Urban Agriculture as the Path to Sustainable City Development. Insights into Allotment Gardens in Andalusia

Abstract

Increasing demand for urban agriculture (UA) can be perceived as a global phenomenon. In some parts of the world its main function is to feed the rapidly growing population while in others it is more associated with lifestyle and environmental issues. Undeniably, UA provides opportunities for sustainable city development. UA can support all pillars of sustainable development: ecological, economic, and social. However, depending on existing circumstances certain pillars may be influenced more than others. In this paper we concentrate on urban allotments in Andalusia and take Baeza as an example of a city with an interesting approach to urban gardening. We attempt to answer the question how urban allotments in Baeza affect the city’s sustainable development and what remains to be done to make this influence more effective. Our study showed that allotment gardens in Baeza endorsed all three pillars of sustainable city development. However, developing broader community relations on the city scale, revival of declining local grocery market and dissemination of environmental initiatives which allotment gardens may also promote and facilitate was missing.

Promoting Urban Agriculture and Its Opportunities and Challenges—A Global Review

“…Government support for urban agriculture practices was recorded in only 16 articles (Table S1). These supports include institutional support (e.g., interagency collaboration and linking with municipal council projects) [5,37,48], integrating urban agriculture into urban planning [26,49,50], creating legislation for urban agriculture [33,51], providing irrigation facilities [52,53], providing suitable lands [47,50,53], providing gardening material [50], providing training [52], informal political support [34,47], market creation [43], providing grants [54], and support for guerilla gardening [55]. This support had given through municipal councils or relevant government agencies.…”

“…Regarding the special benefited groups, only 16 articles [27,28,31,33,34,36,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] have recorded such specific benefited groups from particular urban agriculture practices, which include older adults, migrants, low-income people, disabled people, people with mental disorders, school children, cancer patients, and women (Table S1). However, the Health and emotional benefits were recorded more than twice as much in developed countries [17,26,27,36,[38][39][40]46,47,49,50,52,53,[56][57][58][59][60][61] compared to developing countries [29,59,[62][63][64][65][66] (Table 2). The top three health and emotional sub-categories recorded in developed countries are food nutrition and quality, connection with nature, physical activity, and mental relaxation.…”

“…Recording of environmental education sub-categories has similar frequencies in both developed and developing countries (Figure 5c). There is no significant difference in recording economic benefits between developed [5,28,30,[32][33][34]36,38,39,[47][48][49]53,54,56,57,61,[69][70][71] and developing countries [9,12,21,22,31,[42][43][44]59,[62][63][64][65][66][67][68]72] (Table 2). However, a distinction can be observed among recordings of different sub-categories.…”

Constructing Organic Food through Urban Agriculture, Community Gardens in Seville

“…Faced with this model of urbanisation and its economic and social consequences [12], initiatives launched by social collectives and movements, including the emergence of social and community gardens, as new forms of UA, began to emerge in Spain in the 1990s [3]. This phenomenon, which is partly inspired by other UA references from around the world, is analysed by a whole raft of research and critical studies that highlight its nature as an alternative to ecological and socio-economic unsustainability, and its involvement in the production and social reproduction of a more human urban habitat [3,[13][14][15][16]. This entails, among other things, understanding social participation in the design, management, and control of gardens as examples of generating local governance possibilities [17].…”

“…In this analysis of meanings, we will examine their interpretations and redefinitions of the ecology and nature present in the practices of community allotment gardeners in-depth. The opinions expressed by UA gardeners with regard to ecology have been addressed in detail in relation to their degree of awareness or commitment to ecology [16,33]. Our contribution to this specific point, rather than focusing on detecting such levels of ecological commitment, seeks to understand the roots that determine the meaning of such practices.…”