Research & reports

Kwaku Obosu-Mensah · · Global

This discussion distinguishes an individual's universalistic relationships with the general urban population from more particularistic relationships within social networks, arguing that in urban agriculture, intimate relationships encourage spouses to jointly own and work a farm or garden together. Social class is defined by residence, education, occupation and income, and lower-class individuals are described as having broader social networks; no specific study method or sample size is given.

Bertrand Festus Nero, Nana Afranaa Kwapong, Raymond Jatta, Oluwole Fatunbi · Sustainability · Ghana

Combining interviews with 105 respondents in six neighborhoods and vegetation surveys of over 200 plots (100 sq m each) across five land use types, this study examined the composition, diversity, and socioeconomic contributions of Accra's urban forest and food trees in Ghana. Of 70 woody species found in Accra, 22 have edible parts (leaves, fruits, flowers, etc.), food trees make up about half of all trees counted, and species richness and abundance differed significantly by land use type (p<0.0001) and neighborhood type (p<0.0001), with diversity of food-bearing species much higher in poorer neighborhoods than wealthier ones — while respondents in wealthier neighborhoods rated overall tree and food-tree cover as low and showed greater interest in cultivating food (fruit) trees and expanding forest cover than those in poorer neighborhoods.

Obadia Kyetuza Bishoge, Shaldon Leparan Suntu · Journal of Food Nutrition and Agriculture · Tanzania

A study in Ubungo Municipality, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, used non-random and purposive sampling to survey 240 smallholder farmers and 16 local government officers via observation, questionnaires, interviews, and document review, analyzed with SPSS, to examine how urban horticulture of vegetables and ornamental flowers could reduce poverty. Production of these crops made a significant positive contribution to food availability and accessibility, nutrition, and income used to improve access to services such as water, electricity, health, and education.

Ronald Gomez Londoño · instname:Universidad Santo Tomás · Colombia

An architecture thesis project (Universidad Santo Tomás, Colombia, 2018) proposes an intervention at the San Rafael market building that preserves the existing structure while introducing spaces for urban gardens (huertos urbanos) inside the building to activate agricultural development, alongside promoting interior and exterior commerce as goods and produce flow directly into the market. The design aims to preserve the building's history and its low-rise residential and commercial surroundings, including a wood-clad facade treatment, without reporting empirical results.

Peter Lyle, Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Marcus Foth · Multimodal Technologies and Interaction · Australia

A design and pilot study (Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2018) presents QuickTales, a mobile storytelling platform built from design patterns derived from prior studies with residential gardeners and gardening communities in a large Australian city, intended to let urban gardeners share gardening experiences. The pilot evaluation is reported to provide initial insights into using storytelling in this context; the paper does not state quantitative outcomes and instead proposes directions for further design-pattern development.

Kwaku Obosu-Mensah · · Ghana

A policy-recommendation text on urban agriculture in Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries (2018) states that private landowners will more readily allow others to cultivate their land if given incentives, that Ghanaian urban residents rarely resettle in rural areas, and that even an attractive government relocation package failed to draw redundant urban residents back to rural areas. Because sub-Saharan farming divides labor by gender — men earning cash income, women farming for subsistence — most people running commercial urban farms are expected to be men. Where urban cultivation is small-scale and open-space-based, government should focus on the problems of open-space cultivators and provide conditions that raise yields, but should avoid paternalism by not granting urban farmers preferential treatment over rural farmers.

Chhaya Kolavalli · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

This is a review of the book Just Green Enough: Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification, framed against the fact that cities account for more than 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. It presents the book as a guide to strategies for equitable green urban development — including the promotion and support of urban food systems — as part of climate mitigation and adaptation. The book primarily addresses problems from environmental hazards in the built environment, with several chapters specifically covering urban food production and distribution, offering strategies the review describes as readily applicable to urban planners, activists and community members working in urban food systems.

Ai-Ran Lee, Jae-Min Park · Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture · Global

Against a backdrop of growing interest in aesthetic and cultural community gardens in Korea, the study analyzed community garden design guidelines from six sources across the UK, Canada, the USA, Australia and Japan to draw out their characteristics and implications. Most guidelines are published freely online and follow a chronological structure of introduction, site selection, design, construction and maintenance, but the design sections were found to offer inadequate drawings and case images and little explanatory detail.

Illana C. Livstrom, Amy Smith, Mary Rogers, Karl Hackansan · Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies · Global

A qualitative case study of "Grounding Roots," a community-based collaborative educational program that aims to build food, environmental, and cognitive justice through sustainable urban agriculture and horticulture via intergenerational communities of practice. Drawing on Linda Tuhiwai Smith's framework of decolonizing methodologies, the study examined both the ways a Community-University partnership engaged in decolonizing work through research and practice, and the ways the same partnership served to preserve colonizing practices, using deductive coding grounded in decolonizing-practice theory. Identified decolonizing practices included implementing a program of worth to the community and youth, building from community-led agendas, and prioritizing community healing and transformation over academic research agendas. Identified colonizing practices included inequitable power hierarchies within the leadership team and in garden groups, deficit-oriented talk about minoritized youth, and the devalorization of youth voice. The study concludes that researchers doing community-based work need to examine the white supremacist roots embedded in their own practices, embrace decolonizing and humanizing approaches, engage in community-driven agendas that prioritize process over product, facilitate distributed leadership in collaboration with community members, and produce work of genuine value together with the community.

Carolyn Steel · · Global

This essay introduces the concept of "sitopia" — a society consciously shaped by food as a tool — and argues that in cities with large amounts of vacant land and low-income residents, such as Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans in the United States, urban farming could help green the city and revitalize neighborhoods. It states urban food production is likely to meet only a small proportion of a community's total food needs, while noting that local food production can still improve environmental quality and social ties and encourage sustainable local economic development.

