Research & reports

Gregory Mintz, Phil McManus · Australian Geographer · Australia (Sydney)

This research in Sydney, Australia, evaluates and compares the quality of community garden policies with the distribution of community gardens across local councils and broader geographic regions. It identifies areas that could benefit from increased access to community gardens and discusses ways for councils and the Sydney Region to improve their policies. The study aims to determine what elements community garden policies should contain to best promote these gardens and their benefits.

Matilda Thelin · · Sweden

This qualitative study in peri-urban Uppsala, Sweden, identifies driving forces influencing land use decisions by commercial farmers and institutional landowners. It notes that approximately 700 hectares of land in Sweden are diverted from food production annually, with Uppsala Municipality showing the greatest change in 2013. The expropriation of agricultural land for urban development leads to farmers losing land resources and increased competition for remaining land, resulting in high land prices.

Yaw Kofi, Abena Adwoa, Kwasi Anane · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Ghana

Urban drainage systems in coastal Ghana are vulnerable to climate-induced flooding due to rising sea levels and increased rainfall intensity. Hydrological models indicated a need for increased stormwater infiltration capacity in ATMA, especially along the coastal belt where sea levels could rise by up to 50 cm. Designing drainage systems with enhanced permeability and elevated flood walls is recommended to ensure resilience against projected climate change risks over the next three decades.

Lana Slavuj Borčić, Cvitanović Marin, Aleksandar Lukić · · Croatia (Zagreb)

Community gardens have long existed in Zagreb, Croatia, where residents have transformed underused public urban areas into gardens. While these activities largely occurred outside formal government frameworks, the "City Gardens" policy was adopted in 2012 to allocate urban public parcels to interested citizens. This policy increased participation in community gardening, and previous research indicates that community gardens offer multiple benefits and positive impacts on individuals, local communities, and urban spaces.

Dominique Hes, Chrisna du Plessis · · Global

A discussion piece on regenerative sustainability organized around the concepts of biomimicry and permaculture. It presents Janine Benyus's definition of biomimicry as "the conscious emulation of life's genius" and describes permaculture, jointly developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren as a practical and ethical response to declining energy and resource availability. It links permaculture to what Philip Ackerman-Leist calls "rebuilding the food shed" — building multi-scale, resilient food systems — and to cross-scale relationships from soil-organism communities up to larger communities of fauna and flora, from kitchen gardens to urban food forests. It also describes Singapore's ABC Waters Programme as encouraging green roofs, vertical gardens and rain gardens to improve water filtration and harvesting.

Milica Koscica · Journal of international affairs · Global

This article traces the history of urban agriculture and analyzes current practices and policies to argue for its role in addressing food insecurity in developing cities, noting that more than half the world's population is urbanized and that global food demand is projected to rise 70-100% as urban population reaches a projected 70% by 2050; it frames urban agriculture as a means to expand access to land and water for food production through innovative growing techniques, without presenting new primary empirical data.

Jonathan Crush · · Global

This article argues that cities of the Global South are experiencing a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, marked by growing food poverty, hunger and malnutrition, lack of dietary diversity, child wasting and stunting, increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic disease, and a growing obesity epidemic. It states that this urban crisis remains largely invisible to the policy and research communities concerned with global food security, noting that there was more research and policy debate on urban food insecurity in the 1990s, when the Global South was less urbanized than today, and that concern with urban food security has since been displaced by the new international food security agenda and its pervasive anti-urban bias. It observes that the only aspect of urban food security currently commanding significant attention is urban agriculture, which it describes as widely, but improbably, seen as the key to achieving food security in cities of the Global South.

Christoph D. D. Rupprecht, Jason A. Byrne · PLoS ONE · オーストラリア・ブリスベン／日本・札幌

Defines and surveys informal urban green space (vacant lots, brownfields, verges) across 121 sites in Brisbane and Sapporo. IGS covered ~6.3% (Brisbane) and ~4.8% (Sapporo); Brisbane was verge-dominated (~80%), Sapporo lot- (42%) and gap-rich (19%). Quantifies lot-type IGS that projects like Sakanoen mobilise in Japanese hillside neighbourhoods.

