Compelling evidence of major health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, and outdoor interaction with 'greenspace' have emerged in the past decade - all of which combine to give major potential health benefits from 'grow-your-own' (GYO) in urban areas. However, neither current risk assessment models nor risk management strategies for GYO in allotments and gardens give any consideration to these health benefits, despite their potential often to more than fully compensate the risks. Although urban environments are more contaminated by heavy metals, arsenic, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins than most rural agricultural areas, evidence is lacking for adverse health outcomes of GYO in UK urban areas. Rarely do pollutants in GYO food exceed statutory limits set for commercial food, and few people obtain the majority of their food from GYO. In the UK, soil contamination thresholds triggering closure or remediation of allotment and garden sites are based on precautionary principles, generating 'scares' that may negatively impact public health disproportionately to the actual health risks of exposure to toxins through own-grown food. By contrast, the health benefits of GYO are a direct counterpoint to the escalating public health crisis of 'obesity and sloth' caused by eating an excess of saturated fats, inadequate consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables combined with a lack of exercise. These are now amongst the most important preventable causes of illness and death. The health and wider societal benefits of 'grow-your-own' thus reveal a major limitation in current risk assessment methodologies which, in only considering risks, are unable to predict whether GYO on particular sites will, overall, have positive, negative, or no net effects on human health. This highlights a more general need for a new generation of risk assessment tools that also predict overall consequences for health to more effectively guide risk management in our increasingly risk-averse culture.

This paper outlines pressures on agricultural land in periurban Kumasi, Ghana. A survey of agricultural practices underlines the recent and rapid transition from agricultural to urban land use in the periurban interface, and shows how farmers are reacting by reducing fallow periods. Farmers are also intensifying agriculture near streams and rivers through increased use of irrigation, in response to growing urban markets for a wider range of vegetables. We identify specific problems of water resource pollution and waste management, with particular reference to farmland irrigation. We report results of composting interventions as a community-based waste management strategy. We consider integrated organic waste recycling as a generic strategy to help protect periurban natural resources, to enhance food production through nutrient recycling, and to improve community sanitation.

Understanding of urban fringes or peri-urban interfaces (PUIs) as zones characterised by rapid transitional change and sprawling urbanisation has increased markedly over recent years. Archaeological evidence also illustrates the pivotal role that peri-urban zones once played in the survivability of ancient urban centres. Over the last three decades, urban growth and associated transitional changes have accelerated in most regions, producing major challenges to the development of resilient cities capable of absorbing climatic, economic and environmental shocks. Globalised processes of industrialisation and market interdependence have remoulded urban fringes, bringing increased environmental impacts, including the loss of natural resources and environmental buffers now recognised as essential for urban resilience. Furthermore, ongoing global environmental change (GEC) and increasing socio-economic inequality are generating new priorities as peri-urban zones consolidate, erode and shift outwards. Given the inadequacies of existing frameworks, we advocate a hybrid approach to PUI planning and design that draws on integrated, agropolitan-type perspectives embedded within a resilient, locally appropriate regional-urban focus within broader socio-spatial and geo-economic systems. Diverse historical and contemporary examples inform the discussion of the PUI planning and design and the identifi cation of policy recommendations for a hybrid planning approach based on adaptive capacity and resilience.

Refugee camps are born out of chaos and crisis, characterised as short-term responses with little in the way of planning for long-term living. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that within protracted refugee situations, all too often these camps morph into 'accidental cities', where an accelerated everyday urbanism transforms tents into streets lined with self-built homes. Within the camps of northern Iraq, displaced Syrian refugees are finding innovative ways to incorporate urban agriculture and agroforestry into these unintended but now permanent settlements. Largely unsupported and often in conflict with the initial disaster response planning for camps, Urban Agriculture (UA) flourishes at a household level, providing access to fresh food, healing spaces from trauma, and creative place-making practices. Using lessons learnt from three years of practical fieldwork developing and supporting UA in camps located in northern Iraq, this paper demonstrates that with or without institutional support home gardens emerge at every stage of camp development as a vital yet little-discussed and even less planned practice. The paper argues that refugee settlements, home to millions worldwide, need to be seen as both urban and permanent, with home gardening and agriculture as a core response at the point of crisis, or risk developing, by default, into unsustainable-slum-like-cities of the future.

The provision of Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH) is recognised by the UN as a human right. However, drainage is not. The lack of drainage leads to flooding and can impact on quality of life and human health. This is particularly true in the most vulnerable of populations who live in informal settlements, favelas and refugee camps. This paper shows the potential of sustainable drainage systems or SuDS to address issues of excess surface water and lack of greywater management in these challenging of environments. SuDS mimic nature by encouraging infiltration, storage and slow conveyance of water to attenuate the storm peak, reduce flooding, improve water quality and provide opportunities for amenity and biodiversity. A layer of complexity is added when considering disease vectors such as mosquitoes which may be prevalent in these environments. By encouraging water underground and reducing puddling of water between dwellings and on the street, their breeding sites are reduced, providing a means of reducing their impacts on health due to zika, dengue or chikungunya. Due to the lack of governance, land tenure and any form of planning, residents of informal settlements and favelas need to be actively engaged in improving the quality of their surroundings. Refugee camps, on the other hand, are formally set up by the UNHCR with WASH installed, thus there is potential to influence policy, to encourage installation of drainage at the same time as WASH so that WASH becomes WASH'D, possibly a first step in recognising drainage as a human right.