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

In recent years, urban agriculture is asserting its relevance in a vibrant and diverse food system for its small scale, its focus on nutrition and community building, its contribution to food security, and its possibility for employment 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 or rooftops. Consistently, all spaces that present a lack of identity may be converted to urban agriculture 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 landscape and life quality. To do so, the city of Bologna (Italy) was used as case study. Four types of vacant areas were identified as places for implementing urban gardens: flowerbeds along street 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 observation and interviews) and performing a SWOT analysis. For most cases, urban horticulture improved the image and the quality of the areas as well as brought social benefits regarding 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 regarding the engagement of citizens. Policy-making might focus on participatory and transparent planning, long-term actions, food safety and economic development.