Towards Regenerated and Productive Vacant Areas through Urban Horticulture: Lessons from Bologna, Italy

Abstract

Abstract:In recent years, urban agriculture has been asserting its relevance as part of a vibrant and diverse food system due to its small scale, its focus on nutrition, its contribution to food security, its employment opportunities, and its role in community building and social mobility. Urban agriculture may also be a tool to re-appropriate a range of abandoned or unused irregular spaces within the city, including flowerbeds, roundabouts, terraces, balconies and rooftops. Consistently, all spaces that present a lack of identity may be converted to urban agriculture areas and, more specifically, to urban horticulture as a way to strengthen resilience and sustainability. The goal of this paper is to analyse current practices in the requalification of vacant areas as urban gardens with the aim of building communities and improving landscapes and life quality. To do so, the city of Bologna (Italy) was used as a case study. Four types of vacant areas were identified as places for implementing urban gardens: flowerbeds along streets and squares, balconies and rooftops, abandoned buildings and abandoned neighbourhoods. Six case studies representing this variety of vacant areas were identified and evaluated by collecting primary data (i.e., field work, participant observations and interviews) and performing a SWOT analysis. For most cases, urban horticulture improved the image and quality of the areas as well as bringing numerous social benefits in terms of life quality, food access and social interaction among participants. Strong differences in some aspects were found between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, being the later preferable for the engagement of citizens. Policy-making might focus on participatory and transparent planning, long-term actions, food safety and economic development.

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

“…The recent development of UA has included new urban food production forms, such as the integration of agriculture in and on buildings [14,55]. In Bologna, several UA experiences were deployed by the city council or developed by the citizens to regenerate urban spaces [56]. Some of the assessed experiences take place on roofs (S1, T5, T6) and within greenhouses (T2, T3, T4).…”

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

“…Therefore, understanding the perceptions and values of stakeholders can support the identification of relevant aspects of sustainability [9,53]. Bottom-up processes can reinforce the development of policies and actions that are supported and shared by the community [54], thereby enhancing governance and integrating citizens as being co-responsible and co-creators of a "collaborative development" [9]. In the case of UFP, Gasperi et al [55] unveiled the conflicting top-down and bottom-up implementation processes of urban agriculture in vacant areas in the city of Bologna (Italy), where top-down projects were not participatory and resulted in unsuccessful initiatives that did not respond to community expectations and needs.…”

Informal Urban Green Space: Residents’ Perception, Use, and Management Preferences across Four Major Japanese Shrinking Cities

“…This raises the question of how local governments can procure additional green space areas, not least to adapt to climate change, rising temperatures and associated heat waves. Cities in North America and Europe have been looking toward participative vacant land management to meet residents' needs [10][11][12][13][14]. However, despite introducing participative management for formal green spaces since the 1990s [15], local governments in Japan have been slow to explore this direction for non-traditional green spaces.…”