Research & reports

Daniele La Rosa, Riccardo Privitera · Acta Geobalcanica · Italy (Catania)

This paper evaluates the provision of Ecosystem Services (ES) along three urban-rural transects in the metropolitan area of Catania, southern Italy. Land-use categories were assessed using GIS spatial analysis for their potential ES provision. Results indicate that agricultural lands are the most important landscape features for providing ES, both in terms of their spatial extension and the number of services offered.

Valerio Moretti, Adele Sateriano, Marco Zitti, Luca Salvati · · Europe

This article discusses the relationship between landscape and peri-urban agriculture and its implications for rural area management in the northern Mediterranean basin. It proposes a framework to evaluate the links between agro-forest systems and expanding urban settlements. The study advocates for a sustainable land management perspective in policies to preserve fringe land from excessive settlement scattering and landscape fragmentation, contributing to systemic and multi-scale approaches for territorial policies and integrated management of peri-urban agricultural landscapes.

Wojciech Sroka, Bernd Pölling · Zeszyty Naukowe SGGW w Warszawie - Problemy Rolnictwa Światowego · Europe

This paper evaluated the potential and importance of agriculture in the Ruhr Metropolis and the Upper Silesian Metropolis, two large European metropolitan areas. Urban agriculture was shown to be an important spatial component, with almost 40% of these areas consisting of agricultural land. Analysis revealed that their agricultural potential is comparable to the overall regions in terms of average farm size, employment ratio, and intensity of animal and plant production. The study concluded that agriculture in the Ruhr Metropolis has significantly higher production potential than in the Upper Silesian Metropolis, despite similar natural environments.

Dieneke Schram-Bijkerk, Dirven-van Breemen L, P Otte · Rivm (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) · Europe

Based on a literature review conducted by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), this report examines the health and living-environment effects of non-commercial neighborhood vegetable gardens on vacant urban land. It notes that garden work is associated with increased physical activity and consumption of self-grown vegetables and fruit, and indications of reduced stress and increased social contact in the neighborhood, while also stressing the importance of minimizing risks from soil and air pollution. The review identifies measurable indicators for each health effect and recommends using consistent measurement methods to enable international comparison; findings are also used to inform research on allotment gardens in various European countries.

Carlos Verdaguer Viana-Cárdenas · · Europe

This report describes the third Training School of the COST Action Urban Agriculture Europe, held in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain, from 24 to 26 September 2014. The city had recently expanded through two new neighborhoods, Zabalgana and Salburua, along its greenbelt, but these areas suffered from over-dimensioned public space lacking density and mixed uses and were expensive for the municipality to maintain; the Training School used Zabalgana as a practical field to explore urban agriculture as a way to re-qualify this excess public space, through field visits and presentations followed by a one-day design charrette.

Emanuele Blasi, Clara Cicatiello, Barbara Pancino, Silvio Franco · Agricultural and Food Economics · Italy

Peri-urban agriculture is exposed to pressures toward diversification and multifunctionality, developing differently depending on territorial features. A paper studies the case of Trentino, an Italian Alpine region where the ratio of urban to rural domain is heavily skewed toward the latter and farms face environmental problems that jeopardize their competitiveness in mainstream markets, comparing the development of alternative food chains there with other Italian peri-urban areas. The mountain environment makes it difficult for farms to standardize products to large retailers' requirements, but alternative food chains endorse and communicate to the market the typicality of products and farmers' savoir-faire, the two main factors of added value. Survey data from short food chain consumers show they are inherently more attentive to these product cues, as a result of a lifestyle more attached to identity and origins, and prouder of their territory. These findings confirm that, given its structural and cultural traits, alternative food markets in the Trentino area are meaningful for the survival and development of the local agricultural sector.

Charlotte Flink, Jenny Persson · · Europe

This thesis examines whether Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), as an alternative food production model, can promote sustainable urban and rural development in Sweden, using a Triple Bottom Line (economic, environmental, social) framework across two parts: a literature review and a quantitative participant survey at the CSA farm Stackvallen. The literature review indicated CSA operations can contribute to sustainable societal development through economic stimulus and environmentally sound food supply, while the participant survey found respondents rated the social aspects low and valued the health and environmental aspects more highly.

