Research & reports

Antoinette WinklerPrins · CABI eBooks · Global

This chapter provides definitions and theoretical framing for urban agriculture (UA). Research on UA has evolved beyond describing food production systems to its role in creating spaces of community, resistance, and empowerment. UA serves as a means for those not central to the city's function to claim a right to the city, and it is a rich field for interdisciplinary inquiry into urban sustainability.

Joshua Sbicca · Digital Collections of Colorado (Colorado State University) · Global

An article examining food as an entry point into the politics and processes of gentrification, discussed with reference to cities globally rather than a single case. Where traditional explanations of gentrification hinge on either political-economy or cultural drivers, the article shows the relationship between the two to argue that food gentrification is multifaceted, changing a neighborhood's class and ethnoracial demographics, foodscapes and foodways, and housing. It states that poor communities in cities around the world can experience harmful effects of food-driven gentrification, such as developers using urban agriculture to attract new residents and increase property values. It also describes food itself as being gentrified in two ways: for communities marginalized by race or ethnicity, culturally important foods become "cool," unaffordable and dispossessed from them, while the upscaling of food retail displaces former bars, cafes, restaurants, grocery stores and gardens. The article closes with a brief discussion of social movement strategies and policy approaches to prevent these harmful effects.

Galen D. Newman, Alison L. Smith, Samuel D. Brody · Landscape Journal · 米国（湾岸都市）

Proposes a regional growth framework that repurposes vacant lots with high ecological potential as connectors between habitat patches, balancing storm-protection development pressures with ecosystem services. Supports planning logic for dotted vacant-lot gardens and green links in hillside or fragmented urban fabric.

Giuseppe Cinà, Fahimeh Khatami · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Iran

A study addressing the role of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Mashhad, Iran, from a sustainable development perspective, aimed at identifying conditions hindering and factors favoring its development. After framing the UPA phenomenon with reference to significant planning experiences in Western and Islamic countries, the study outlines Mashhad as a "city in transition," describes the institutional framework of its present urban planning, and shows the weak enforcement mechanisms of planning policy for UPA. It then presents a conceptual and material network of un-built areas potentially suitable for agriculture, organized into three classes from the compact city center to its periphery, summarizing physical characteristics, ownership, and resources for each, and concludes that policy, education, and social commitment are the three domains that can favor effective UPA policies and practices.

Jacques Godfroid · Archives of Public Health · Global

This opinion paper discusses a One Health approach to brucellosis at the wildlife-livestock-human interface in both industrialized and low- and middle-income countries. It points to pitfalls in serological studies and states that urban and peri-urban farming contributes to the re-emergence of brucellosis in the developing world, identifies wildlife as a potential reservoir, and discusses the ethics of culling wildlife to control disease spread.

Noriah Othman, Rabiatul Adawiyah Latip, Mohd Hisham Ariffin, Noralizawati Mohamed · Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal · Malaysia

Against a background of limited public participation in urban farming activities in Malaysia despite government efforts, and challenges in sustaining participants' interest, this study measured motivations for urban farming participation using the three components of Expectancy Theory of Motivation—expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. This paper reports findings on the expectancy component of that motivation.

Stephanie White · CABI eBooks · Senegal

A book chapter applying resilience theory to situate urban agriculture within city food systems and urban food security. Using urban agriculture in M'Bour, Senegal as a case, it examines how urban processes and space ("urban assemblages") produce various food vulnerabilities and resiliencies, and how food practices are leveraged to survive and thrive in dynamic, variable urban environments.

Rawaa Fawzi Naom Abbawi, Fatima fouad Yaseen · Iraqi Journal of Architecture and Planning · Global

A study taking up the concept of urban agriculture as one of the trends within sustainable urbanism, motivated by limited green space, population growth and ongoing neglect of the urban landscape. A literature review established the key terms and indicators related to urban agriculture's spatial properties and multi-use activity, and the study then tested its hypotheses through a destructive, analytic study of actual urban agriculture projects. Results showed that urban agriculture's connection to city landscape is achieved mainly through contextual linkage, and that social and cultural uses are the most important use realized through urban agriculture's presence in the city landscape. The study concludes with a theoretical model of urban agriculture in the city landscape.

