Research & reports

Shivant Jhagroe · Urban Studies · Netherlands

A study of the Gandhi-garden, a community garden in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that is part of the global Transition Towns movement, drawing on participatory ethnography, interviews, and online documents. Challenging the anthropocentrism common in research on urban sustainability and resilience, the paper analyses everyday acts such as weeding and permacultural planting as "more-than-human assemblage" place-making practices involving insects, plants, soil, and fences that challenge urban neoliberalism. It also examines expressions of solidarity with Palestine through olive trees and non-violence thinking, alongside tensions between humans and non-humans over dog waste and birds that take harvested produce.

Josep Pueyo‐Ros, Joaquím Comas, Ina Säumel, Joana Castellar, Lucía Alexandra Popartan, Vicenç Acuña, Lluís Corominas · Nature-Based Solutions · Global

A paper addressing the problem that serious games proposed as a tool to foster civic participatory processes often fail due to lack of funding or design skills, presenting a new framework for designing serious games for participatory planning of nature-based solutions, with guidance on definition, content, and evaluation steps. The framework's usefulness is illustrated through the design of the Edible City Game (ECG), a digital serious game for participatory planning of edible city solutions (urban nature-based solutions with a food component), which was implemented on Tygron, a platform providing a graphical interface for urban-planning serious games. The paper argues that while Tygron provides user-friendly software for designing serious games, the final product still requires a proper design-oriented process to fulfil its purpose.

Grace Gardner, Wendy Burton, Maddie Sinclair, Maria Bryant · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Global

A scoping review following Arksey and O'Malley's methodology searched Scopus and grey literature to identify interventions aimed at strengthening the environmental sustainability of school food systems; of 6,016 records screened, 24 were included. The most common intervention types were sustainably designed school lunch menus, school food waste reduction, sustainability education delivered through school gardens, and dietary interventions with an added environmental component, and the review concluded that further research is needed to establish the effectiveness of these interventions.

Endris Assen Ebrahim, Ahmet Toy, Yissa Hassen Kassim · Frontiers in Sustainable Cities · Ethiopia

A survey of 218 randomly sampled micro and small-scale enterprise (MSSE) managers/owners across manufacturing, trade, construction, service, and urban agriculture sectors in Dessie Town, Ethiopia, used self-administered questionnaires and stratified random sampling to identify determinants of enterprise growth. Of nine candidate factors, statistically significant associations with MSSE growth and performance (at the 5% level) were found for political/legal factors, management, market conditions, technology, infrastructure, entrepreneur-related factors, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michael G. Parkes, Rebekah O’Rourke, Tiago Domingos, Ricardo F. M. Teixeira · Sustainability · Europe

An experimental indoor vertical farm urban-agriculture project involving 27 stakeholder groups was set up in a university building in Lisbon, Portugal in 2018 and closed in 2022; this study analyzed the governance dimension of the project's sustainability using role-constellation mapping of the stakeholder groups and force-field analysis across seven governance factors to understand why the project did not continue. It found that despite early positive outcomes across environmental, social and economic dimensions, the project failed to establish a network of stakeholders consistently engaged in governance from the outset, and that inadequate project culture and a lack of critical governance factors led to a failure to convey a sense of ownership to stakeholders, contributing to the project's closure.

Ananda Rizqullah, Bilqis Tsurayya, Paul Aldo Purba, Helki Ginting, Alya Putri Natandini, Dicky Andrea Sembiring · International Journal of Architecture and Urbanism · Indonesia

This paper proposes NeoHada, an adaptive urban building design concept for Indonesia that integrates solar-piezoelectric technology and rooftop farming, developed in response to urban flooding challenges. The concept is based on three principles — climatic, energetic, and productive architecture — using a rain-harvesting system on building rooftops to prevent flooding and provide an alternative water source, solar panels combined with piezoelectric technology for independent electricity generation, and rooftop farming aimed at urban food self-sufficiency. The paper frames the proposal in relation to Sustainable Development Goals covering zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, sustainable cities, and climate action.

