Abstract
Urbanization and achieving sustainable agriculture are both major societal challenges. By reducing food miles and connecting people with nature, food cultivation in cities has several major advantages. However, due to further urban development (peri-) urban agriculture (UPA) is under threat. To strengthen UPA, we argue for considering UPA as a nature-based solution (NbS) supporting systemic approaches for societal challenges. However, academic knowledge on UPA’s contribution to various societal challenges of urbanization is still fragmented. This study addresses the gap by conducting a systemic literature review, incorporating 166 academic articles focusing on the global north. The results of the review show that UPA contributes to ten key societal challenges of urbanization: climate change, food security, biodiversity and ecosystem services, agricultural intensification, resource efficiency, urban renewal and regeneration, land management, public health, social cohesion, and economic growth. The value of UPA is its multifunctionality in providing social, economic and environmental co-benefits and ecosystem services. When implementing UPA, social, institutional, economic, technical, geographical, and ecological drivers and constraints need to be considered. To upscale UPA successfully, the study develops an integrative assessment framework for evaluating the implementation and impact efficiency of UPA. This framework should be tested based on the example of edible cities.
Highlights
Worldwide cities are spatially expanding twice as fast as the urban population [1]
To strengthen UPA, we argue for considering UPA as a nature-based solution (NbS) supporting systemic approaches for societal challenges
Through UPA’s multidimensional benefits and contribution to societal challenges, such as decreasing food risk, we argue that urban food supply through UPA can be considered as an urban nature-based solution (NbS)
Summary
Worldwide cities are spatially expanding twice as fast as the urban population [1]. Since land and soil are limited resources, the ongoing trend of urbanization will further increase competition between different kinds of land use such as settlement, transport areas, and arable land [2]. Forests, (industrial) rooftop gardens, residential and community gardens, containers on balconies, vacant land, edible landscaping, vertical edible green infrastructure as well as marine and freshwater systems are spaces for urban food products [6,7,8,9]. These different forms of UPA produce a broad variety of foods related to plants and animals (e.g., vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk) depending on climate conditions, existing technologies, and cultural preferences [8]. Between 15–20% of the world’s food is produced in cities worldwide [10]
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