Fatemeh Kalantari, Osman Mohd Tahir, Raheleh Akbari Joni, Ezaz Fatemi · Journal of Landscape Ecology · Global

This paper critically reviews 60 published documents on vertical farming — cultivating plants and livestock on vertically inclined surfaces such as skyscrapers in land-scarce urban areas — assessing it against environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability, and notes that published critical reviews on the topic remain scarce. Economic viability is named as one of the challenges considered alongside environmental and social factors, but the abstract does not present specific cost, revenue, or failure data to support this; it concludes, without citing supporting figures, that vertical farming can be "potentially beneficial" for food production, quality, safety, and food security.

Matt Curnock, Carol Farbotko, Kerry Collins, Cathy Robinson, Kirsten Maclean · Geographical Research · Australia

In a context of heightened regional biosecurity activity in northern Queensland, Australia, researchers interviewed 16 community garden group leaders and local government representatives to examine how community garden actors engage with biosecurity surveillance. Informal factors such as social networks shaped engagement more than institutional characteristics like land tenure or the presence of management policies; unengaged stakeholders were typically unaware of pest and disease risks and had limited government network connections but expressed interest in learning, while disengaged stakeholders knew more about the risks and had established networks yet showed low interest in reporting threats.

N. Delille · WORLD OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT · Global

This article examines the concept of ecological citizenship -- which positions citizens as agents of change and sources of progress, in contrast to environmental policy's long-standing treatment of citizens as passive actors -- against the backdrop of the rise of community-supported agriculture (CSA). It argues that this new form of sustainable consumption can be considered tangible evidence for Dobson's theory of ecological citizenship, but states that the scientific literature needs to take more interest in the topic to understand its implications for public policy, which it says has not yet been done.

Shobha Shrestha · Nepalese journal of geoinformatics/Journal of geoinformatics Nepal · Nepal

Using GIS, remote sensing and spatial metrics, this study analyzed the spatial structure and dynamics of urban land use, including agricultural land use, in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, over the ten years from 2003 to 2012. Land use changed drastically over this period, with the most pronounced shifts occurring in the agriculture and built-up classes, signaling rapid urbanization; the valley's spatial structure moved toward a more heterogeneous and fragmented landscape, with new, isolated urban patches emerging inside what had been larger, contiguous agricultural patches and breaking them into smaller fragments.

J. A. Byrne, Catherine Marina Pickering, D. A. Guitart, R. Sims-Castley · CABI eBooks · Australia

The local impacts of global urbanization — dwindling green spaces, food insecurity, land shortages, and loss of biodiversity — have triggered renewed interest in various forms of urban agriculture. In rapidly growing cities across both the Global North and Global South, residents are seeking better access to places to grow safe and healthy food, spaces that foster social inclusion, and improved environmental quality. Urban cultivation initiatives are often framed around the social benefits of local food growing and typically aim to be "sustainable." This chapter addresses the implications these twin goals have for land-use planning and policy.

Bronwen Morgan, Declan Kuch · Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks · Global

A chapter draws on an extensive study of grassroots innovation responding to climate change, spanning a continuum from social activism to social enterprise, examining the diverse motivations of entrepreneurs who started community-supported agriculture projects, car-sharing schemes, and co-working spaces. It shows how entrepreneurs' differing biographical trajectories shape the initiatives they create around economic, environmental, and social benefits. The chapter argues these benefits must be understood through the ambiguity of a socio-legal lens: while "sharing" initiatives may occasionally catalyze opportunities to move beyond neoliberalism, the ways lawyers and legal techniques shape the infrastructure of collaboration are deeply implicated in the economics of the neoliberal inheritance — meaning such sharing-economy governance remains entangled with, rather than genuinely escaping, neoliberal economic structures.

Castaneda-Alvarez N.P., Khoury C.K., Achicanoy H.A., Jarvis D.I., Maxted N., Toll J. · Nature Plants · Global

Models the distribution of 1,076 taxa related to 81 crops, finding over 70% are high priority for further collection because they are poorly represented in genebanks relative to their native ranges.