Michael Hardman, Katherine C. R. Baldock, Stuart Connop, Kenny Taylor, Ross Stirling · · Global

Against a backdrop of high interest in blue-green infrastructure (BGI), this chapter examines how developers, planners, engineers, architects, and other actors are incorporating BGI into urban and rural environments. It notes that evidence shows approaches are often basic, relying on traditional landscaping methods that fail to explore BGI's possibilities, and reflects on advances in more radical approaches. The chapter begins with a review of how pollinator biodiversity can be enhanced through innovative BGI systems, then addresses incorporating food growing into BGI strategies and co-benefits with low-carbon energy.

Anni Müüripeal, Bianka Plüschke-Altof, Anton Küünal · Cities · Europe

Drawing on the practitioner memoirs of Tallinn gardener Anton and in-depth interviews with city officials and gardening activists, this case study traces how Anton moved from community gardening to guerrilla gardening. It applies a more-than-human theoretical lens to show that the strong emotions driving early community gardening experiments led to a more controlled, institutionalized governance model, which alienated first-generation activists like Anton and pushed him toward guerrilla gardening instead.

Muhammad Fawwaz, Muhammad Fikri Akbar, Madziatul Churiyah, Sholikhan · PRIMA PORTAL RISET DAN INOVASI PENGABDIAN MASYARAKAT · Indonesia

A community-engagement report on establishing a "Waste Bank Gallery" in Kampung Mergosono, led by PKK (Family Welfare Movement) mothers, to address urban waste management. The program provided counseling on waste issues, management solutions, the Waste Bank Gallery scheme, handling procedures, task delegation, schedules, and stakeholders, and taught practical recycling of valuable waste plus using organic waste as fertilizer for urban farming. The outcome was described as effective dissemination of the Waste Bank Gallery program, contributing to improved waste management in the area.

Tufan Özsoy · International Journal of Agriculture Environment and Food Sciences · Global

Starting from the premise that population growth, environmental change, urbanization, shifting consumption patterns, waste, geopolitics and infectious disease strain global food security, this paper proposes a model for promoting rooftop farming on residential, commercial and public housing as a way to build regional self-sufficiency in a transition toward a green economy. It frames rooftop farming as a strategic tool for strengthening local economies, reducing inequality, internalizing responsible production and consumption, and improving urban quality of life, and cites real cases, though it does not report specific figures or measured outcomes.

CHRISTINA FELIX KIFUNDA · Asian Journal of Agriculture · Tanzania

Combining 30 years of temperature and rainfall data from the Tanzania Meteorological Agency with a questionnaire survey of 386 urban-agriculture households across five wards of Kinondoni City (Bunju 118, Kunduchi 42, Mabwepande 102, Mzimuni 28, Wazo 96), plus focus group discussions, key informant interviews and direct observation, this study examined climate change's effects on urban crop production and farmers' adaptation strategies. More than 70% of surveyed smallholder farmers were aware of climate change indicators, consistent with the meteorological data, citing rising temperature (76%) and declining rainfall (73%); pests and diseases were ranked highest (88%) among significant climate-change effects. Land scarcity was also identified as a significant challenge for urban agriculture, and pesticide and fertilizer use was the most commonly cited adaptation strategy (65%).

Rachael Walshe, Lisa Law · Cities · Global

This paper presents a novel research method combining the "walking interview" method with a "free listing technique," applied with teachers at a north Queensland primary school in a rapidly urbanising neighbourhood, as part of a larger project exploring the barriers and opportunities of incorporating community gardens -- as important green spaces -- into schools. It reflectively analyses how simple factors such as weather, noise and interruptions shaped 20 minutes of a teacher's day, and considers how conditioned and situational temporalities and more-than-human influences affect the knowledge produced in such rapid walking interviews.

Madhvi Chulet, Sahil Fadia, Shweta Suhane · · Singapore

A paper on future master planning for the Punggol District in Singapore, revisited every 25 years, structured around five systems: green, water, public spaces, energy, and food. Set against Singapore's sustainable-architecture policies for climate mitigation and the way COVID-19 reshaped design at the urban and building scale, the paper argues that a systems-thinking approach produces positive outcomes for architectural form and site planning, and it synthesizes guidelines for blue-green infrastructure in the Punggol District.

