Agriculture has traditionally been the basis of Turkey's national economy. Capital Ankara is a special laboratory to view this sector's development, its politics, and transformation since the Republic's foundation in 1923. This chapter initially presents interrelated concepts, draws a thorough historical background of underlying national forces, and examines the present state of peri-urban agriculture over three cases from Ankara, where intensive, informal, and individual farming are applied. The chapter, while overviewing pressures created on the fringe areas and rural communities, mainly directs its attention on how these three cases will find place in the market for survival and for feeding the city. In conclusion, the tools of governance and planning, empowering rural–urban interactions, interconnected solutions of circular economy, and climate smart agriculture will be discussed, distinguishing agriculture as a vital sociocultural landscape with local know-how to be safeguarded cautiously, providing an important resilience for urban food security and environmental sustainability.

This chapter examines the shift in Cuba's agricultural sector following the collapse of the Soviet Union, from one based in industrial monoculture toward diversified agroecology with an emphasis on self-provisioning via urban agricultural production. It critically analyzes the flaws of industrialized agriculture framed within the context of the climate crisis and presents agroecology as a resilient alternative. It then looks at Cuban agriculture and highlights the changes that occurred following the fall of the Soviet Union. These include a restructuring of national agricultural education, an expansion of agricultural collectives, and the widespread practice of urban agriculture. This chapter concludes that the combination of a process of decentralization, collaboration between governmental and nongovernmental institutions, and the implementation of an extensive peer-to-peer education system were the key factors facilitating Cuba's recovery from agricultural and economic crisis—and highlights them as potential strategies for transitioning toward agroecology elsewhere in the world.

The Protestant Reformation in 1536 and its expulsion of the Catholic clergy and expropriation of its huge landholdings in northern Europe laid the legal foundation and subsequent rise of urban agriculture. Parts of the land were namely transferred to the boroughs and provided as a payment to the mayors, aldermen, brewers, etc., for upholding their duties and loyalty to the King. In the same period, the fiction ‘Utopia’ (1516) became a landmark and a change in the western literature of visions for a new ideal society. Together with the persecutions of Protestants in the rest of Europe, and many refugees following in the wake, the book gave inspiration to the establishment of new religious and urban agriculture–based communities in both Europe and America. The Enlightenment period (18th century), with its idea of progress, provided new perceptions on society that the existing social and world order was no longer God-given. Poverty and misery of the poor were remediable and no longer accepted as part of a natural order. Hence, poverty gardens were established around Europe, and later in the wake of early industrialization utopian socialist visions of ideal work and community organization started to emerge around company towns parallel with allotment gardens in the periphery of the expanding cities of Europe and growing working classes. Model company towns such as Port Sunlight (1888) and Bournville (1895) were influential in regard to their building and planning innovation and had a significant impact on the Garden City movement from 1902. The Garden City's mix of social and urban planning, with a perfect blend of city and nature, provided an alternative to the slums and social misery of capitalism and became an important part of the Labor movement's community housing policies during the 20th century. Their visions and heritage of creating new urban agriculture–based utopias lends inspirations to present-day “eco-villages, agrihoods, and city architecture integrating climate resilience with local food production and new modes of sustainable living.”

Interest in urban agriculture is growing. Yet despite its popularity barriers remain, preventing widespread uptake, especially for productive commercial urban agriculture. Stadsbruk is a method developed to foster dynamic commercial urban agriculture movements in Swedish cities. The method uses a brokering organization to: facilitate communication between urban farmers and municipalities; provide training programs for municipalities and farmers; support farmers to access municipal land for growing; and build networks of municipalities and other key actors involved in commercial urban agriculture. In this chapter, we use the city of Malmö as an example to show how Stadsbruk farms have the potential to make a substantial contribution to the city's self-sufficiency in terms of fresh vegetable provision. We then explain how Stadsbruk amplifies commercial urban agriculture by creating more resilient movements in the cities where it operates, increases the speed at which commercial urban agriculture is taken up, and thereby grows the movement itself. As such, the Stadsbruk network and its underlying principles have begun to spread across Europe. Importantly, Stadsbruk is influencing policy and shifting public perceptions of urban agriculture. While the method is promising, there continue to be many institutional barriers to more widespread success, and this is compounded because attempts to gain legitimacy through demonstrating impact can be thwarted by methodological challenges. As commercial urban agriculture is amplified, social and ecological sustainability values must be prioritized to ensure that it remains a genuine contributor to sustainability.