Leitgeb F., Schneider S., Vogl C.R. · Agriculture and Human Values · Cuba (Havana)

Using semi-structured interviews with 15 urban farmers in Havana, this study examines how Cuba's 2008 land reform and 2011 Lineamientos policy created conditions for food sovereignty while generating new marketing opportunities, though reducing subsidies raised consumer prices.

Ba A., Cantoreggi N., Simos J., Duchemin E. · VertigO – la revue électronique en sciences de l'environnement · Senegal (Dakar)

This study found that urban farmers in Dakar's Niayes zone face serious occupational health risks from unregulated pesticide use and contaminated irrigation water, with groundwater pollutant levels reaching up to 75 times WHO standards, while farmers themselves underestimated their own exposure risks.

Filkobski I., Rofè Y., Tal A. · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening · Israel

A survey of 44 community garden coordinators across Israel found that community gardens serve as community anchors and sites of encounter for diverse urban populations. The study documented their characteristics and functions within the Israeli urban context.

· The Journal of Development Studies · Burkina Faso

Analyses the diffusion of smallholder drip irrigation in Burkina Faso, focusing on the role of development brokers.

Spilková J., Vágner J. · Land Use Policy · Prague, Czechia

Since 1989 Prague's allotment gardens have been diminishing rapidly, converted to residential, transport, and commercial development or recreation. The paper documents how allotments are among the most vulnerable urban green spaces under the pressures of urban planning and private interests.

Sarah James, Philip O’Neill · Australian Geographer · Australia (Sydney)

This study collated and analyzed existing Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and non-ABS data on Sydney agriculture between 1992 and 2011. It found that accounting for the Sydney Basin's farmlands remains opaque due to difficulties in acquiring reliable data, and existing data are often contested. The findings reveal trends in Sydney Basin agriculture that invite debate on assumptions about peri-urban agriculture, emphasizing the need for more reliable and consistent longitudinal data for future planning.

Silvio Caputo, Eva Schwab, Kostas Tsiambaos, Mary Benson, Hervé Bonnavaud, Neslihan Demircan, Tim Delshammar, Frederico Meireles, Nerea Morán, Jeanne Pourias · · Global

This chapter provides an overview of emergent approaches to urban gardening, identifying urban dynamics and spatial implications. It notes that a lack of suitable urban land and difficulties in establishing constructive dialogue with local authorities regarding land provision can lead to the use of interstitial urban spaces for gardening practices. An example includes a community-based organization constructing a permaculture garden on a supermarket rooftop, highlighting challenges in land access and governance.

Steve G. Hallett, Lori Hoagland, Emily Toner · Horticultural reviews · Global

This chapter discusses urban agriculture from economic, environmental, and social perspectives, acknowledging differences between urban agriculture in small and large cities, as well as the Global North and South. Urban farms and community gardens can have both positive and negative environmental impacts, such as reducing or increasing energy consumption, improving water infiltration, and beautifying neighborhoods, or producing odors and contaminating water. The chapter also attempts to frame policy recommendations that might help guide urban agriculture's development.

Sofia Nikolaidou, Tanja Klöti, Simone Tappert, Matthias Drilling · Urban Planning · Switzerland (Geneva)

This article examines new forms of small-scale urban gardening practices in Geneva, Switzerland, focusing on how multiple actors negotiate over open space and the resulting hybrid forms of public green space. Main findings indicate emerging forms of collaboration, partnerships, and governance patterns involving public and private sectors and increased civil society participation. This cooperation enhances accessibility and diversified uses of urban green spaces.

Antonia Bousbaine, Christopher Bryant · Challenges in Sustainability · Global

This article proposes Action Research as a key approach for research to contribute to sustainable solutions in urban agriculture. It describes the researcher's roles, such as providing information, counseling, and organizing meetings, which are adopted based on requests from actors like citizens and farmers. The article synthesizes relevant research on sustainable agricultural systems in periurban areas and the co-authors' own research over eight years, identifying patience, process emphasis, and multi-actor participation as necessary characteristics of Action Research.