Luiza Vigne Bennedetti, Paulo Antônio de Almeida Sinisgalli, Maurí­cio Lamano Ferreira, Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · Global

Following the PRISMA protocol, a 2023 systematic review evaluated 26 studies on the interplay between urban agriculture (UA) and sustainability surveyed on Web of Science. While UA is increasingly recognized as an action to promote urban sustainability and inform public health policy for urban populations, the review confirms that its implementation still presents challenges in countries across both the Global North and Global South. The review identified numerous key challenges to UA adoption, including air and soil contamination, availability of green areas, layout of urban infrastructure, and food distribution, among others. Given the many socio-economic and environmental contextual factors involved — especially when comparing Global North and Global South realities — the review concludes there is a need to develop a model adaptable to these different contexts. It further concludes that the concept of sustainability lacks a universal understanding, and that one of the most important remaining gaps is addressing social issues in relation to environmental ones.

Prof. Dr. Hasan YILMAZ · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Global

This 2023 paper introduces the concept of Biodiversity Friendly Cities (Biofriendly City) as a response to climate change. Citing a UN development report projecting that nearly 70% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050, it argues this trend is driving rapid loss of urban green spaces and agricultural land, alongside environmental problems including transportation, infrastructure, energy, health and nutrition issues, air pollution, visual pollution and solid waste. Inadequate open and green spaces, obstruction of wind corridors, misguided urban planning, and light reflection from glass and shiny surfaces are described as contributing to urban heat island formation, while insufficient attention to natural and ecological thresholds leaves cities with difficult-to-reverse ecosystem damage and greater vulnerability to disasters. Urbanization is described as degrading productive landscapes such as urban green spaces and agricultural land, fragmenting habitats and increasing pressure on urban biodiversity, even as cities also create new habitats and species — with vascular plant and bird diversity in some temperate cities reported to surpass that of the surrounding landscape. Citing the IPCC, the paper notes global temperatures have already risen by 1.1°C, progressing toward 1.5°C.

Vitória Oliveira Pereira de Souza Leão, Roberta Moraes Curan, Paulo Eduardo Moruzzi Marques · Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional · Brazil (São Paulo)

Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has had major impacts on the world's population, and concerns about food supply — particularly for the most vulnerable populations — gained prominence among international bodies, Brazilian public institutions, researchers and civil society (2023). Difficulty responding to the crisis, especially misalignment of buffering measures across levels of Brazilian government and compounded by threats to democracy, produced a picture of absent effective public planning for food and nutrition security. In this context, urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUP), combined with food solidarity initiatives, emerged as a strategic means of food access in the most vulnerable urbanized regions, while allowing farmers to maintain their income. This article examines different food supply actions in the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, at the peak of the pandemic, focusing especially on new dynamics among seven urban and peri-urban farmers representative of the situation in São Paulo's main production regions. Beyond social coordination among different solidarity groups in the municipality, the article highlights the role of short, proximity-based distribution circuits in sustaining local production and ensuring food consumption for food-insecure populations, amid a marked shortage of emergency food and nutrition security policies.

Mahir Yazar, Ece Baykal Fide, İrem Daloğlu Çetinkaya · Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning · Turkey

A 2023 study of climate policies in nine cities in Turkey examined how vulnerable groups and individuals are identified and how land-use policy is developed to address the identified vulnerabilities and climate justice concerns, using policy content analysis and expert interviews. The analysis found critical relationships between identified vulnerable groups, responsive land-use policy and climate justice. While social-aid municipalism-related vulnerabilities dominated districts' climate policies, nature-based solutions (NBS) — especially green infrastructure and urban agriculture — emerged as the dominant climate adaptation approach. However, the way urban vulnerabilities are prioritized in the climate and sustainability plans places less emphasis on intersectionality and infrastructure-related vulnerabilities, and tokenism of justice occurs in the policy documents: the plans do not incorporate vulnerable communities into land-use planning. The study concludes that the complexity of responsive land-use policy requires greater awareness of how to practically support vulnerable communities.

Dinda Nur Haliza · Jurnal Teknologi Pangan dan Ilmu Pertanian · Indonesia (Jakarta)

Motivated by the risk that conversion of agricultural land in Jakarta, Indonesia, poses to food security, this study developed a conceptual model integrating rainwater harvesting with automatic irrigation for a rooftop greenhouse, based on a literature review of 12 journal articles and 3 textbooks on land conversion, irrigation systems, rainwater harvesting and greenhouse design. The resulting conceptual model shows rainwater collected in an underground reservoir could be supplied via automatic irrigation to crops in a rooftop greenhouse, though the authors state further study is needed on soil moisture requirements for specific plant types and direct testing of the model.

