Research & reports

CJ Lim, Ed Liu · · Global

This publication, "Smartcities + Eco-warriors," presents a collection of essays and case studies related to urban utopias, smart cities, urban agriculture, eco-sustainability, and cultivating communities. It includes examples of urban agriculture projects in various locations such as Guangming Smartcity China, Daejeon Urban Renaissance Masterplan Korea, and Nordhavnen Smartcity Denmark. The work also features contributions on the urban future and the role of cities in climate change.

William H. Friedland · Rural Sociology · Global

This article explores strengthening alternative agrifood movements by mobilizing academic researchers. It proposes a new organization, "Alternative Agrifood Researchers without Borders," to utilize researchers' skills and structural position. The goal is to enhance movements, reduce inequalities, and improve academic research quality by paralleling existing state and market structures while focusing on progressive objectives.

Radojica Sarić, Vladana Hamović, Svetlana Roljević Nikolić, Radojica Sarić, Vladana Hamović, Svetlana Roljevic · AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) · Serbia

This paper analyzes urban agriculture in Serbia, focusing on its role in configuring urban open spaces and its effects on sustainable development and environmental protection. The study aims to understand the economic, social, and ecological impacts of urban agricultural production on improving city life quality, especially given Serbia's dynamic urbanization and agricultural land transformation post-World War II.

Emmanuel Berthier, Bernard de Gouvello, Florian Archambault, Didier Gallis · · Global

This preliminary study aimed to better understand the water balance of vegetated or green roofs (TTV) and to develop a conceptual reservoir storage model. Two databases were used: CSTB's one-year data (limited to rain and runoff) and LROP's nine-day detailed data (including evapotranspiration and water storage). Detailed monitoring was shown to deepen the understanding of water balance, and the developed reservoir storage model appeared suitable for reproducing the TTV water balance.

Chris Carlsson, Francesca Manning · Antipode · Global

Nowtopia identifies a new basis for a shared experience of class, characterized by an exodus from wage labor and the embrace of meaningful, freely chosen, unpaid work. Nowtopian communities are largely grounded in unpaid practical work, such as urban gardening/agriculture, which gradually reverses the extreme atomization of modern life. These practices represent a decentralized, uncoordinated collective research and development effort exploring a potentially post-capitalist, post-petroleum future.

AP Chanan, Jaya Kandasamy, S. Vigneswaran, G Spyrakis, I Ghetti, Elisa Idris · UTS ePRESS (University of Technology Sydney) · Australia (Sydney)

This paper outlines a project by Kogarah Council in Sydney, Australia, which assisted all 22 schools in the Kogarah LGA to install rainwater tanks. The initiative aimed to increase water use efficiency and reduce potable water consumption for toilet flushing and school garden irrigation. The project successfully reduced drinking water usage and served as a visual reminder for students to conserve water.

Nerea Morán Alonso · · Global

This article reviews the historical background of urban agriculture, highlighting it as an example of action in crisis situations and the social potential of food production in urban contexts. In Southern countries, urban agriculture has gained importance as a development strategy, including programs led by international organizations. Urban gardens, by integrating nature into the city, contribute to urban metabolic efficiency and enhance biological diversity.

Lisen Hendeberg · · Sweden

This study compared Ebenezer Howard's garden city ideals with contemporary urban farming movements in Sweden through a literature review and analysis of three active movements. It found that when garden city ideas were implemented in Sweden between 1905 and 1930, much of the original ideological basis for self-sufficient small towns and collectively owned land was lost. While similarities exist in ideological starting points, their approaches to change differ.

Eva Collins, Kate Kearins · Academy of Management Learning and Education · New Zealand (Auckland)

A sustainability instructor took a graduate class to an eco-village near Auckland, New Zealand, where students observed off-grid homes and community gardens. While New Zealand students were inspired by the alternative lifestyle, two international students from China and Tajikistan expressed that this lifestyle was how they lived at home and they did not wish to live that way, preferring the New Zealand lifestyle. This indicates a limited appeal of the eco-village model to some international students.

Diana Lee-Smith, L. J. A. Mougeot, Michael Levenston, Peter Mann, Katherine Brown, Jerry Kaufman · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

This reflection on the urban agriculture movement notes that 19th and early 20th-century urban reforms, including urban gardens, aimed to improve living conditions in industrial cities. However, these initiatives also shifted the burden of sustenance from industrialists and fair-wage policies onto urbanizing families, particularly women. Despite this, garden spaces provided nourishment and retreats in densely populated areas.

