In recent years, urban agriculture (UA) projects have bloomed throughout the world, finding large applications also in the developed economies of the so-called Global North. As compared to projects in developing countries, where research has mainly targeted the contribution to food security, UA in the Global North has a stronger multifunctional connotation, and results in multiple combinations of farming purposes and business models pursued. The present review paper explores the contribution and role that UA plays in cities from the Global North, defining its functionalities toward ecosystem services (ES) provisioning and analyzing the factors that hinders and promote its regional diffusion and uptake. The manuscript integrates a description of UA growing systems, as well opportunities for crop diversification in the urban environment, and a comprehensive classification of UA business models. The distinctive features in terms of business models, farming purposes and farm size are then applied over an inventory of 470 UA projects in the Global North, allowing for a characterization and comparative analysis of distribution frequency of the different project typologies.

Features and Functions of Multifunctional Urban Agriculture in the Global North: A Review

Orsini, Francesco
Writing – Original Draft Preparation
;
Pennisi, Giuseppina
Data Curation
;
Michelon, Nicola
Investigation
;
Minelli, Alberto
Membro del Collaboration Group
;
Bazzocchi, Giovanni
Membro del Collaboration Group
;
Sanyé-Mengual, Esther
Data Curation
;
Gianquinto, Giorgio
Supervision
2020

Abstract

In recent years, urban agriculture (UA) projects have bloomed throughout the world, finding large applications also in the developed economies of the so-called Global North. As compared to projects in developing countries, where research has mainly targeted the contribution to food security, UA in the Global North has a stronger multifunctional connotation, and results in multiple combinations of farming purposes and business models pursued. The present review paper explores the contribution and role that UA plays in cities from the Global North, defining its functionalities toward ecosystem services (ES) provisioning and analyzing the factors that hinders and promote its regional diffusion and uptake. The manuscript integrates a description of UA growing systems, as well opportunities for crop diversification in the urban environment, and a comprehensive classification of UA business models. The distinctive features in terms of business models, farming purposes and farm size are then applied over an inventory of 470 UA projects in the Global North, allowing for a characterization and comparative analysis of distribution frequency of the different project typologies.
2020
Orsini, Francesco; Pennisi, Giuseppina; Michelon, Nicola; Minelli, Alberto; Bazzocchi, Giovanni; Sanyé-Mengual, Esther; Gianquinto, Giorgio
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Descrizione: Supplementary Table 1. Cropped area, farming purpose (Thomaier et al., 2015) and business models (Pölling et al., 2015) in selected UA projects in the Global North.
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Descrizione: Supplementary Table 2. A cell by cell comparison of the standardized residuals for the contingency table for the relation between business model and class of project dimensions (n=399). The three components of each cell from top to bottom are the observed counts, the percentage (%) of the total count, and (in italic) the standardized residuals. The cells with standardized residuals in bold font are those that exceeded the corresponding z-value of the Bonferroni-adjusted alpha at significance 0.05 (in this case α= 0.001 with z-value = +/- 3.28 after adjustment).
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Descrizione: Supplementary Table 3. A cell by cell comparison of the standardized residuals for the contingency table for the relation between farming purpose and class of projects dimension (n=407). The three components of each cell from top to bottom are the observed counts, the percentage (%) of the total count, and (in italic) the standardized residuals. The cells with standardized residuals in bold font are those that exceeded the corresponding z-value of the Bonferroni-adjusted alpha at significance 0.05 (in this case α= 0.001 with z-value = +/- 3.28 after adjustment).
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/780533
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