Peri-urban agriculture and alternative food networks in Athens: Solidarity dynamics, spatial planning challenges and institutional reforms (original) (raw)
Between the Urban and the Rural : Back to the city
2015
This doctoral thesis defines the relationship between the urban and rural in the 21st century, and focuses on food as a key component. The fact that food is, for the most part, produced in the countryside and then transported to the city has a significant influence on this very unbalanced relationship today. The main goal was to show that it is necessary to bring agriculture, urban gardening, the breeding of domestic farm animals, and beekeeping back to the city, which would have a positive affect on both the city and the countryside. All of this is already taking place at the local level, within the neighbourhoods of our cities and through the work of self-organised activities and initiatives, which have been taken up by city residents themselves. One example of this is the community garden, a new model of gardening which offers fertile ground for growing vegetables and to test various forms of co-existence, different ways of designing spaces, the creation of alternative values, an...
This paper aims to analyse the emergence of agricultural activity in European metropolitan regions as a form of citizens' resilience in front of the crisis. In fact, agricultural activity is coming back to desindustrialized cities in various forms and under different logics. The wide label 'urban gardening' refers to a plethora of different phenomena including the recovery of empty spaces in city centres used to promote new common public spaces and to (re)learn about food production, self-consumption oriented practices, or even the creation of cooepratives in the urban context to generate employment in the agricultural sector. This paper has two aims. The first one is to provide a conceptual clarification of 'urban gardening' giving a vision of the different forms of agricultural activity in the urban context. In this sense the paper analyses different conceptions and logics behind urban gardening practices through a literature review. In second place the research wants to analyse two specific practices of urban gardening emerged in the context of the financial crisis in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area: one in the city centre and another in the peripherial area. This analysis aims to understand to what extent practices on 'urban gardening' are forms of individual and collective citizens' resilience. To do so, it will take attention, with an ethnographic perspective, to a) the historical background of agricultural practices in the city and its links with the emerging activities b)who are the promoters of these practices, what is their socio-economic situation and their objectives in terms of food production and transformation of the city; c) what discourses and knowledge on the relation between the urban and the food production lies behind these practices and d) what is the logic of collective organisation and the degree of political implication of the involved actors in the specific case studies
Jardins Urbanos: Saúde Humana, Terapia e Sustentabilidade
Revista Gestão & Sustentabilidade Ambiental, 2022
RESUMO Jardins urbanos transformam o meio ambiente, são capazes de restabelecer a biodiversidade, proporcionam mais qualidade de vida para os cidadãos. Hortas urbanas são elementos importantes que levam à sustentabilidade urbana, sendo benéficas para a saúde humana. Assim, o objetivo deste artigo é analisar os benefícios das hortas urbanas através de terapias de saúde humana na promoção da sustentabilidade. Para este fim, foi realizada uma análise bibliométrica a partir de uma pesquisa sistemática no banco de dados Scopus. Foi identificado que a pesquisa surge nos seguintes campos de conhecimento: Ciências Agrárias e Biológicas, Ciências Ambientais, Artes e Humanidades, Engenharia, Medicina, Ciências Sociais e Veterinária. Os resultados do presente trabalho indicam que esta área ainda carece de estudos mais detalhados, mas, ao mesmo tempo, existem muitos benefícios terapêuticos dos jardins urbanos em relação à qualidade de vida das pessoas de todas as idades, sejam elas idosas, deficientes ou com distúrbios psicológicos. RESUMEN Los huertos urbanos transforman el entorno, son capaces de restaurar la biodiversidad y proporcionan más calidad de vida a los ciudadanos. Los huertos urbanos son elementos importantes que conducen a la sostenibilidad urbana, siendo beneficiosos para la salud humana. Por ello, el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar los beneficios de los huertos urbanos a través de las terapias de salud humana en la promoción de la sostenibilidad. Para ello, se realizó un análisis bibliométrico a
Emerging rurality: rethinking the city based on valuation of the urban-rural
Revista Nacional de Gerenciamento de Cidades
The development of urban and rural environment concepts pervades landscape characteristics and the dichotomous relationship between these areas. The urban and rural understandings are related to their economic, industrial, and agrarian activities to the city and countryside, respectively. Thus, the urban-rural duality departs the notion of a city that includes multiple environments and induces both an erasure of the ecosystem logic of humans and nature relations and consideration of humans as part of its decrease. In that regard, aspects connected with the dynamic of products and services store, such as water and food provisions, have unstuck from their origins which trivializes the process of production, supply, and consumption. Furthermore, a discussion between urban and rural must consider several points, including food sovereignty, agribusiness, land access inequality, local and regional territorial articulation, and climate. Based on a bibliographic review of academic articles ...