윤혜경, 이연숙, 이홍성 · 한국생태환경건축학회 학술발표대회 논문집 · Global

This study investigates the utility of "Health Community Farming Gardens" within apartment buildings in Korea, aiming to present a realistic and effective apartment floor plan that enhances residents' health. Through a literature review of green infrastructure and urban farming, the research confirms that green infrastructure and urban farming revitalize apartment culture, effectively address ecosystem deterioration, and foster a green cultural spread within resident communities. The study emphasizes the innovation of integrating farming gardens into apartment buildings to maintain residents' holistic health.

Jovana Čikić, Marica Petrović · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Serbia

This paper analyzes the female labor force on family farms as a factor in urban agriculture development in the urban and peri-urban area of Novi Sad, Serbia. The study examines socio-demographic indicators of female labor, specifically economic activity and education level, as a development potential. The analysis aims to highlight the main characteristics of female economic activity and education level that contribute to urban agriculture development.

Yuji Hara, Takashi Furutani, Akinobu Murakami, Armando M. Palijon, Makoto Yokohari · Waste Management & Research The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy · Philippines (Metro Manila)

This research used solid waste management programs in three Quezon City barangays, Metro Manila, as a case study to assess organic waste recycling and local urban agriculture potential. It measured organic waste and compost production from barangay projects and identified potential compost use on local farmlands and vacant lots. The study found that securing compost buyers is currently difficult, leading to distribution to neighboring farm villages, but concluded that a more local compost recycling system within the barangays is feasible.

Louiza M. Boukharaeva, Marcel Marloie · VertigO · Russia

This article examines collective urban gardening in Russia, practiced by city dwellers on various land types, as a significant reference for urban agriculture theory. This non-commercial family urban agriculture, supported by the state, businesses, and the population, acts as a crisis buffer by combining food production, health, recreation, leisure, child education, and artistic creation functions. The right to build housing on garden plots democratized urban access to land and nature, addressing poverty by extending a middle-class lifestyle element to the entire urban society.

Amy Linzie · School for International Training Digital Collections (School for International Training) · Cuba (Havana)

This paper explores how urban agriculture (UA) addresses urban food security and re-establishes food sovereignty in Havana, Cuba, and Mexico City, Mexico. Havana has developed sustainable UA methods addressing organic food access, while Mexico City's D.F. struggles to establish UA's relevance amidst poverty, resource shortages, and pollution. The study examines UA development in these two societies and its relevance to regaining food sovereignty.

John Merson, Roger Attwater, Peter Ampt, Howard G. Wildman, Rosalie Chapple · International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · Australia

This paper presents an overview of a four-year project examining the western edge of the Sydney basin in Australia — historically a major source of fruit and vegetables for Sydney markets — where rapid urban development expansion has caused a significant reduction in the number of small farms and market gardens. Urban and peri-urban agriculture in the region also serves as an important buffer between urban development and the neighboring Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, with urban expansion and economies of scale identified as contributing to the decline of urban agriculture. The project explored options for supporting these vulnerable farming communities in terms of regulatory factors and economic and environmental sustainability, and investigated the role of agri-industries as landscape buffers to the neighboring World Heritage Area in relation to resilience, communities of practice, and ecosystem services. Working with targeted representative landholders, the study developed tools including an integrated bio-system approach using organic waste conversion and landscape function analysis to help address erosion, nutrient loss, and inefficient water management.

Adam Shiloh Moates · · Uruguay

This 2010 dissertation is a comparative ethnographic study of agricultural and livestock production strategies in peri-urban Montevideo, Uruguay. It examined the factors shaping urban and peri-urban agricultural and livestock enterprises, the conditions under which growers organize collective action, and how municipal politics and institutional linkages affect production practices. The study focused on three populations: displaced urban working-class residents known as neo-pobres, waste-collector communities called clasificadores, and family-run organic grower organizations. The analysis found that all three groups strategically form organizations and collective-action strategies to raise their institutional visibility, secure and improve access to urban resources, and contest or resist municipal land-use policies and the push to "regularize" informal settlements. The research also points to the effects of large-scale political and economic forces on the urban margin and the difficulty of implementing policy there.

