Research & reports

Maya MITEVA · AGROFOR · Global

Citing UN (2015) projections that Bulgaria's population will shrink by 27.9% by 2050 (compared with 15.1% for Japan), this case study positions urban agriculture as a planning tool for responding to population decline and urban shrinkage. It analyzes Japan's Kashiniwa program, an innovative local governance system for managing vacant lots in shrinking cities that began in Kashiwa City in 2010, examining Japanese local authorities' approach to declining and aging population and discussing its transferability to Bulgarian planning practice.

Hiran Roy, C. Michael Hall, Paul W. Ballantine · · Global

This excerpt is the introduction to a chapter on barriers facing hospitality businesses' use of local food; it covers only the background on rising North American and European consumer demand for local food, driven by desire for fresh food access, support for local farmers and communities, and concerns over trust, locality, transparency, animal welfare and food safety, alongside the post-1990s growth of farmers' markets, food box programs and community-supported agriculture. The specific economic barriers and constraints named in the chapter's title are not described within this excerpted text.

Stefanie Schneider, Jennifer R. Pharr, Timothy J. Bungum · Health Behavior and Policy Review · Global

This systematic review searched Web of Knowledge and SCOPUS in April 2015 and examined 14 studies on the impact of garden-based interventions on nutritional knowledge, fruit and vegetable consumption, taste preferences, physical activity, and math/science achievement; 11 studies covered dietary outcomes, 2 examined physical activity, and 2 assessed math and science achievement. Findings indicate that school gardening programs that include a nutritional component are more likely to increase participants' nutritional knowledge, fruit and vegetable consumption, and range of taste preferences. The review concludes that combining an educational curriculum with gardening activities is an effective strategy for improving attitudes toward healthy food and healthy dietary behaviors.

Puentes Torres, Róger Eduardo · · Colombia

This study compiles and analyzes documents describing the urban agriculture program run by the Mesa Ambiental de Bosa, a participatory environmental planning forum between local government and citizens in the Bosa locality of Bogotá, Colombia, to trace the program's trajectory and its contributions to the local community. The paper is presented as a document-based approximation rather than a study reporting primary field data or measured outcomes.

Javier Melero Llorente · Phytoma España: La revista profesional de sanidad vegetal · Global

This is a profile and interview piece on Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine artist, architecture professor, human rights activist, and 1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, describing his decades of support for agroecology and social movements defending alternative, ecologically based agricultural production, and covering his October visit to the School of Agricultural Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València to inaugurate its fifth course on agroecology, urban agriculture, food sovereignty, and rural development cooperation, shortly after serving as an international observer for Colombia's peace referendum. It contains no research data or study findings.

BibekDhital BibekDhital, Anusha Sharma, Santosh Adhikari · International Journal of Environment Agriculture and Biotechnology · Nepal

Against a backdrop of rapid urbanization and increasing land fallowing in rural Nepal, this case study examined the current state of urban agriculture in Pokhara and Dhulikhel municipalities. It found that a 150 m² area was sufficient to meet the vegetable needs of an urban family of four to five, saving an estimated NPR 6,000-8,000 per year per 100 m².

George R. Smith, Dilip Nandwani, Vanaja Kankarla · International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology · Global

This conceptual article works to validate a common set of parameters and principles for sustainable agriculture, comparing alternative forms of sustainable agriculture with rural-to-urban community resilience and drawing conclusions across multiple sustainable/alternative agriculture systems. It proposes organic agriculture parameters and principles as a conceptual framework and examines best-management parameters of urban and rural sustainable agriculture in the United States and United Kingdom. The article states that urban agriculture is expanding alongside rising demand for fresh, accessible produce, and that evidence supports a symbiotic relationship between sustainable agriculture and rural/urban communities, while also noting that some hold this relationship has not been clearly defined.

