Accepting abstracts for our session called ‘Cultivating urban agriculture: Assessing success’
For instance, many cities in North America have put forth that using temporarily vacant land for urban agriculture solves two problems at once: limited land availability and the unattractive nature of vacant lots.
The 9th Nordic Geographers Meeting
Joensuu, Finland
Abstracts (350 words) are due on October 29th, 2021
Excerpt:
Cultivating urban agriculture: Assessing success
As the majority of people come to live in cities, urban agriculture has taken up a more important place in sustainable city discourses. In addition to its capacity to contribute to food security, especially with regards to fresh fruits and vegetables, urban agriculture can have positive social, economic, and environmental outcomes. However, a body of critical work is emerging highlighting that while these positive outcomes have been demonstrated in some cases, in other cases urban agriculture can be a tokenistic expression of sustainability, and one which benefits the sensibilities of the elite more than the environment or society at large. It is vital that we have a better understanding of what contributions urban agriculture can actually make to well-being and a just urban sustainability if it is to be taken seriously.
In order to meet these ideals and maximise desired benefits it is essential to track outcomes over time. Without information on performance it is not possible to adapt management practices. Similarly, without monitoring, learning from other projects and locations is challenging. In particular, rapidly growing and large cities of the Global South often have more experience with diverse forms of urban agriculture from which the Global North could learn a great deal from. For instance, many cities in North America have put forth that using temporarily vacant land for urban agriculture solves two problems at once: limited land availability and the unattractive nature of vacant lots. However, experiences in some areas of the Global South would indicate that insecure land tenure which actually one of the barriers to sustainable management and taking full advantage of urban agriculture.
Goals and outcomes are different in different parts of the world, however without assessing impact within and as it relates to specific contexts, it will be difficult to enable cross-context learning. To address this need, several tool kits have been developed to assess urban agriculture and the sustainability of urban food systems. These initiatives show considerable promise, but to date their uptake is not commensurate with the apparent demand and need to assess urban agriculture, and it is unclear why this is so. As more cities invest in formal urban food system planning with urban agriculture as a fixture, it becomes even more important to select and measure indicators that can support nimble investment and policy adaptation.
In this session we will critically discuss how the impact of urban agricultural and food initiatives have been, or could be, assessed. The focus is on exploring this issue through the pluralistic nature of geographic sub-disciplines and case study cities, because urban food system plans and projects are diverse and multifunctional. We welcome theoretical contributions, but also encourage empirical contributions using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, especially contributions that consider impact assessment in multiple ways, including through pluralistic epistemologies and methodologies, as well as both process-oriented and outcome-oriented assessments. Questions related to the process of impact assessment, how such assessments serve a purpose and for whom, as well as the barriers to assessment are also welcome.