Mamadou Ndiaye, S. Niang, H.‐R. Pfeifer, Raffaele Peduzzi, Mauro Tonolla, Y Dieng · Irrigation and Drainage · Senegal

Lettuces grown at two urban agricultural sites (Pikine and Patte d'Oie) near Dakar, Senegal, and sold in local markets were tested for microbial contamination linked to irrigation water. Salmonella spp. positivity was 6% at Pikine and 7% at Patte d'Oie farm sites, with lettuces irrigated by shallow 'Ceanes' groundwater most contaminated at both sites (8%), compared to wastewater irrigation (4% at Pikine) and well water (5% at Patte d'Oie); at market, Salmonella was isolated at every marketplace surveyed, with higher rates around Patte d'Oie (9% at Grand Yoff, 11% at Dalifort) than around Pikine (4% at Zinc, 2% at Sham) or the control site Rufisque (2%), and lettuces washed with Ceanes water before sale were more contaminated than those rinsed with tap water. Reusing wastewater for irrigation is presented as an alternative to animal manure, with the microbial contamination risk significantly reducible by washing vegetables with tap water before sale.

O. Muñiz, M. Ternero, Álvarez Montero, F. Martínez, T. Limeres, O. Jouber, M. Orphee, Julia Vidan Estevez, B. Calero, F. A. de Alcantara, Adriana María de Aguiar Accioly · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · Global

This paper situates its topic within the urban agriculture movement, which it describes as having successfully enabled low-input food production in cities, noting that organoponicos — plots focused on producing leafy vegetables and condiment crops in organic substrates — have driven up demand for organic material sources. The title indicates the study addresses the effect of using heavy-metal-contaminated compost on vegetable production, but the available abstract provides only this background context, with no results on contamination or crop impact stated.

Zhifeng Chen, Guohua Lin, Liu Rongzhang, Lin Shu-wen · Nongye xiandaihua yanjiu · Global

This paper analyzes the significance of low-carbon patterns in urban agriculture development from economic, aesthetic, ecological, and philosophical perspectives, examining low-carbon patterns characterized by high-value industry structures, high resource efficiency, ecological safety, and mechanism innovation. Based on a city's natural resources, agricultural resources, and low-carbon technology, it summarizes low-carbon patterns of urban agriculture spanning multiple regions, scenic areas, and types, and proposes that local governments should actively create conditions to support and develop low-carbon industrial patterns of urban agriculture.

Adam Shiloh Moates · Culture & Agriculture · Colombia

A case study of clasificadores (urban waste sorters) in Montevideo, Uruguay, focusing on the subset known as clasificadores criadores de cerdos (CCdCs) who raise hogs alongside recycling. CCdCs do not fit the standard urban agriculture model since they do not garden but instead feed collected organic refuse to hogs. Raising hogs in the irregular settlements where CCdCs live is illegal, and very little of the hog meat they produce is consumed by the CCdCs themselves; out-of-town hog farmers transport their "bootleg," trash-fed hogs to legitimate markets to close the legal loop for what remains a clandestine production system. Although clasificadores have recently organized cooperatives and a labor union, the hog-raising activity itself remains illegal and dependent on this informal, off-book market channel.

Marie Hélène Dabat, Romaine Ramananarivo, Evelyne Ravoniarisoa Faramalala, Tovohery Ramahaimandimbisoa, Christine Aubry · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · Madagascar

Little was known about the quantitative importance of urban agriculture in Antananarivo, Madagascar's capital, but recent studies on supply chains for commodities including rice, tomato, cauliflower, and leafy vegetables provide insight into agriculture's contribution to the capital's food supply and the comparative advantage that urban locations offer for these chains.

Cantor, Kelly-M · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Colombia (Bogotá)

This study analyzed urban agriculture practiced by forcibly displaced residents and by vulnerable populations living in poverty in southern Bogotá and the Soacha locality, Colombia, using a livelihoods approach and drawing on 20 local actors and public/private institutions that had run urban agriculture programs as its information source. It found that urban agriculture carries symbolic value as a livelihood and occupational alternative, framed around collective wellbeing beyond monetary value, and reflects a struggle by peasant identity to survive within city life—but concluded that it is not an integrally sustainable activity.

Buchmann C. · Human Ecology · Cuba (Trinidad de Cuba)

Using ethnobotanical fieldwork in Trinidad de Cuba, this study shows how home gardens serve as the most adaptable local land resource, with garden composition and management adapting in response to major events such as the Soviet collapse, bolstering household food security and social-ecological resilience.

· Leisure Studies · Port Melbourne, Australia

Ten members of a community garden in Port Melbourne, Australia were interviewed with semi-structured questions exploring their perceptions of the health and wellbeing benefits of participation.