The Sustainable City X, 2015
Activities and locations inhabited create distinctions between rural and urban living. Today some cases start to deconstruct these distinctions. The case study of Küçük Armutlu, which this paper will delve into, is located in the heart of Istanbul with strong ties to urban daily life. This paper will investigate how a recent agricultural regeneration project, Community Garden, within the urban context acts as a tool to maintain a sustainable community with a rural character. An unofficial civic organization called "People's Engineers and Architects" had initiated a dynamic sustainable project called Community Garden Project. This project aims to fulfill the low-income resident's vital vegetation needs. However, this is not the sole intention of the garden. It stands out as a place of struggle and solidarity for a sustainable community where the neighbourhood is under the threat of urban transformation attempts by the government. The issue is investigated through observations and in depth interviews with the habitants of Küçük Armutlu, people taking part in the garden project and members of People's Engineers and Architects group as well as People's Committee.
Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2022
In 2018, Lisbon won the title of Green capital of Europe 2020. It was described by the Expert Panel as an inspirational city which had started its journey towards sustainability during a period of economic crisis. A year later, Covid-19 had become a global pandemic. Imposed confinements highlighted the extent to which globalisation has spread the virus, as well as the particular fragility of places like cities where people, living together, were asked to not physically interact anymore. Exploring further that very particular global crisis can help to identify the faults in our economic systems and to ask why Lisbon was neither resilient nor sustainable in the face of that adversity. In addition to highlighting how weak our health is, Covid-19 has exacerbated vulnerabilities in Lisbon such as job losses (especially in the touristic sector), food supply (Portugal imports 70% of its food) and food waste. This paper explores how the activity which, 'par excellence', meets the most basic of our needs (food), through the example of Urban Agriculture (UA), could contribute to discussions on what makes a city sustainable. A literature review on UA in Lisbon highlights its various benefits, complemented by a broader literature review which converges to showing how UA can help to address the vulnerabilities generated or exacerbated by Covid. Having shown its potential contribution to addressing crises, this article then suggests to examine how systems approaches could help to incorporate UA further in a new type of more participatory urbanism aimed at creating sustainable cities.
Sustainable Urban Development Through the Empowering of Local Communities
InTech eBooks, 2012
The financial, economical, social and ecological crysis that violently outburst worlwide after 2008 is the result of structural challanges, such as globalization, climate changes, the pressure on resources, migrations, social exclusions, demographical changes, the ageing of population, mobility, etc., which all have a strong urban dimension, which was determined, at an international level, mainly by the "SPRAWL"-type growth (Saunders, 2005), which only encourages the economical side of the development. In order to overcome this crisis, we propose, as short, medium and long-term strategies, the analysis and the solutions that we found for the problems of the city of Timişoara (Romania). These studies take into consideration the works of C. Butters (Butters, 2004), who states that regional sustainable development cannot be achieved, and therefore neither that of each city, community or neighbourhood, without gradually improving all of the following aspects, at the same time: the social one, which brings social diversity, accessibility, identity, security, variety, involvement and sociability; the economical one, which can be achieved by cutting revenue expenditure, improving functions, diversifying activities and adjacent financial structures, services and communications, by management and flexibility; the ecologic one, through a more harmonious use of land, through biodiversity and bio-climate, by producing nonpollutant energy, re-naturalising the water cycle, recycling, adequate accessibility and by improved overall health. The desire to exit this crysis has determined, throughout the majority of the European cities, new types of strategies, with objectives, development directions and clear measures, that are adopted, with small differences, all across the European Union, and that accentuate the importance of good governance at a European/national/regional/local level. From our point of view, however, good governance applied only to those four levels, as stated in the European documents, is not enough; we believe that the local level should be divided in a number of subunits. For the four initial levels of governance, the research methods are clearly formulated, according to the 2007 Leipzig Charta. Solving the problems regarding social exclusions, structural changes, the ageing of population, climate changes and mobility is the main theme of this European document, which hopes to lead to economic prosperity, social ballance and a healthy environment. In this document, the prosperity mentioned above depends on an increased attention paid to the subunits of the local level, which