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Abstract: Urban agriculture (UA) has turned into a diverse and complex movement. Important challenges will be to set accurate expectations by civil society in relation to UA development, and to find ways to discuss UA in governance and collaboration networks from an aggregate point of view. However, analytical tools that allow comprehensive study of UA initiatives (UAIs) are absent. This article elaborates on a conceptual framework from the COST Action Urban Agriculture Europe (Prové et al. 2015) and evaluates findings that result from applying the framework to four UAIs. We found that, analytically, the framework generates in-depth information on UAIs, and argue that it can be a useful tool in networks that are responsible for collaboration, support, or governance within the UA movement. We also discuss its usability issues and discuss future research.
Keywords: civil society, conceptual framework, diversity, Europe, governance, sustainable development, urban agriculture
Over recent decades, we have witnessed an increase in the number of urban agriculture initiatives (UAIs) across the Western world. The understanding of urban agriculture (UA) has shifted from urban food production practices in and around cities for food security purposes (FAO 2008), to the inclusion of other broader social, environmental, or economic food production activities linked to goals of sustainable urban development (Mansfield and Mendes 2013; McClintock 2010; Morgan 2015; Partalidou and Anthopoulou 2017; Tornaghi 2014). Urban agriculture (UA) can be broadly defined as all the food production initiatives in and around urban areas (McClintock 2014; Mougeot 2005; Vejre et al. 2015). This means that UA encompasses community gardens or guerrilla gardens, existing professional farms seeking connections with the urban center, as well as the more innovative forms of UA such as indoor farming (e.g., LED farming, container farming, aquaponics, hydroponics), rooftop farming, community-supported agriculture, and healing, recreational, or educative gardens. In broader understandings of UA, the regulatory (e.g., food councils), processing, and distribution initiatives (e.g., farmers' markets, vegetable box schemes) are also taken into account because they facilitate the integration of UA within the food system (Bailkey and Nasr 2000).
As UA has grown in scope and size, and involves an increasing number of people, a series of challenges have emerged. First, enthusiastic proponents in government, the media, and research have high expectations of civil society in...