Research & reports

Dan McKanan · · Global

Rudolf Steiner's economic teachings and "threefolding" social theory influenced the development of green banking and community-supported agriculture (CSA) starting in the 1970s. Steiner advocated for "fraternal" cooperation within the economic sphere, inspiring cooperative enterprises and later contributing to social entrepreneurship and B-corps. This philosophy also led biodynamic farmers to establish CSAs, where consumers share farm costs and risks.

Mohd. Ramzi Mohd. Hussain, Norul Hafizah Yusoff, Izawati Tukiman · · Global

This paper aims to discuss the literature framework of the growing demand for urban farming activities within the city environment and how they benefit the concept of environmental sustainability. It describes the advantages of urban farming activities from environmental, economic, and social perspectives that contribute to urban sustainability, evaluating the benefits and potential of implementing urban farming within limited urban spaces.

Bethany B. Cutts, Jonathan London, Shaina Meiners, Kirsten Schwarz, Mary L. Cadenasso · Local Environment · Global

This paper applies a dynamic spatial politics framework to interpret a 30-year conflict over an urban garden in Sacramento, California. It examines how urban gardens, often idealized, are also sites of conflict due to competing visions of "soil" versus "dirt." The study highlights that contaminants like lead in the soil contribute to this instability, reframing fertile soil as dangerous dirt, and influencing the garden's transformation from a countercultural space to a gentrified amenity.

Rémi Schweizer, Cyril Mumenthaler · VertigO · Switzerland (Genève)

This case study in Geneva, Switzerland, examined the integration of urban agriculture and food sovereignty into public policy, focusing on the regional brand Genève Région - Terre Avenir (GRTA). The analysis, based on a cognitive approach, highlighted compromises and imbalances among actor communities with divergent value systems. Ultimately, the study demonstrated the difficulty in challenging the dominant agricultural framework.

Villarraga Cordoba, María Fernanda · · Colombia

This 8-month project at Gimnasio Real de Colombia implemented urban agriculture and micro-garden planting with third-grade primary students. The aim was to strengthen environmental awareness and generate communication strategies through "Earth Art" processes, including pre-ritual games and performance actions. The report details the process and results of this pedagogical work.

Julia Dahlvik, Yvonne Franz, Myrte Hoekstra, Josef Kohlbacher · ISR-Forschungsberichte · Austria (Vienna)

The effects of urban living labs and "unplanned" meeting spaces on interethnic contacts were investigated using semi-structured interviews and participant observations in three urban living labs in Vienna: the neighborhood center in Gumpendorf, the neighborhood space "Herbststraße 15," and the urban gardening project "Matznergarten." Comparative analysis showed that the success of an initiative depends on the number of participants, its continuity, and the degree of interethnic encounter. A mixing of non-Austrian and Austrian participants was observed in relatively few initiatives, linked to both ethnic and socioeconomic exclusion mechanisms.

Pulido Barbosa, Cindy Gillary · · Global

This report details the results of the "Guardians of Nature" environmental project, which aimed to raise student awareness of environmental care through building a school garden and making compost. The project utilized recycled materials like plastic bottles for planting various vegetables and provided workshops to the entire educational community on environmental topics. This initiative led to changes in students' cognitive and procedural skills, fostering critical reflection and problem-solving, culminating in the successful construction and maintenance of a school garden.

Daniela Artunduaga Arboleda, Laura Michelle Bayona Ruiz, Juan Camilo Gómez, Laura Marcela González Vargas, Lady Jhoana Leiton Peña, María Fernanda Pardo Pachón, Daniela Alejandra Quintero Bautista, Möritz Velásquez Riaño · Revista de Tecnología · Colombia (Bogotá)

This descriptive study in a kindergarten in Santa Bárbara, Bogotá, addressed food security for 14 children, who received 16,693.6 g of vegetables/month, significantly less than the FAO-recommended 42,000 g. To mitigate this deficit, urban agriculture workshops were held for parents. The implemented proposal covered 65% of the vegetable supply deficit, equivalent to cultivating 140 plants, and 100% of participants showed interest in continuing the project.

Praptiningsih Gamawati Adinurani · · Global

Massive urbanization without adequate human resources support will cause problems, including the provision of food. Urban farming activities by urban communities, utilizing yards or abandoned land, can address food needs. Increased knowledge and skills of urban farming practitioners can be achieved through counseling, discussion, and training in various agricultural techniques such as verticulture, hydroponics, and polybag systems. After participating in training, urban agriculture practitioners can produce vegetables and fruits for their consumption and for sale, produce seeds and fertilizer, and model various farming practices.