François Mancebo, Sylvie Salles · Challenges in Sustainability · Global

This essay-style article surveys urban agriculture projects that have proliferated worldwide since the late twentieth century, reshaping urban landscapes and urban fabric, offering alternatives to traditional urban life, creating new commons, and bringing people together. It cites examples from Singapore (self-reliant in meat), Bamako (self-sufficient in vegetables), and Berlin (80,000 community gardens on communal land with 16,000 more people on a waiting list). It states that vacant and derelict land arising from deindustrialization, population aging and decline (as in Japan and Germany), and emigration (in some African mid-sized cities) creates new opportunities for urban agriculture — citing Detroit, where thousands of hectares of urban land have been given to unemployed workers for food growing, and Britain, where councils in 20 cities have promoted urban agriculture on wasteland. It notes urban agriculture is gradually becoming a planning-policy option, integrated into land-use planning documents in Delft and protected within an inclusive local land development plan in Paris.

Saverio Miccoli, Fabrizio Finucci, Rocco Murro · Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia · Global

Against a backdrop of rising food demand driven by global urban population growth, this paper (2016, no specific region) argues for fostering urban agriculture to integrate with traditional agricultural production, which it characterizes as no longer sustainable on its own. After proposing implementation of integrated urban agriculture systems, it introduces the "Community Esteem Value," a measure of community social appreciation obtained through a deliberative appraisal procedure.

Christine Brown-Paul · Practical Hydroponics and Greenhouses · Global

An overview article (2016, no specific region) surveys the varied forms of urban agriculture — from small community gardens to urban farms spanning several city blocks to intensive indoor hydroponic or aquaculture facilities — describing it as a fast-growing phenomenon with the potential to nourish community health and social fabric and create economic opportunities for farmers and neighborhoods, while also coming with its own set of challenges and opportunities.

Iain Black, Deirdre Shaw, Katherine Trebeck · Families Relationships and Societies · Global

An introduction (2016, no specific region) presents two related Open Space articles — "Changing the narrative: Measuring progress by measuring what matters to families" and "Places of prosumption: Community gardens putting the 'we' into neighbourhoods" — describing how the articles explore how spaces can be created that enable relationships not reliant on socially and environmentally damaging consumption, and that help build space for socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable societies.

· · Global

This essay argues that when spatial planners and other policymakers promote or preclude certain land uses, they interfere with the rights of land users, most notably property rights. It frames "land policy" as the concept connecting land uses, planning, and property, arguing that good land policy provides for a diversity of land uses through plural property relations, since no single kind of property rule fits the purposes of all land-use types — a detached single-family house, a community garden, and a highway each need their own property "fingerprint." It states that when planners find existing property rules do not suit their goals at all, they need to understand the extent to which property obstructs the implementation of their plans, noting that property rules are often more helpful than planners initially expect.

Efrat Eizenberg · · Global

This chapter discusses the broad, self-generated relations between the institution of community gardens and opportunities both to engage in political practices and to take part in the process of producing space. The self-generative power of this assemblage is described as having a life of its own, continuously producing new participants and sustaining the institution over the long run. The development of political consciousness remakes participants as a different kind of urban resident; paraphrasing Gramsci, the author terms this process the production of "organic residents" — people who may not be defined as citadins but can nonetheless be seen as a step toward utopian urban political subjects. Multiple opportunities for political development are embedded across many levels of the production of space, with the actual space of the gardens serving as the blueprint for a political strategy, and the institution linking vision to space.

Jean-Francois Paquay, Sue Spaid · The Journal of Somaesthetics · Global

This philosophical essay observes that somaesthetics — the philosophy of embodied aesthetic experience — has tended to shift its focus from producers to consumers when discussing food, neglecting farmers, and proposes urban farming as a somaesthetics case study. It begins by examining urban farming's absence from Aesthetics, then discusses how the aesthetic experiences associated with urban farming collapse artistic and aesthetic distinctions, debates whether somaesthetics can be considered a subset of everyday aesthetic practice, and analyzes whether urban farming's capacity to contribute to well-being makes it a potential somaesthetic enterprise. One explanation offered for urban farming's absence from somaesthetics is that its success owes more to luck than to the disciplined will that guides successful somaesthetic practices, and the essay argues that for it to function as a somaesthetic practice, cultivators would need to adopt unconventional approaches that raise "the foodies' bar."

Christopher Maughan, Christopher Maughan · Exchanges The Interdisciplinary Research Journal · Global

An essay reflects on Critical Foodscapes, a one-day conference part-funded by the University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study and the Food GRP, that sought to bring a critical-studies approach to the emerging research area of urban community food growing. It offers reflections on the conference itself as well as on prospects for urban gardening more broadly.

