Revisiting the Sustainability Concept of Urban Food Production from a Stakeholders’ Perspective

Abstract

Urban Food Production (UFP) initiatives are expanding worldwide to enhance urban food production while contributing to the development of sustainable cities in a three-bottom perspective (environment, society, economy). Although the sustainability aspects of UFS have been addressed in the literature, there is a need to set a sustainability framework for UFP based on the concepts and the understanding of the stakeholders as a basis for quantifying their sustainability and for developing effective policy-making. This paper evaluates the concepts of the UFP sustainability from a stakeholders' perspective through participatory methods and network analyses. Two different workshops were organized in the city of Bologna (Italy), where mind-mapping exercises to define the environmental, economic and social sustainability elements of UFP were performed. This bottom-up approach unveiled a comprehensive and complex vision of sustainable UFP, the relevance of certain sustainability elements and key aspects to take into consideration for the development of UFP and effective policy-making. The existence of bidimensional and tridimensional concepts indicated priorities, synergies and trade-offs among the dimensions of sustainability. The multi-scalar nature of UFP suggested that specific policies can be supported by global schemes (e.g., Sustainable Development Goals) and that UFP can be a local tool for democracy and equity at lower scales.

How Can Innovation in Urban Agriculture Contribute to Sustainability? A Characterization and Evaluation Study from Five Western European Cities

“…Finally, the survey respondents were asked to identify whether different sustainability aspects (both positive and negative) are observed in their UA activities. The list of sustainability aspects was adapted from the stakeholder-based study of Sanyé-Mengual et al [15] and included the following: 19 environmental benefits, five environmental risks, 20 social benefits, five social risks, 16 economic benefits, and four economic risks. Due to the completeness of the list of sustainability elements and the involvement of stakeholders in the definition of sustainability aspects, this study was chosen as the basis for assessing sustainability.…”

“…Reduced food transportation and reduced food waste were highlighted as a benefit in studies employing life cycle assessment (LCA), where the entire supply chain of products is evaluated [61,62]. Depending on the type of UA, the product and the agronomic practices, such reductions result in the decrease of the environmental impact in the LCA indicators related to carbon emissions and air pollution associated with the food product [15,25,62,63]. However, the logistics of UA can lead to less efficient distribution models (e.g., smaller truck capacity, consumer transportation to the farm or to the pick-up point), and the environmental benefits depend on the logistics model implemented in each specific case [64].…”

Measuring Progress in Sustainable Food Cities: An Indicators Toolbox for Action

“…Finally, there are few contributions around urban food system assessments. To date, an important part of the urban food literature has concentrated on evaluating the contribution of urban agriculture to sustainability [42][43][44] This expanding body of work evaluates the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability of urban food production, with a particular focus on developing quantitative assessment methods. For example, this includes determining whether cities can become self-reliant on food and its associated sustainability and health benefits [45] or quantifying the contribution of home gardening to urban food security and its environmental impact [21].…”

“…The framework so far has only been applied to Cardiff and Bristol, however, there is potential for data gaps to be filled as more cities conduct this exercise and identify new or alternative data sources or methods to capture these. Furthermore, there are a number of exercises in place developing urban food indicators (see for example the Milan Food Policy Pacy Monitoring Framework), as well as quantitative academic contributions particularly around urban agriculture [43][44][45]. While in this paper we have relied on key literature (see Section 2), in order to continue advancing in the development of sustainability assessment frameworks, it is paramount to develop mechanisms that facilitate the crossfertilisation of different exercises, associated data and their related conceptual and practical advances.…”

Could Social Farming Be a Strategy to Support Food Sovereignty in Europe?

“…In the former, it is related with Third Sector (TS) activities in properties near or in Natural Protected Areas (NPA), with activities of residents' associations or the local administration taking the form of urban gardens in publicly-owned land, or projects related with TS entities [6,7]. Although recent years have seen a considerable increase in urban agriculture (UA) in Europe and North America [8], there is growing concern around making sure that it is sustainable [9]. Studies of local food growing systems in Spain [10] reveal that owing to the spatial distribution of small ventures such as peri-urban gardens, it is more difficult to ensure that they are sustainable.…”