The Urban More-than-Human Collective, Sonja Dümpelmann, Robert Gioielli, Stephan Pauleit, Anindya Sinha, Kate Wright, Amy Zhang · Global Environment · Global

Scholars from history, anthropology, animal studies, and landscape planning and management discuss various forms of urban and urbanizing infrastructure and their political entanglements. The volume addresses topics ranging from the black soldier fly — used as biotechnological infrastructure for waste management — to other nonhumans such as macaques developing and negotiating their own urbanisms, to plants and community gardens used as green infrastructure providing shade and food and as social infrastructure for endurance and resistance, to transportation infrastructure that both divides and unites people. Through case studies from across the world, it presents different conceptualizations of infrastructure as complex human-nonhuman co-productions that shape the modern city.

Jesús Sanz Abad, Sara Sama Acedo, Gaël Carrero Gros · · Spain

Case studies of two cooperative enterprises (in finance and forestry) and one new urban commons — community gardens in Madrid — all located in Spain, were analyzed using ethnographic methods within the field of solidarity economy and commons. The analysis found tensions between the initiatives' economically and politically "transformative" aspirations and the reality of operating in a market-driven capitalist environment, alliances and tensions arising from interactions with established institutions, and dilemmas or conflicts between maintaining ideological coherence and extending the initiatives' social base.

Noémi Gonda, Péter József Bori · Geoforum · Europe

A study using the case of Hungary examined how agricultural initiatives such as Community Supported Agriculture, permaculture, and small-scale and regenerative farming relate to sustainable rural politics under an authoritarian regime. Based on qualitative interviews conducted in Hungary, it identifies three rural pillars sustaining the Hungarian authoritarian regime — unequal land relations, agricultural subsidies, and agricultural commodity sales — and proposes emancipatory alliances, counter-knowledge claims, and emancipatory subjectivities as potential rural pillars of sustainable democracy in response.

Arini Putri Hanifa, Eka Triana Yuniarsih, Retna Qomariah, Nurmalinda, Yopi Saleh, Yati Haryati, Indarti Puji Lestari, Susi Lesmayati · IntechOpen eBooks · Indonesia

A book chapter discusses the urban farming movement in Indonesia across five topics: trends in yard utilization and food provision policy, the importance of urban farming in society, community perception and involvement, the pandemic's impact on household food security and supply chains, and government strategy for sustaining participatory urban farming. In the Indonesian context, urban farming is defined as cultivating food crops, vegetables, fruit, herbs, and medicinal or ornamental plants combined with fish and poultry, on home yards, office yards, school gardens and communal gardens. It concludes that the sustainability of urban farming still requires government assistance and intervention plus private-sector involvement through corporate social responsibility, and that government must support both policy and physical infrastructure to build business partnership networks between producers and market actors.

王 文倩, 大島一二 · Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) · Japan

A paper on the Kashiwabara House Grape Shippers Association, a member organization of JA Osaka Nakakawachi in Japan, examines what activities the member organization undertakes to demonstrate the cooperative's organizational strength, its functions and issues, and its future direction, based on a review of prior research and field interviews. JA Osaka Nakakawachi has natural conditions suitable for agricultural production but has been strongly affected by the urbanization of Osaka Prefecture; as a result, its agricultural management has developed in the form of urban agriculture, with farmland and management scale considerably smaller than the national average. Its main agricultural products are vegetables and fruit trees such as grapes.

Christian Nindyaputra Octarino · ATRIUM - Jurnal Arsitektur · Indonesia

A study examined how effective urban farming and greenery integrated into a residential area are at maintaining microclimate quality, using field measurement and ENVI-MET simulation in the Tompeyan district of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The results show vegetation in outdoor spaces has a significant effect on surface and air temperature. The ENVI-MET simulation showed an increase in the thermal comfort index in vegetated areas, although it had not yet reached the ideal value.

Sabine O’Hara · · United States

A book chapter introduces the people behind new urban agriculture and food systems innovations emerging in cities across the United States. These innovators come from all walks of life, and the ways they envision and implement more decentralized urban and peri-urban food systems are as varied as the people themselves. Their stories raise questions about which food systems innovations are most likely to create win-win outcomes of improved food security and improved sustainability. A transformation of the conventional food system is already under way, even in cities with less than optimal growing conditions, but much more remains to be done.