Governing Urban Agriculture: : Internal, External and Contextual Factors

Abstract: ElectriCITY, a citizenship-driven economic association aims at making Hammarby Sjöstad the most climate-friendly district in Sweden. Their next step is to integrate urban agriculture into the neighborhood. Urban agriculture is, by definition, growing or producing food in a city. It allows, among other things, to increase access to locally grown food for the population nearby and to educate city dwellers on many aspects of agriculture. This project’s goal is to offer a large overview of urban agriculture and its different governance characteristics. In addition to the literature review and to have a better understanding of the relevant stakes of this field, the project was based on six different case studies that introduce various types of urban agriculture governance: SweGreen (Stockholm), Odlande Stadsbasarer (Stockholm), Nature Urbaine (Paris), the WandelGarten (Freiburg), the Tillsammansodling group of Viva (Gothenburg) and Greenhouse (Malmö). The study was built on desk studies, interviews, and two participant observations. It had a focus on the different governance characteristics of the urban agriculture approaches (internal, external, and contextual) based on a distinction between market-oriented projects and non-market-oriented ones. The findings showed similarities between the case studies on different points such as their approaches to sustainability or the need to have external partners and political support. They showed as well the importance to take into account the external and contextual factors for projects to be well-integrated into the urban system.