Research & reports

Amirul Asyraf Zhahir, Mohd Ilias M Shuhud, Siti Munirah Mohd, S.K. Kamarudin, Azuan Ahmad, Rossly Salleh, Norita Md Norwawi · Computer Science and Information Technologies · Global

This study proposes a conceptual model for technology adoption in smart urban farming, building upon a previous systematic literature review. The model is founded on Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) and incorporates factors from other technology adoption models. The research aims to provide insights into the components influencing technology adoption in smart urban farming, offering a framework for future studies and applications.

Mayank Kaushal · · Global

This study investigates the relationship between urban form, perceptions of safety and security, and their influence on the utilization of public open spaces, including community gardens. It employs qualitative and quantitative methodologies, such as interviews, surveys, and observational analysis, to collect data on individuals' perceptions, experiences, and usage patterns. The research explores factors contributing to perceived safety and security and investigates strategies like urban design modifications and community engagement to improve these perceptions and enhance urban livability.

Nurmiftah Fauzi, Titi Stiawati, Arenawati Arenawati · Kebijakan Jurnal Ilmu Administrasi · Indonesia (Tangerang)

The Tangerang City Food Security Agency implemented a 1000-plant hydroponic assistance program as part of an urban farming initiative to strengthen food security. This qualitative phenomenological study used Rogers' innovation attributes theory to evaluate the program's relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. Results indicated the program provided economic benefits and spiritual satisfaction, and was compatible with existing values and food needs, but found room for improvement in the complexity aspect.

Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah · Urban agriculture · Global

This chapter examines alternative governance visions for urban agriculture, or urban food commons (UFCs), through the lens of polycentric governance. It argues that UFCs require a mix of institutional arrangements, including centralized, decentralized, market, cooperative, and command-and-control models, rather than a single approach. Four institutional design parameters are outlined to guide this polycentric vision: multiple decision centers, cross-scale and cross-sector interactions, an overarching rule system, and rule adaptability, exemplified by Chicago's NeighborSpace.

Legrand Cirimwami, Fabrice Kibingani, Clérisse M. Casinga · Journal of Environment · Africa

A study of Bukavu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (more than 1.6 million inhabitants in 60 km², driven by rural exodus due to insecurity), examining residents' perceptions of deforestation to inform policy on urban forest restoration. Researchers sampled and interviewed 210 informants, 70 each in the communes of Kadutu, Ibanda, and Bagira. Findings show 85% of informants favour restoring green spaces, and at least 72.9% recognise green spaces as important for air purification, environmental improvement, ornamentation, erosion control, biodiversity conservation, and food production from fruit trees. 81.9% agreed that vegetation cover has decreased, especially since the 2000s, mainly due to rural exodus and unregulated housing construction. 87.1% see themselves as the main beneficiaries of green spaces and blame government as the main destroyer of green spaces that should also be the main actor in restoring them, while acknowledging some of their own responsibility, though less than government's. For restoration, 51.7% suggested tree-planting initiatives, favouring Eucalyptus, Cupressus lusitanica, and ornamental and medicinal trees, with awareness-raising and planned urbanisation also proposed as strategies.

Aji Saputra, Oekan S. Abdoellah, Gemilang Lara Utama · Jurnal Ilmu Lingkungan · Indonesia

A systematic literature review aiming to identify the methods used for sustainable urban agriculture in Indonesia and to assess the main opportunities and challenges of using it to achieve environmental, social, and economic goals. Using the PRISMA method, the review screened articles from the Scopus database and analysed 25 studies on the relationship between urban agriculture and sustainability. It reports that urban agriculture offers economic, social, and environmental benefits within sustainable urban environments, and concludes that realising its full potential requires coordinated efforts through policy development, community involvement, and overcoming existing obstacles.

Véronique Saint-Gès, Bethsabée Warin, Antoine Jacobsohn · Sustainability · France

A study of two French public urban farms, the Potager du Roi in Versailles and the Cité Maraîchère in Romainville, using the concept of the triple-layered business model to examine their sustainability strategy through empirical case-study research. The evaluation of their economic, social, and environmental impacts shows their dependence on multiple interlinked public policies, and points to the justification for significant, recurring public funding on grounds of general interest.

Fauziyyah Nur Rachmadillah, Mochamad Yusuf · Jurnal Teknik ITS · Indonesia

In Kampung Ngemplak Sutan (Kampung Sayur Organik), Surakarta, Indonesia, sustainability of the local urban farming initiative was evaluated using primary data from observation, questionnaires and interviews plus secondary data, analyzed with Multidimensional Scaling and Rapid Appraisal for Sustainability (MDS/RAPS). The socio-cultural dimension scored highest at 75.44 ("very sustainable"), while the economic dimension scored lowest at 56.71 ("fairly sustainable"); the study also noted that urban farming there functions mainly as a side activity that receives limited attention and that community participation has been declining.