Norul Hafizah Yusoff, Mohd. Ramzi Mohd. Hussain, Izawati Tukiman · PLANNING MALAYSIA · Malaysia

This paper reviews and analyzes the importance of a framework for urban farming activities within cities, describing the community's role in achieving environmental, economic, and social sustainability. It evaluates the benefits and potential of urban farming in limited urban spaces, noting its contribution to improving quality of life and addressing food shortage crises. The paper concludes that the community's role is crucial for implementing urban farming activities in urbanized areas.

Antoinette WinklerPrins · CABI eBooks · Global

This chapter provides definitions and theoretical framing for urban agriculture (UA). Research on UA has evolved beyond describing food production systems to its role in creating spaces of community, resistance, and empowerment. UA serves as a means for those not central to the city's function to claim a right to the city, and it is a rich field for interdisciplinary inquiry into urban sustainability.

Éric Darier · · Global

This chapter reviews Michel Foucault's contribution in the context of environmental effects of biopolitical disasters and presents three Foucaultian approaches. It then illustrates three specific components of the food justice movement: Via Campesina, urban agriculture, and Slow Food. The food justice movement exemplifies the theoretical lenses of power/knowledge, resistance, and ethics from the three Foucaultian perspectives.

Søren Christensen · Civil Engineering and Architecture · Global

This meta-analysis of literature published between 2000 and 2016 examined urban community gardens' capacity to generate social capital. It found that several studies confirm urban community gardens create both bonding and bridging social capital, with indications of linking social capital. The analysis suggests future research should use mixed methods, including qualitative approaches focusing on activity meanings and documenting sociodemographic compositions, to further understand how these gardens foster social capital.

Ellen Burke · Landscape Research · Global

This paper is a transdisciplinary literature review addressing how to measure the performance of food production landscapes in urban, suburban, campus and other design contexts. Noting that such performance is currently most often measured by the weight and value of harvest alone, it aims to identify expanded methods and metrics, particularly for health and well-being benefits. Through the review it presents evidence for mental well-being, physical activity, and human nutrition benefits, and catalogs performance metrics and evaluation methods.

Joshua Sbicca · Digital Collections of Colorado (Colorado State University) · Global

An article examining food as an entry point into the politics and processes of gentrification, discussed with reference to cities globally rather than a single case. Where traditional explanations of gentrification hinge on either political-economy or cultural drivers, the article shows the relationship between the two to argue that food gentrification is multifaceted, changing a neighborhood's class and ethnoracial demographics, foodscapes and foodways, and housing. It states that poor communities in cities around the world can experience harmful effects of food-driven gentrification, such as developers using urban agriculture to attract new residents and increase property values. It also describes food itself as being gentrified in two ways: for communities marginalized by race or ethnicity, culturally important foods become "cool," unaffordable and dispossessed from them, while the upscaling of food retail displaces former bars, cafes, restaurants, grocery stores and gardens. The article closes with a brief discussion of social movement strategies and policy approaches to prevent these harmful effects.

Imogen Bellwood‐Howard, Eileen Bogweh Nchanji · CABI eBooks · Ghana

This book chapter argues that the market function of urban agriculture, combined with characteristics of the urban zone, allows urban farmers and marketers to reconnect ecological aspects with social and economic ones in their livelihood strategies. Drawing on urban political ecology and livelihoods frameworks, it shows this occurring to varying extents across the Global North and Global South, depending on the degree of politicization and connection between producers and consumers. The chapter draws on primary data on vegetable marketing in Tamale, northern Ghana, comparing it with case studies from the Global North, and concludes by considering implications for the future of market-oriented urban agriculture in both regions.

Galen D. Newman, Alison L. Smith, Samuel D. Brody · Landscape Journal · 米国（湾岸都市）

Proposes a regional growth framework that repurposes vacant lots with high ecological potential as connectors between habitat patches, balancing storm-protection development pressures with ecosystem services. Supports planning logic for dotted vacant-lot gardens and green links in hillside or fragmented urban fabric.

