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This roadmap identifies policy recommendations for a desirable future for urban agriculture in 2050 based on policy reviews, interviews and workshops. In particular, this work assesses how and to what degree policy can be developed to create synergies between urban agriculture and cities’ food, energy and water nexus. This work is based on the existing policies in five city regions in France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. This report is designed for use by policy makers, public authorities and other stakeholders who want to support a shift towards an urban agriculture in which the nexus between food production, water and energy use, and social benefits is optimised. To construct scenarios for analysis, seven key factors were identified (from 24 original drivers emerging from analysis) and intersected with three potential trends (positive, negative and a continuation of the status quo). Recommendations in this roadmap are based on the most positive outcomes for urban agriculture, cities, and citizens.

The FEW-meter project was developed by an international consortium comprising researchers, practitioners, and associations in the urban agriculture sector from five countries: France, Germany, Poland, the UK, and the US. The project was funded under the Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative (SUGI), Food-Water- Energy Nexus call, established by a Joint Programming Initiative of the Belmont Forum and Urban Europe. The consortium´s submission proposed to investigate the FEW-nexus in urban agriculture. At the core of our project is the collaboration between researchers, farmers and gardeners. We invited associations to cooperate, such as the Polish Allotment Gardeners Association, the German Landesverband Westfalen und Lippe der Kleingärtner, which represent allotments holders in the regions of these countries where some case studies are located, Jardin des Eglantiers - a local French allotment garden association, Social Farms & Gardens (the UK charity representing community gardens and city farms), and Green City Force (a US-based organization training young people from low-income social housing communities to farm). Their insights, experience and dedication were invaluable and enabled the co-production of new knowledge. They supported the recruitment of case studies, participated in workshops and, together with farmers and gardeners from our case studies, provided constructive feedback for the development of the project’s methodology and data analysis. This report presents the main outcomes of the three-year FEW-meter project.&nbsp

A vast literature discusses the physical attributes of built environment for the purpose of creating lively and inclusive public spaces for the sake of its temporary appropriation by citizens. Here the term temporary appropriation is defined as the act in which people use public spaces to carry out individual or collective activities other than the purpose that the space was originally designed for. The paper reviews relevant literature and analyses urban design elements of the spatial configuration of the street that are related to the temporary appropriation. Its main objective is to identify urban design elements of spatial configuration of the street supporting diversity of temporary appropriation and explore this relationship in Mexico City Centre. The analysis and the study of theselected case study may provide insight and contribute to a better understanding of this relationship (appropriation and spatial configuration) within heritage city centres in Latin American cities.

Large-scale hydroponic systems, a highly resource and space efficient form of cultivation, already contribute substantially to global food production. Recognising the value of such an efficiency, a few hydroponic/aquaponics community projects and small social enterprises have recently been implemented in Europe. In addition to food production in itself, hydroponic gardening can be an opportunity in terms of not only enabling urban communities to produce their own food in absence of land suitable for cultivation, but also in re-skilling in a range of fields, from plumbing and energy resource management, to computer programing. The advantages of simplified hydroponics in a densely built urban context has been investigated before in the developing countries (see Facondini et al 2010) and in the developed world (Laidlaw and Magee, 2016). We intend to build on the latter and generate further insights on the possible barriers to the uptake of soil-less, small-scale, digitally operated hydroponic systems from community of gardeners and people involved in gardening projects. Gardening is traditionally an on-soil activity, with associated benefits such as physical exercise and interaction with nature. We aim to understand whether a different, technology-based approach to food cultivation can be perceived as a limit from these communities. In collaboration with the community association Big Local Fratton, we are in the process of installing a digitally-operated hydroponic unit in a community garden located in a primary school, in Portsmouth, and ask gardeners to manage it. Interviews will be held between July and September with students and parents, volunteers of the community garden, and a wider community of gardeners connected with Big Local Fratton. This paper will present the initial analysis of the interviews.