İşık Sezen · ATLAS JOURNAL · Global

A review essay compiling the views of architects and urban planners on urban agriculture, examining its relationship to urban sustainability, surveying urban agriculture in various world cities, and focusing on the allotment garden as one form of urban agriculture. No empirical data or survey method is presented.

Djokić V., Ristić Trajković J., Furundžić D., Krstić V., Stojiljković D. · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening · セルビア・ベオグラード

An examination of informal (uninstitutionalised) gardening in Belgrade, read within the dwelling culture of the socialist and post-socialist periods. It treats the urban garden not as a product of policy but as lived space shaped by residents' everyday practice.

World Future Council · World Future Council (futurepolicy.org) · Ecuador

A policy case study on Quito's AGRUPAR participatory urban agriculture programme in Ecuador. Over 16 years it reached 73,936 people directly and 113,774 indirectly, produces over 960,000 kg of food annually, and 84% of its 21,746 trained participants were women. The programme received the Future Policy Silver Award in 2018.

Heidy Yohana Tamayo Ortiz · El Tiempo · Colombia

An article on Medellín's 'Huertas con Vos' program, featuring a roughly 270-square-meter garden shared by 5 households in the Doce de Octubre neighborhood, saving each household about 50,000 pesos a month. The city has about 100,000 food-insecure vulnerable households, of which 10,000 are prioritized; in 2018 the program built 700 new gardens (450 urban, 250 rural), aiming for 1,707 gardens total over three years.

Equipo LS · Ladera Sur · Chile

This article lists ten benefits of urban community gardens. It reports that the first urban community garden in Chile's capital was a 2007 municipal project in La Pintana, on a 700 sq m plot divided into 11 gardens. By around 2012, roughly 40 such spaces already existed in Santiago, and new projects such as the Barrio Yungay initiative have continued to spread since.

Herrera F. · Cuadernos de Desarrollo Rural · Venezuela

A multidimensional diagnosis of thirteen urban agricultural production units in Caracas, drawing together economic, social and ecological factors to set out what determines food sovereignty and sustainability. It credits the units' organisational strengths while naming limited access to seed and thin crop diversity as constraints, and records how the city's units — starting with Organopónico Bolívar I, opened in 2003 — came into being and changed hands.

Alessio Russo, Francisco J. Escobedo, Giuseppe T. Cirella, Stefan Zerbe · Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 242, 53-66 · Global

A foundational paper proposing and reviewing the concept of Edible Green Infrastructure (EGI), addressing the neglect of provisioning (food) ecosystem services in green infrastructure planning that has emphasized regulating and cultural services. It frames allotment gardens, rooftop gardens, edible landscapes and urban forests as a multifunctional green network that, with best management practices to minimize disservices, can enhance food security and urban resilience.

Brenda B. Lin, Stacy M. Philpott, Shalene Jha, Heidi Liere · Greening Cities (Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements), Springer, 155-179 · Global

A book chapter framing urban agriculture—community farms, rooftop gardens, edible landscaping and urban orchards—as 'productive green infrastructure' supplying high biodiversity and diverse ecosystem services. It synthesizes both ecosystem services (pollination, biological pest control) and social benefits (food and nutrition, cultural and recreational value) that this green infrastructure delivers to cities.

Soga M., Gaston K. J., Yamaura Y. · Preventive Medicine Reports · Global

Meta-analysis demonstrating that gardening yields wide-ranging health benefits, reductions in depression and anxiety and gains in life satisfaction and physical activity, underpinning the health rationale for workplace and community garden programs.

Tornaghi C. · Antipode 49(3):781-801 · Global

Critically theorizes the neoliberal 'food-disabling city' that deprives citizens of food agency, redefining urban food justice and arguing for an urban agriculture politics grounded in empowerment and food sovereignty.

Horst M., McClintock N., Hoey L. · Journal of the American Planning Association 83(3):277-295 · Global

Multidisciplinary literature review questioning who benefits and who does not from urban agriculture, suggesting ways urban planners can structure urban agriculture in support of food justice.

Partalidou M., Anthopoulou T. · Sociologia Ruralis, 57(2), 211–228 · Greece (Thermi, Northern Greece)

Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs and fieldwork in a municipal allotment garden in northern Greece, the study constructs a typology of gardeners and finds that participation evolves from satisfying basic subsistence needs during economic crisis toward self-actualization and placemaking.

Anthopoulou T., Nikolaidou S., Partalidou M., Petrou M. · In: Soulard CT., Perrin C., Valette E. (eds) Toward Sustainable Relations Between Agriculture and the City. Springer, Cham, pp. 181–199 · Greece

Drawing on fieldwork at three municipal allotment gardens in Greece, the chapter examines the institutional and political context of their rapid proliferation during the economic crisis and identifies governance challenges facing local authorities and urban gardening communities.

Guzman C. · Sustainable Landscape Planning in Selected Urban Regions (Springer, Tokyo) · Philippines (Metro Manila)

This book chapter reviews urban agriculture initiatives, practices, and impacts in the Philippines, using Metro Manila vegetable production and peri-urban jasmine cultivation as case studies. It highlights employment and income benefits while identifying land-use competition and lack of clear policy as major threats to continued urban farming.

Hagolani-Albov S.E. · Focus on Geography, Vol. 60, No. 1 · Finland (Helsinki)

This photographic study documents four forms of urban agriculture in Helsinki — colony allotments, market gardens, box gardening, and community-supported agriculture — tracing over a century of practice and illustrating how urban farming is spatially and institutionally embedded in the city.