Shuyue He, Ming Li, Yuhan Zheng, Xin Gao, Ruixia Wang · Cities · China

An ethnographic study of two guerrilla gardening cases in Nanjing, China (SuoJincun), examined how residents produce differentiated representational space in daily gardening practice. It found that gardening carries social value as material production, functions as a material carrier of place attachment and cultural identity, offers access to nature and culture for residents with limited mobility, and operates as a form of private appropriation and recycling of collective public space by residents.

Yunanto Yunanto, Retno Wulandari · Agricultural Socio-Economic Empowerment and Agribusiness Journal · Indonesia

A study of the Sustainable Urban Farming (P2L) program in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia, surveyed 88 respondents across 11 farmer groups using a Likert scale to assess farmers' perceptions of agricultural extension workers' performance in planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting, with relationships analyzed via Spearman's rank correlation. The program was reported to have improved food availability, accessibility and household income through market-oriented production, and extension workers' performance was rated good (score 260.42), but factors such as age, non-formal education, farmer knowledge, farming experience and ICT use showed only very weak correlation with extension worker performance.

Matthijs T. Wessels, Shaaban M. Mgana · Urban Forum · Tanzania

Based on ethnographic research in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania — one of the fastest-urbanizing cities in sub-Saharan Africa — this study examines how farmers configure their day-to-day agricultural practices amid urban change. Contrary to narratives that present agriculture as passive in the face of urban growth, it describes farmers building networks of provision through informal access to land and water, supplying food and employment while actively co-shaping the city. Farmers adapt their strategies in response to land pressure and water resource degradation. The paper argues that better representation of urban farmers and irrigated agriculture in urban planning and governance would reduce uncertainty and risk for both farmers and the wider city.

Ada Górna · · Global

This chapter summarizes research conducted for a book comparing urban agriculture in three cities — Havana, Singapore, and Kigali. It presents a structured comparative analysis identifying similarities and differences among these Global South cities across four facets: distribution characteristics, internal structural/production and organizational/technical features, distribution methods, and functions fulfilled. It also identifies universal attributes of urban agriculture that recur independently of spatial, socioeconomic, political, and environmental conditions, along with distinctive mechanisms shaping its development, and discusses verification of the study's hypotheses, methodological challenges specific to each city, and directions for future research.

Carol E. Ramos-Gerena, Allison DeHonney, Shireen Guru, Rachel Grandits, Insha Akram, Samina Raja · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This article examines the Seeding East Buffalo Fellowship (SEBF) program, co-founded by community and academic organizations in Buffalo, NY in 2022, which supported residents of Buffalo's Black neighborhoods in growing their own food, emerging as urban agriculture leaders, and engaging in urban agriculture policy advocacy. The authors, who are co-founders or team members of SEBF, draw on field notes and qualitative interviews with SEBF growers to reflect on lessons from this pilot program. Key lessons for policy change identified are that programs must be rooted in community history, pedagogical strategies must be tailored to local context, and long-term relationships must be fostered.

Valeria Di Martino, Gian Vito Zani · Rivista di estetica · Italy

This paper examines the distinction between public goods and common goods (commons) as understood in economics and applies it to a typical public good — urban green areas. While public goods involve openness to all and state management, commons require management that is common yet still limited; the two also differ in the kind of agent involved, with public goods presupposing an aggregate of individuals and commons presupposing a plural subject capable of acting in concert to manage the good. After exploring this distinction in detail, the paper applies it to green areas in cities and shows the theoretical advantages of a commons-based framing, including through the concrete case of community gardens.

Michele Deri · Florence Research (University of Florence) · Italy

This paper examines the peri-urban agricultural park, an instrument that has gained significant importance in Italian territorial policy in recent years, as a tool for integrated governance of peri-urban territory and socio-ecological factors. Based on a desk analysis, it selects several major Italian experiences and presents an initial overview of the characteristics this tool presents in various contexts, in terms of both process and project. The paper highlights the relevance and diffusion of the instrument in public discourse and territorial governance practices, as well as the strengths, limitations, and critical issues the various cases present in operational terms, concluding that further exploration of its design and management characteristics as a connective element between planning and rural development is needed.

Henriette John, Martina Artmann · International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development · Germany

Based on a German case study, this paper introduces an integrative framework for evaluating the environmental, social and economic sustainability of urban agriculture, applying multi-criteria analysis via the Analytic Hierarchy Process combined with a participatory approach. Analyzing the examples of vertical farming and community-supported agriculture, the environmental dimension received the highest weight, followed by the social and then the economic dimension; among sub-criteria, species diversity received the highest weight and food quality and safety the lowest.

Nuryanti Nuryanti, Muhamad Bai’ul Hak, Adhitya Bagus Singandaru · Elastisitas - Jurnal Ekonomi Pembangunan · Indonesia

Using an integrated literature approach combining a literature review with a systematic review, this paper examines the innovations in Governor Regulation No. 6 of 2022, which sets out the Roadmap of the Halal Industrial Park in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. It finds that the Roadmap functions as a clean, clearly defined green-economy location for scaling up and increasing the productivity of small and medium industries (SMI), that it secures a sustainable supply of raw materials for industry through integrated urban farming, that it guarantees SMI empowerment from the production process through market segmentation, and that it encourages SMIs to meet national and international product standards.

