Bücher der Reihe Urban Agriculture

This book guides architects, landscape designers, urban planners, agronomists and society on the implementation of sustainable rooftop farming projects. While rooftop farming experiences are sprouting all over the world the need for scientific evidence on the most suitable growing solutions, policies and potential benefits emerges.

This book gives an overview of frameworks, methods, and case studies useful for the analysis of the relations between agriculture and the city, in Europe and the Mediterranean. Part 2 deals with methods and tools for urban planning and local development, utilized to design and assess sustainable food systems.

The book investigates the development of community gardens with self-built structures, which have existed as a shared public open space land use form in New York City's low-come neighborhoods like the South Bronx since the 1970s.

The book explores how unused and under-used urban spaces - from grass verges, roundabouts, green spaces - have been made more visually interesting and more productive, by informal (and usually illegal) groups known as "guerrilla gardeners".

The book results from research carried out by the authors since 1999 on urban gardening collectives in Russia, then from the extension of this research towards collective urban gardening in France, with some investigations in other European Union Member States and Brazil.

This volume offers a new perspective to debates on local food and urban sustainability presenting the long silenced voices of the small-scale farmers from the productive green fringe of Sydney's sprawling urban jungle.

This book guides architects, landscape designers, urban planners, agronomists and society on the implementation of sustainable rooftop farming projects. While rooftop farming experiences are sprouting all over the world the need for scientific evidence on the most suitable growing solutions, policies and potential benefits emerges.

It is the result of work carried out within Agropolis International within the framework of the Sustainable Urban Food Systems program and an action research carried out in support of Montpellier Mediterranee Metropole for the construction of its agroecological and food policy.

This book gives an overview of frameworks, methods, and case studies useful for the analysis of the relations between agriculture and the city, in Europe and the Mediterranean. Part 2 deals with methods and tools for urban planning and local development, utilized to design and assess sustainable food systems.

It is the result of work carried out within Agropolis International within the framework of the Sustainable Urban Food Systems program and an action research carried out in support of Montpellier Mediterranee Metropole for the construction of its agroecological and food policy.

This book will fill a void in the literature around research and program design and the impact of such experiences on learning outcomes within urban agricultural contexts. In particular, this book will cover topics such as STEM integration, science learning, student engagement, learning gardens and curriculum design.

This Monograph focuses on the new approaches that urban agriculture offers to grow food in cities. The author paints a dynamic picture of soil-less and indoor techniques that are currently emerging. A growing number of small scale community-led and entrepreneurial initiatives are using such techniques for diverse objectives: to increase resource efficiency; to strengthen food security; to educate and inform or to exploit new market opportunities. The described studies demonstrate how technologies that are typically used in high-tech food production can also be harnessed in small projects to generate social and economic benefits at a local level.  The author puts a focus on three aspects: to outline the context within which small scale soil-less urban agriculture is developing in Europe; to give an overview of the state-of-the-art of projects focusing on this area through case study analysis and to elaborate on emerging questions. Such questions include: is the use of soil-less urban agriculture changing the relationship with, and perception of, what is natural and sustainable for urban farmers and small enterprises working in this sector? What is the perceived potential of these soil-less and indoor forms of urban agriculture to meet environmental, social and economic goals? By answering these and other questions, the volume is a valuable resource for researchers in agriculture and sustainability, as well as urban farmers.

This book presents the findings of a multidisciplinary study on the effects of urban agriculture (UA) on the social, economic and environmental aspects of the quality of life in Sofia - the capital of Bulgaria. The analyses are based on a sociological survey representative of 3 districts of Sofia (among 750 people), in-depth interviews, focus groups, expert statements, ecological monitoring of UA sites, and spatial mapping of natural resources for UA. It also focuses on UA effects on the social well-being of citizens and communities, the correlation between social capital and UA attitudes, the challenges for UA to integrate disadvantaged social groups, the factors for success of small UA businesses, as well as the role of policy and civil society in developing UA.  This work is also important for the analysis of the underlying links between all aspects of urban agriculture, many of which are valid beyond the local socio-economic context and environmental specifics of the city of Sofia.