collect research contributions on new movements and self-organized initiatives that re-use and transform various parts of the city, including abandoned buildings, green areas, and public spaces. These experiences, such as informal community gardens and squatter occupations, can be interpreted as interstitial practices or a growing method of urban construction.

Alexander Follmann, Valérie Viehoff · Local Environment · Germany

This paper investigates NeuLand, a community garden created in March 2012 on a brownfield site in Cologne, Germany. It assesses NeuLand as typical of a new form of political engagement 2.0, focusing on local problems and direct actions, and its potential to offer a blueprint for alternative urban futures and new ways for citizens to claim their "right to the city." The study links the NeuLand experiment to broader discussions on alternative socio-ecological futures, extending beyond analyses of urban gardening solely for sustainable food production or community cohesion.

Pascale Scheromm, Coline Perrin, Christophe‐Toussaint Soulard · Espaces et sociétés · France (Montpellier)

A study of urban agriculture in Montpellier, France, utilized policy analysis, spatial analysis, and an analysis of urban agricultural actors' practices and representations. The research revealed a great diversity in urban agriculture and a gap between its perception in urban policy and its spatial realities. Traditional agriculture is declining despite occupying more land, while new forms like gardens and agriparks are emerging, fostering interactions between public actors and citizens.

Barbara Walczak · Ochrona Środowiska i Zasobów Naturalnych · Poland (Zielona Góra)

This paper presents the total and phytoavailable copper content in allotment garden soils in Zielona Góra, Poland. Soil samples from eight garden plots and two neighboring areas showed total copper content ranging from 2.58 to 16.23 mg·kg⁻¹ and phytoavailable copper from 0.2 to 3.85 mg·kg⁻¹. The total copper content met the requirements of relevant Polish directives on heavy metals in soils and soil quality standards.

· 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.

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.

Jean Lagane · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · France

This paper examines the challenges of food provisioning in Marseille due to global food networks and environmental issues like global warming and metropolization. A three-year ethnographic study of the "Marche du Cours Julien" in Marseille explored how citizens revived local farmers' markets and promoted bottom-up ecologization. The study also analyzed the links between the Cours Julien farmers' market, which hosts a French Community-supported agriculture (CSA), and the development of Alternative Food Networks and Short Food Supply Chains.

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.

Judith Moellers, Brînduşa Bîrhală · OpenAgrar · Europe

Three cases of Community Supported Agriculture launched for the first time in western Romania were analyzed for the costs and benefits experienced by participating farmers and consumers. Farmers deliver organically grown vegetables directly to private contract partners; consumers were characterized by value-based attitudes such as belief in healthy nutrition and concern about synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, while farmers were driven more by economic considerations — market access itself and higher prices. Both farmers and consumers used the partnership to compensate for market failure.

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.

Helena Jedličková · · Europe

A thesis on inquiry-based learning at the Faculty of Education in Brno, Czech Republic, addresses four areas shaping the relationship between people (children) and nature: the concept of activity education in the 21st century, the principles of natural gardens, the topical phenomenon of community gardens, and garden forms associated with educational institutions. Its practical part attempts to unite these four areas into one. The core of the thesis is designing, creating and implementing a garden patch with natural elements at the Biology Department workplace of the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, funded by the "Natural DVPP" project and the "SEP" innovation project for South Moravian region schools using international field placements and internships (registration number CZ.1.07/1.41/02.0055).

Zsófia Benedek · Econstor (Econstor) · Europe

A literature review of international research on short food supply chains (SFSC) and their impacts, combined with findings on the types already established in Hungary. SFSC consumers tend to be more highly educated than average; traditional forms such as farmers' markets attract older people while newer forms such as community-supported agriculture and web-based value chains attract younger people. The review finds that clear scientific evidence of SFSCs' positive environmental, social or economic impact is not always available, and in some cases traditional food supply chains prove cheaper and more environmentally beneficial, concluding there is no generally preferable SFSC solution given their heterogeneity.

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.

Amparo Hurtado Soler, Ana María Botella Nicolás, José Cantó Doménech, Valentín Gavidia Catalán · · Spain

Framing the school garden as an educational resource that helps students approach the natural environment and develop basic skills through interdisciplinary experiences, the L'Hort 2.0 project in Spain built a virtual environment based on the school garden to manage ICT content linking activities outside the classroom with course guides. It proceeded through an active, collaborative methodology in three phases: preparing and designing the web environment across six thematic areas, developing educational materials, and evaluating their usefulness in the classroom and effectiveness in the learning process. The project reports high student involvement in the learning process and improved assessment results that better reflected the skills students had attained.

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.

Stefano Grando, Roberto Henke, Livia Ortolani, Francesco Vanni, Thomas Aenis, Andrea Knierim, M. C. Riecher, R. Ridder, Harold H. Schobert, Holger Fischer · · Italy

Noting that urban and peri-urban farms cannot feed a city's entire population in either quantity or variety, but can provide a base for products and services that enhance the ecological, social and economic sustainability of metropolitan areas, this study analyzes farms in the countryside surrounding Rome, Italy. It first identifies market-oriented farms within the municipality of Rome and classifies them into three categories — traditional, adaptive and reactive peri-urban farms — then examines two cases of "reactive" farms in depth to identify the factors that shaped their successful trajectories and drove their renewed, multifunctional role in Rome's peri-urban agriculture.