This chapter focuses on the elements that must be considered when designing rooftop gardens and integrating them within buildings. Different types of rooftop gardens and how they can be integrated within existing and new buildings in order to enhance their environmental performance, better connect with their users and contribute to the amelioration of the urban environment are presented together with a description of necessary factors for implementation. These include: techniques and technologies for cultivation (i.e. simple planters, green roofs and hydroponics), necessary structural loadbearing capacity of the host building and protection from wind. The chapter also gives an overview of existing innovative and experimental projects of rooftop gardens, ranging from those that require little to high investment."

The resurgence of urban agriculture (UA) seems to be in full swing, with local policies embracing it through food charters and other initiatives, academic debate developing in-depth insights on its multi-functionality, and groups and social enterprises increasingly practicing it in diverse forms. Despite this growing interest, the purpose for it remains unclear, with some actors pursuing it for social purposes and others for ecological enhancement or even as a form of protest. Concomitantly, beyond the seminal conceptualisation of urban productive landscapes as an integration of UA within urban development, advancements on this topic have been marginal. Academic debate seems to focus predominately on issues such as healthy lifestyles and food security, but much less on models of dense cities based on productivity (economic, of food, ideas and social relations) and a just access to resources. The article is a theoretical contribution in this direction. It builds on the thesis formulated by Srniceck and Williams (2015), which posits that ‘localism’ and community-based approaches characterising many of the left wing movements over the last decade are the main cause for their failures to gain general consent. This is because such approaches lack a unifying, global vision that can be perceived as an alternative to the current neo-liberal regime. The article reviews four of the most celebrated city models that have UA at their core to subsequently discuss a unifying urban vision of a UA city, which can, in turn, provide long-term guidance to the many, varied UA projects in developed countries."

Tree planting is widely advocated and applied in urban areas, with large-scale projects underway in cities globally. Numerous potential benefits are used to justify these planting campaigns. However, reports of poor tree survival raise questions about the ability of such projects to deliver on their promises over the long-term. Each potential benefit requires different supporting conditions—relating not only to the type and placement of the tree, but also to the broader urban system within which it is embedded. This set of supporting conditions may not always be mutually compatible and may not persist for the lifetime of the tree. Here, we demonstrate a systems-based approach that makes these dependencies, synergies, and tensions more explicit, allowing them to be used to test the decadal-scale resilience of urban street trees. Our analysis highlights social, environmental, and economic assumptions that are implicit within planting projects, notably that high levels of maintenance and public support for urban street trees will persist throughout their natural lifespan, and that the surrounding built form will remain largely unchanged. Whilst the vulnerability of each benefit may be highly context specific, we identify approaches that address some typical weaknesses, making a functional, resilient, urban forest more attainable.

This chapter provides an overview of the latest trends of urban allotment gardens from a typological and spatial standpoint. Previous chapters in this book show that\ud recently there has been a resurgence of urban gardening practices (see Chapters 2 and 3). Thus, an investigation into whether this resurgence is supported by new spatial arrangements that can circumvent the ever-rising pressure for urban development and from land values is necessary. Likewise, it is necessary to question whether planning systems are capable of accommodating higher demand for allotment gardens as a result of such resurgence. The chapter shows that, in response to rapidly changing urban conditions and planning systems that cannot reconcile speculative development with social needs, other types of urban allotments are emerging which differ from the conventional forms of the past. A number of case studies from 11 European countries collected by many researchers involved in the COST Action form the evidence base for the identification of new approaches to the design and implementation of allotment gardens which substantially differ from the conventional type on green land. Following the introduction, the chapter is organized in four sections: the first identifies urban dynamics behind the emergence of new ways to approach urban gardening, both as an activity and its spatial manifestations; the second presents a description of such emergent approaches, and the third discusses their cross-cutting and common characteristics, identifying the spatial implications for the urban context. Finally, in the conclusions we establish the need for a reframing not only of spaces suitable for urban gardening or motivations for this particular activity, but more importantly of planning and design processes, and the role of the designer as a facilitator of bottom-up initiatives.