Helen Armstrong, Abby Mellick Lopes · Water science and technology library · Global

This chapter contrasts growing cities (such as in Asia and Australia), which are destroying their rural edge, with shrinking cities (such as in Europe and North America), which are creating a new rural urbanism in their urban centres, and examines how design and mapping technology enable new typologies for peri-/inter-urban rural land. It draws on small-scale community initiatives in Penrith, Western Sydney -- Out & About in Penrith, Penrith as a Regional City Garden, and the Cooling the Commons project -- to show the potential of mobile infrastructure and temporary urbanism for Western Sydney.

Silvana Moscatelli, Hamid El Bilali, Mauro Gamboni, Roberto Capone · AGROFOR · Global

This review paper argues for a holistic, multidimensional, interdisciplinary, and systemic approach to understanding food systems "from farm to fork" -- production, processing, trade, distribution, and consumption -- as a prerequisite for achieving sustainable food security amid population growth, resource scarcity, ecosystem degradation, and climate change. It states that cross-cutting issues such as gender, innovation, and technology should also be considered, and it lists alternative food consumption and production models linking production and consumption -- organic agriculture, urban agriculture, community-supported agriculture, and short food chains -- among the options that can help foster a shift toward sustainable food systems.

Sandra Yamile Salamanca Corredor, Brayan Osnaider Diaz Morales · · Colombia

This pilot study, focused on the La Estancia neighborhood of Bogotá, assessed the technical and economic feasibility of implementing home practices for utilizing household waste -- (1) vermiculture for organic waste, (2) urban agriculture and vertical gardens, and (3) reuse of greywater for non-potable uses. It also investigated whether residents of the neighborhood already use these practices for managing waste and greywater, and their level of interest in the topic.

Anne Marie Todd · · Global

This chapter analyzes guerrilla gardening as a form of environmental communication, examining the rhetorical strategies used in guerrilla gardening manuals to show how the discourse both constructs and deconstructs community. It argues that guerrilla gardeners deconstruct public space through embodied critique of the urban environment and transgression of public norms and boundaries, while simultaneously constructing community through aesthetic appeal and civic engagement, drawing people in and mobilizing support for community gardens.

Dewey Thorbeck · · Global

An essay on land use and food security amid global urbanization describes how the growth of larger farms has strained small rural towns, while small specialty farms near large cities have emerged as a lifestyle choice, providing fresh food through community supported agriculture (CSA) arrangements in which urban residents contract directly with CSA farmers. It also describes community gardens being established on vacant public land in existing urban neighborhoods as part of this fresh-food movement. No empirical study data are presented.

Okan Yılmaz, Funda ERTÜRK · Journal of Advanced Research in Natural and Applied Sciences · Global

A study evaluated the adequacy of five school gardens in Çanakkale city center, Turkey, as public open green spaces, using observation and site examination of green space adequacy, plant structural and equipment elements, per-capita green space, and playground quality. It found that the school gardens were insufficient in area, were not planned according to landscape architecture design principles, and lacked adequate plant material and equipment. As solutions, the study proposed separating vehicle and student entrances, designing dedicated seating areas, and creating designated educational activity areas within the gardens.

Lydon M., Garcia A. · Island Press · Global

A foundational book systematising short-term, low-cost, scalable interventions (pop-up parks, gardens, experiments) that use space temporarily to build consensus for permanent change — a theoretical pillar of interim land activation.

Taylor J.R., Lovell S.T. · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 30(1):22-32 · Global

Studies African American, Chinese, and Mexican-origin home gardens in Chicago, finding that ethnic gardeners saving open-pollinated traditional crop seeds preserve agrobiodiversity while reproducing cultural identity and supporting community food systems.

Visser O., Mamonova N., Spoor M., Nikulin A. · Globalizations · Russia

Introduces the concept of 'quiet food sovereignty' to describe how Russian smallholders practise dispersed, muted, bottom-up food autonomy in the absence of organised rural social movements.

Boukharaeva L.M., Marloie M. · Springer (Urban Agriculture Series) · Russia

A Springer monograph documenting research since 1999 on urban gardening collectives in Russia, analysing the social, cultural, and food-security roles of family urban agriculture and its prospects.