In the context of urban–rural linkages, urban food systems offer multiple sustainability opportunities. This chapter focuses on: (1) Change-enabling policy initiatives such as the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the New Urban Agenda; (2) Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design; (3) Cross-regional stakeholder engagement through city region food systems including education opportunities to sensitize the public (especially children) about food as a basis for sustainability; and (4) Considering food systems in more nuanced way by exploring the rejection of eating meat. This scan points out that more attention is needed on land use in and around cities that includes agroecology as a key focus can be activated through multiscale/actor responsible governance by weaving together cities with their regions. Urban planning is also insufficiently covered in existing literature, training programs, and localized practices. How food is produced, processed, distributed, consumed, recovered, and wasted and how local food systems complement rural agricultural production are issues that relate closely to urban planning, which can be either an opportunity to feed cities better or an obstacle to making food systems work sustainably.

Vital natural resources are depleting and being wasted in today's industrialized and agricultural processes. Critical planetary boundaries have been transgressed with major effects on biodiversity loss and climate change. Necessary elements for our daily life such as nitrogen and phosphorus are being lost through household wastewater. The EU-funded project Living Architecture which is currently under development addresses these issues through a selectively programmable bioreactor that recovers phosphates, cleans water, and produces electricity. The Living Architecture system, to be realized in 2019 as a partition wall to be incorporated into existing buildings, is further speculated in design scenarios, including a remote research facility for extreme environments and for application into the urban context as infrastructure.

Due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 worldwide, it is necessary to rethink the way of producing vegetables taking advantage of free spaces at homes, since a large majority of the world's population have lost their jobs, and they need to generate income for their families. One way to grow plants at homes is through hydroponics or soilless culture. The rising urbanization results in a reduction of arable land and also leads to a higher demand for food in urban areas. As there is a considerable decrease in agricultural soils in the world, soilless culture would be an important production alternative in urban and peri-urban areas, mainly in undeveloped countries. The growth and future of hydroponics in undeveloped countries like Peru will much depend on the development and adaptation of less sophisticated commercial systems. Inside the context of urban agriculture, hydroponics could be well applied in the cities with more simple and low cost of technologies, mainly in extreme poverty areas, as a way to spread the vegetables for self-consumption and to support the family or community income, and also, to create microcompanies that will generate employments. In relation to the media used in soilless culture, there is not an ideal or optimum substrate, because it could be used as a great diversity media, as pure, or as mix form. Among the inorganic substrates it is possible to use quarry, river and quartz sand, gravel, and pumice. Husk rice, coco fiber, peat moss, and sawdust are used as organic media.

Aquaponics is a circular food production system that combines fish and plant cultivation. Its benefits can further the urban agriculture movement through sustainable food production, community support, and education. While the growing system is well understood, its prospective integration into cities, regional foodsheds, and circular economy require detailed consideration from both built environment and economic perspectives. The proliferation of aquaponic operations beyond backyard hobbyists has emerged recently as technology has evolved to support industrial scale production. In this context, existing operations are analyzed based on their technical attributes, economic viability, and sustainable benefits. Five key operation types are described and examples of each are discussed. The chapter concludes with a preliminary understanding of how urban aquaponics can contribute to sustainable food systems and further the regenerative aims of the circular city model.

This chapter explores the potential of community gardens in creating community capital and achieving food justice by drawing upon research on community-based urban agriculture. The Community Capitals Framework offers a useful distinction of the different principles that guide social, economic, cultural, natural, and political forms of capital that policymakers must recognize and support at the beginning of every community-based urban agriculture project. This chapter helps us understand the complex processes involved in growing healthy, sustainable, and just communities. It does so by bringing together previously disparate literature sources that have in common as a goal line to provide a comprehensive understanding of urban agriculture as an opportunity for economic, social, and environmental change at the community level.

Many cities currently focus on high-tech farming; but the future of urban food security depends on diverse strategies. Urban agriculture can take a variety of forms from small scale community gardens to medium scale urban farms to large scale food forests. Beyond the benefits of producing food and other resources, urban agriculture can be understood as a microsystem embedded in macro-scale economic, social, ecological and infrastructural systems of the city. This framing as embedded in the urban ‘system’ challenges cities to address urban agriculture not as a discrete activity, but as an important component of infrastructure and urban planning. I argue that there are innovative options across low to high tech approaches if we contextualize landscape types across the urban gradient. This chapter aims to categorize diverse opportunities across 10 landscape types for multifunctional urban land uses that integrate agriculture. Multifunctional land uses that integrate agriculturally productive landscapes will be a critical adaptation for the sustainability of future cities.