Carly Wood, Jules Pretty, Murray Griffin · Journal of Public Health · United Kingdom

A UK case-control study measured self-esteem, mood, and general health in 136 allotment gardeners before and after a gardening session, and compared them with 133 non-gardener controls. Paired t-tests showed a significant improvement in self-esteem following an allotment session, and one-way ANCOVA showed allotment gardeners had significantly better self-esteem, total mood disturbance, and general health than controls (P<0.001), with less depression and fatigue and more vigour (P<0.0083).

Benno Gammerl, Rainer Herrn · Goldsmiths (University of London) · Europe

A theoretical essay (in German and English, from a European context) on the tension between affect that disrupts ordered structures and the emotional processing of power-laden spatial relations. It uses practices of urban gardening and debates about gentrification as its examples, arguing that analyzing the dynamic interplay between spaces and emotions is fruitful for a critical view of urbanity - explicitly linking urban gardening practices to gentrification as an exclusionary dynamic.

Rosa Maria Vitrano · Nova Science Publishers (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.) · Europe (Italy)

This study of green-envelope building redevelopment in Palma di Montechiaro, in Italy's Agrigento Province, combined testing of innovative products for realizing vertical gardens with the design of guidelines for the architectural and environmental transformation of the Marina Todaro waterfront promenade. The work was framed as a means of defining prospects for Palma di Montechiaro to be considered a green city of Agrigento Province, exploring scenarios of green urban design and urban agriculture still little practiced in the area. Its originality lay in a participatory approach carried out on-site, positioning residents as the primary agents of the environmental regeneration project.

Luisa Pedrazzini · TERRITORIO · Europe

This dossier compiles contributions from an international workshop, "Spatial and Landscape Planning and Design in EU and Lombardy," held at Politecnico di Milano in June 2013. It presents experiences from the EU, Île-de-France, Lombardy, and the United States, highlighting the distinctive features of peri-urban space and landscape and the potential of peri-urban agriculture.

Karen Hart · Primary Teacher Update · United Kingdom

A short article (2015, United Kingdom) describes the design of a new school in West London — featuring state-of-the-art classrooms, a rooftop garden, and a multi-use sports facility — as aiming to fulfil the borough's holistic vision.

Beatriz Giobellina, Yuliana Céliz · Repositorio Digital de la UNC (National University of Cordoba) · Europe

This paper was presented at the International Seminar on Territorial Development and Innovation Policy, held in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, and Valencia, Spain, in 2015. The available abstract provides only this presentation context, with no further detail on content or findings.

Flavio Lupia, Giuseppe Pulighe · Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia · Italy

Using a 2014 Italian Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA) inventory of roughly 2,700 residential kitchen-garden parcels around Rome, Italy, mapped by photointerpretation of high-resolution Google Earth imagery and field validation, this study estimated irrigation water demand for the April-September growing season under different land uses and two irrigation systems, using average climatic data from 1950-2000, and evaluated a rainwater-harvesting scenario as an alternative or supplement to current water sources, which in Rome include municipal supply as well as legal and illegal well, canal and river abstraction.

Bernd Pölling, Bernd Pölling, Rolf Born, Rolf Born · 0028-0615 · Germany

Urban agriculture is defined here as the market-oriented, professional agricultural and horticultural activities carried out within and at the edges of densely built urban areas. It is characterized by its diversity of business orientations and multifunctionality.

Louiza M. Boukharaeva, Marcel Marloie · Revue d’ethnoécologie · Europe

The Brundtland Report, in its chapter on "The Urban Challenge," recommended developing urban agriculture. Subsequent research has emphasized urban agriculture's contribution to food production, poverty reduction, and improved soil, air and water quality, but it appears as a marginal activity involving only a small fraction of middle- or low-income populations. The experiences of Russia and other European countries reveal a larger-scale phenomenon that can involve most city dwellers. Individual plots of 300 to 1,000 square meters within garden and dacha collectives involve roughly a quarter of Russia's urban population, with smaller proportions in other countries; the right to build a small house for weekend and holiday stays extends their multifunctionality. This non-market, extra-professional activity was a social achievement under the Soviet regime and constitutes an alternative to the polluting, soil-destroying detached-housing model. It cushioned the systemic crisis of the 1990s by helping populations cope with stress and avoid famine. Contrary to the view, dominant since 1929, that individual gardening carries a "petit-bourgeois" spirit, it is described as enabling lifestyles more compatible with people's existential needs, with this family-based urban agriculture serving as a means of building a more autonomous, social and ecological urban society, necessary for the resilience of individuals, families and society.