Akpınar, Musab Talha, Korkut, Cem · Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) · Global

This chapter surveys how the basic sciences -- physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics -- contribute to Sustainable Smart Cities. It states that physics underlies energy efficiency and structural design, chemistry drives sustainable materials and pollution control, biology supports green space, biodiversity and ecosystem services including urban agriculture, and mathematics/data science enable real-time monitoring and resource allocation, arguing for continued interdisciplinary investment in research and education.

Elza D’Cruz · Landscape Research · India

This study examines the disappearance of a historic urban agriculture landscape in Bangalore, India, between the 1950s and 1970s, a period of post-independence urban planning, drawing on urban planning documents, government files and oral histories recorded with the Vahnikula Kshatriya, a traditional urban agriculture practitioner community. It finds that colonial frameworks embedded in post-independence urban development plans not only displaced urban agriculture but continue to affect it, and argues for changing how urban planning in formerly colonised places approaches urban agriculture.

Albin Mathew -, Sanu K Thekkath -, N Sneha · International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research · Global

This paper is a review that surveys various forms and definitions of urban farming and discusses its role in implementing circular economy strategies and strengthening urban food security. Drawing on case studies within institutions such as schools and Anganwadi centres, it argues that urban farming initiatives can promote sustainability, community engagement and equitable participation, that urban farming and neighbourhood development are interconnected in ways that support an inclusive society and sustainable urban design principles, and advocates positioning urban farming as central to urban planning.

Meiling Wu · Sustainability · China

A study of a Sharing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in China examined, through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, how external investment drives the conventionalization of alternative agriculture. The farm's low economic sustainability was the trigger that drew in external investment; investors then compelled the farm manager to relax adherence to organic agriculture's ecological values and principles and shift toward specialized, intensive farming to secure profitability, and a new business model was adopted that further entrenched this conventionalization.

Constantine Manolchev, David Watson, Laura A. Colombo, Patrick Elf, James Scott Vandeventer · · United Kingdom

A chapter examines the role of technology across the European 'agrifood' system, an umbrella term for the agriculture, horticulture, food, and drink sectors. Placing the dysfunctional consequences of making economic growth the driver of food-system organization in historical context, it shows through a case study of a daffodil farm in South West England that when technology is deployed as an engine of efficiency, unbridled growth, and profit maximization, it vastly improves productivity through worker quantification—time, motion, and output tracking—while transforming worker-nature relationships in exploitative ways. By contrast, when used to prioritize non-exploitative, collaborative relationships, technology can support sustainable well-being and ecological production, illustrated through three alternative food network cases: a UK community garden, a UK Community Supported Agriculture scheme, and a network of social agricultural cooperatives in Italy.

Victoria Dietze, Amna Alhashemi, Peter H. Feindt · Food Security · Global

Using the Urban Food Production Innovation System (UFoPrInS) concept, a 2024 study analyzed the urban contexts and enabling and impeding factors for implementing controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) in three contrasting locations — London, Nairobi and Singapore — based on document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews. Findings show Singapore as a favorable location because public policies support CEA implementation to reduce food import dependency and enhance the resilience of food supply. In London, high food import dependency is increasingly seen as problematic, but CEA implementation has been hampered by other policy priorities. In Nairobi, where over half the population lives in informal settlements without adequate food, water and sanitation, CEA is unlikely to make an economically efficient contribution to food security. The study concludes that CEA implementation is likely to be suitable in locations with ample capital and knowledge, stable political, social and infrastructure conditions, and limited space, where its value can be linked to hospitality and tourism and supported by favorable pricing for resource savings.

AZOLLA Projects · Open MIND · Europe

This document, prepared under Activity 2.1 of the Carbon Farming MED project, defines the criteria for selecting pilot farms for a carbon-farming program across two Mediterranean regions, Italy and Spain. Farms practicing regenerative agriculture or agroforestry were required to meet mandatory conditions — legal compliance, access to internet and car transport, and the economic capacity to dedicate 0.5 ha to the study — plus preferable conditions such as soil free of heavy-metal contamination, historical soil analysis data, pollinator habitat and biological corridors, efficient water management, participation in farmers' markets or community-supported agriculture, a track record with circular-economy practices, and potential for scaling. Three farms in Catalonia and three farms in Spain were selected, with primary activities of viticulture, olive growing, horticulture, and agroforestry; on-farm data will be collected from these farms to monitor and validate soil organic carbon (SOC) content.

Shu Hua Teoh, Gwo Rong Wong, Purabi Mazumdar · Innovations in Agriculture · Global

A review combining scientific literature analysis and interviews with urban farmers examined urban farming models including community, indoor, rooftop and vertical farms using techniques such as aeroponics, hydroponics and aquaponics. It found that sustainability and yield remain major challenges to fully realizing urban farming's potential, identifying limited land and water resources, pest and disease incidence, financial constraints on setup and maintenance, knowledge and skill gaps among participants, and a lack of effective collaboration between universities, government and industry as the key barriers.