Jamal Mohammadi, Soleimani Shiri Mortez · International Journal of Agriculture and Forestry · Iran

A study addressing how urbanization and rising living standards bring both destructive environmental impacts and pressure on resources needed for urban life—food, energy, materials—and examines global experiences with urban agriculture to propose strategies for developing urban agriculture in Iran that would address the growing urban population and its resulting problems while achieving sustainable development.

Jennifer Vansteenkiste · Development in Practice · Global

This paper examines the social and gender politics of a women's urban garden project in Cap Haïtien, Haiti, supported by the International Organisation for Migration. The study finds that the development process created an unmonitored symbolic space in which society's normalized gender processes were reproduced, importing broader social inequalities that in turn prevented the project from meeting the women's practical and strategic goals. It discusses how an ecohealth approach, as an alternative design framework, could make this symbolic space visible for critical engagement and analysis by participants.

Christine Aubry, Jean-Noël Consalès, Leïla Kebir, Bernard Barraqué · Espaces et sociétés · Global

This joint interview with Christine Aubry and Jean-Noel Consales addresses debates around the resurgence of urban agriculture in cities of the Global North, where public, private, associative and entrepreneurial initiatives are spreading. It notes broad enthusiasm about the range of services urban agriculture provides, food as well as social and environmental roles, alongside dissenting views that dismiss non-professional agriculture as peripheral to meeting citizens' food needs, a passing fad, or urban leisure rather than real agriculture. The interviewees point to the great variety of urban agriculture forms as a breeding ground for innovation and a possible sign of major transformation in the agricultural world.

T. A. Russo, Katherine Alfredo, Joshua Fisher · Water · Global

This review assesses sustainable water management (SWM) across three sectors — urban, agricultural, and natural systems — addressing four questions: how SWM is defined and evaluated, the challenges associated with sustainable development in each sector, where the greatest potential for improvement lies in urban and agricultural water management, and what role a country's development status plays in SWM practices. Methods for evaluating water management range from simple indicator approaches to integration of multiple models, depending on problem complexity and investigator resources. The review's two key findings and recommendations are: (1) all forms of water must be treated as usable and reusable resources, and (2) increasing agricultural crop water production efficiency represents the largest opportunity for reducing total water consumption, needed to meet global food security requirements. It states that the level of regional development should not dictate sustainability objectives, though local infrastructure conditions and financial capabilities should inform the details of water system design and evaluation.

Muhammad Bello Ibrahim, Nobaya Ahmad · Universiti Putra Malaysia Institutional Repository (Universiti Putra Malaysia) · Global

This review paper examines the concept and role of peri-urban agriculture (PUA) as a contributor to solving urban food crises in developing countries. It reviews the historical development and current state of PUA across different parts of the world in relation to rising urban vegetable demand, noting that agricultural communities engaged in PUA make multifunctional contributions to national economies. As approaches to PUA vary by country, the paper argues it is the community's role to identify the functions that benefit local people most, and discusses how PUA, through community and rural development, can boost urban food supply and serve as an income-generating option for farmers in developing countries.

Rubén D. Piacentini, Laura Bracalenti, Graciela Marisa Salum, Erik Zimmermann, Lattuca, Ricardo Abel Terriles, S. Bartolomé, Mario Vega, L. Tosello, Néstor Di Leo, Susana R. Feldman, Alejandra Coronel · Americanae (AECID Library) · Colombia

With the world's urban population now exceeding its rural population, this report frames urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as a strategy relevant not only to feeding people but also to mitigating climate change. In the city of Rosario, Argentina, supported by the RUAF Foundation and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), a detailed study was underway to monitor the urban heat island effect, reductions in food transportation, and the impact of green infrastructure on flooding. The abstract describes the scope of this ongoing study rather than reporting specific measured results.

Saverio Miccoli, Fabrizio Finucci, Rocco Murro · Sustainability · Global

Focused on cities such as Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, London, and Paris that have undergone regeneration since the 2007 economic crisis, this paper proposes planning methods for an organized, multifunctional "agro-urban system" incorporating urban agriculture (UA). It presents a "deliberative monetary appraisal" methodology combining economic valuation based on hypothetical scenarios with direct, inclusive, dialogic approaches, offering an overview of UA's characteristics and problems, methodological elements for planning an agro-urban system, and guidelines for a deliberative appraisal procedure; the paper does not report an empirical application of the method.