Dražen Šimleša, Jelena Puđak, Filip Majetić, Anita Bušljeta Tonković · · Europe

This paper sets out a qualitative case-study framework for examining the solidarity economy in Split, Croatia's second-largest city, focused on the association MoST (The Bridge), one of Croatia's designated "Centres of Knowledge" for social development, specializing in social inclusion work with homeless people and at-risk youth. It poses as its research questions the inner potentials, strengths, obstacles, and disadvantages for solidarity economy development in Split at the point when MoST and other local actors were just beginning to promote a "Solidarity City Split" concept; the text as given does not report study findings.

Pernille Malberg Dyg · · Europe

This qualitative, explorative study of four school gardens in Denmark combined garden observations, interviews with teachers and garden educators, and focus group discussions with children conducted two months after the programs ended, to examine pedagogy and learning effects in school garden settings. Preliminary findings show children felt more motivated learning outdoors, were better able to understand complex connections and concepts, and found garden-based learning more exciting, with children's sense of ownership over the garden experience and harvest, and their understanding of the seed-to-table process, pollination, and biodiversity, leaving the strongest impressions.

National Audit Office · National Audit Office (NAO) · United Kingdom

An investigation published by the UK National Audit Office on 29 October 2015. The children's charity Kids Company received at least £46 million of public funding over fifteen years, £28 million of it from the Department for Education. In 2008 it took 20 per cent of the funding available under one programme, and in 2011 it received over twice the amount given to any other grant recipient. Officials raised sustainability concerns in six separate briefings between 2002 and 2015, yet funding continued outside competitive processes; the charity closed insolvent on 5 August 2015 and around 1,900 cases were passed to local authorities.

Georgia Graham · Channel 4 News · United Kingdom

A fact-check on Kids Company, the charity founded in 1996 that operated in London and Bristol. It claimed to reach 36,000 children by 2015 and had received £46 million of public money over fifteen years — £44 million from central government, £28 million of that from the Department for Education. Its 2013 annual income was £23 million, 20 per cent from government and 77 per cent from private donations. The piece notes that government oversight relied on the charity's own self-assessments, with no independent verification of outcomes or beneficiary numbers.

Christian M., Evans C., Cade J. · Public Health Research, Vol. 2, No. 4 (NIHR Journals Library) · United Kingdom

Two randomised controlled trials in London primary schools evaluating the RHS Campaign for School Gardening. They found gardening alone had very little impact on children's fruit and vegetable intake, suggesting it must be combined with nutrition education to change diet.

Tomita H., Ishii M. · Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering · Germany

Analyzes the influence of Bauhaus's second director Hannes Meyer and his Bauhaus Brigade on Soviet urban and architectural planning, examining Meyer's socially-oriented functionalism and planning features including mass demonstration spaces and broad greenery, using unpublished sources.

Bishop P. · Journal of European Studies (SAGE) · Germany

A scholarly review of Henderson's study of Ernst May and the New Frankfurt initiative, critically assessing Weimar modernist social housing, garden and green-space programs, and Existenzminimum dwelling within their historical significance and limitations.

Banerjee C., Adenaeuer L. · Journal of Agricultural Studies 2(1):40-60 · Europe

Engineering and economic simulation of a 37-floor commercial vertical farm in Berlin, quantifying capital investment, operating costs, and profitability challenges of for-profit indoor food production.

Moulin-Doos C. · Journal of Urban Affairs · Germany

Examines how intercultural gardens in Germany respond to migrants' need for spaces of interaction outside home and work, offering a setting to build social capital and practise the mutual respect essential for integration.