James Ward, John Symons · Horticulturae · Global

A two-stage linear programming model examined the net value of urban agriculture across different climates and water prices, treating crop type and yield as decision variables constrained by dietary food-group bounds, protein and energy requirements, and area per person. The model found optimal crop regimes to be similar across climates and water prices because high-profit-margin crops were consistently selected, and that smaller per-capita garden size was optimal for water-use efficiency and net value, with a modest, well-chosen food garden shown to be cost-effective even under conservative yield and water-use assumptions.

Ellen van Holstein · Local Environment · Australia

A study critically examining the motivations and practices of community gardeners in relatively affluent neighborhoods, based on participant observation and semi-structured walking interviews at three community gardens in Sydney, Australia. It analyzes how people fit food production into their everyday lives, how they develop relationships with plants, and how these in turn shape relations among people in a community group. The study finds that to fit gardening into busy lives, people strategically choose plants with biophysical qualities suiting both personal and communal circumstances, that tensions can arise from growing and sharing food on communal and private plots, and that these tensions can also prompt reflection on individual and group roles within the community.

Anna Grichting · Kobra (Universitätsbibliothek Kassel) · Global

Set against the backdrop of food and water security in Qatar, and recognizing that rapid urbanization not integrated with ecological landscape design is driving urban sprawl, fragmented landscapes and biodiversity loss, this paper presents research on edible landscapes at Qatar University's architecture department, framed around its regenerative-cities concept, aimed at contributing to campus food supply while promoting biodiversity. Drawing on examples from edible campuses worldwide and literature on permaculture and food urbanism, an analysis of existing and future campus buildings and landscapes identified intervention types: retrofitting existing buildings with green roofs, green walls and biodiversity habitats; transforming existing landscapes; using empty land for food production; and integrating food gardens into the design of future buildings. The vision also includes water recycling and treatment, organic waste recycling, renewable energy, citizen participation and awareness campaigns, and collecting quantitative data on food miles.

Pranee Liamputtong, Erin Sanchez · Activities Adaptation & Aging · Australia

A study of older residents in a rural Victorian town in Australia examined perceptions of, and reasons for participating in, a community garden through in-depth interviews with 10 older persons. Participation built social support networks and social capital and created social connectedness among participants. The main reason for initial involvement was that participants were new to the area and sought to build local support networks in their new living environment.

M. Bare, Raymond M. Danner · Ecological Restoration · Global

A 2017 study surveyed bird communities in three forest sites with different restoration and natural revegetation histories, 20–40 years since clearing, within a tropical urban-agricultural landscape in the Ecuadorian Amazon, comparing manually restored and naturally revegetating forest. A diverse assemblage of birds was found visiting and occupying the forest fragments, including two IUCN-listed near-threatened species. Bird species richness was similar across sites with different management histories and species composition varied only slightly, but differences existed in the presence and occupancy of forest-dependent groups such as large frugivores and forest insectivores. In the manually restored site, bird diversity may have been limited by under-developed forest structure, though the effects of patch size and landscape matrix could not be isolated. The study suggests future restoration efforts consider forest structure alongside plant species diversity, and that future studies account for landscape and matrix parameters when evaluating restoration projects.

Noriah Othman, Rabiatul Adawiyah Latip, Mohd Hisham Ariffin, Noralizawati Mohamed · Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal · Malaysia

Against a background of limited public participation in urban farming activities in Malaysia despite government efforts, and challenges in sustaining participants' interest, this study measured motivations for urban farming participation using the three components of Expectancy Theory of Motivation—expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. This paper reports findings on the expectancy component of that motivation.

Jim Downing · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Global

The 2017 DOAJ-indexed abstract states only that the work operates at the intersection of technology, civic society and sustainability to build food security and community-university connections; no specific study site, method or findings are given.

Selena Ahmed, Sarabeth Buckley, Anne Elise Stratton, Feven Asefaha, C. Butler, Matthew J. Reynolds, Colin M. Orians · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Global

A study on green-roof urban agriculture, which faces the ecological challenge of limited soil moisture, compared two soil moisture management practices — sedum (Sedum album) groundcover versus watering — for their effects on the performance and quality of three perennial culinary herbs: thyme, mint and oregano. Individually and interactively, sedum groundcover and watering significantly affected performance measures (biomass, vitality, module coverage) and quality (total phenolic concentration) during early establishment, but had variable effects at later developmental stages. The results suggest sedum groundcover can substitute for watering of hardy culinary herbs on green roofs in terms of plant performance and quality.