Chen Sheng-we · · Global

A discussion piece positions the popularization of urban agriculture science as a key measure for shifting traditional agriculture toward modern agriculture and accelerating urbanization and new countryside construction. It identifies making urban agriculture research results benefit the public as a pressing problem in current popularization efforts, and examines service philosophy and content innovation to improve service quality and content based on the practical work involved and its shortcomings. No empirical data is presented.

Meanwhile Foundation · Meanwhile Foundation (UK) · Global

The 'meanwhile lease' lets landlords grant short-term use to voluntary groups while keeping ownership and the right to recover the site; an intermediary provides standard contracts and insurance to make interim use legal and smooth.

Westengen O.T., Jeppson S., Guarino L. · PLOS ONE · Global

Assesses the completeness of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault's safety-duplication collection against the world's ex-situ holdings, quantifying global backup of crop genetic diversity across 156 crop genera.

Mansfield Brent, Mendes Wendy · International Planning Studies · Global North

Examines three Global North municipal food strategies aiming to integrate urban agriculture into single policy frameworks. Highlights tensions and limits in translating integrated food-strategy ambitions into implementation, revealing gaps between comprehensive policy design and on-the-ground delivery.

Sarah James · Geographical Research · Australia (Sydney)

This paper examined the failure of Sydney's 'green zones' farmland protection policies, which were abandoned due to protests. The failure was attributed to a lack of consultation with Sydney's diverse small-scale farmers, rather than a rejection of farmland protection itself. Farmer interviews suggested that a bottom-up policy-making approach would have been more successful in maintaining farming in peri-urban areas.

Soraya Pourjavid, Hassan Sadighi, Hossein Shabanali Fami · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · Iran (Tehran)

This study identified constraints affecting urban agriculture in Tehran, Iran, by surveying 320 city dwellers across 22 municipal districts. The most important constraints identified were "high start-up costs" and "lack of knowledge among managers and authorities." Factor analysis revealed seven factors explaining 67.36% of the variance, including financial-economic and technical aspects.

Kirstie Cadger, Thembela Kepe · Development in Practice · Botswana

Challenges facing community garden initiatives among the San of Botswana were analyzed through semi-structured interviews and participant observation in two San communities. The study found that the failure of the gardens related to how the San are treated and how they view their situation as destitute people. Forced resettlement, historical livelihood disruption, and government and NGO policies of development through welfare neglecting genuine empowerment were concluded to be responsible for the limited success of the community gardens.

邰杰, 汤洪泉, 曹晋, 陆韡 · Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis Sunyatseni · Global

This study interpreted the guiding principles, development strategies, and design methods of urban agriculture landscapes outside China, drawing from conceptual definitions, international practices, and case insights. The analysis aims to provide a reference for open space planning and green infrastructure construction during China's rapid urbanization. It concludes that urban agriculture holds significant potential across various aspects, including urban ecology and form, food security and supply, natural education, and job opportunities.

“Biopolis” Biopolicy for Greener and More Livable Cities · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Global

This article proposes a "biopolis" model, supported by biopolicy principles, for sustainable urban management. It suggests that this model can lead to coordinated actions that limit emissions, expand green spaces, protect waterways, and encourage urban farming. The biopolis model aims to enhance cultural development, create green jobs, and promote educational opportunities, contributing to healthier and more livable cities.

Josiah Taru, Hardlife Stephen Basure · Russian Journal of Agricultural and Socio-Economic Sciences · Zimbabwe (Harare)

This study applied Norman Long's interface analysis to understand the causes of conflicts and struggles among urban agriculture (UA) actors in Kuwadzana Extension, Harare. Intensified competition for scarce land and water escalated conflicts, particularly in off-plot agriculture due to its contentious nature outside institutional frameworks. Actors with different power bases used them to dispossess and marginalize others. Conflict resolution mechanisms (mediation, litigation, conciliation) often lacked legal binding or institutional backing, tending to generate more disputes.