FOODCITYBOOST: integrated assessment of urban farming impacts and policies for boosting sustainable urban agricultural development linking urban, peri-urban and rural areas

FOODCITYBOOST aims to develop a knowledge based decision-support system integrating evidence-based indicators of urban agriculture’s environmental, social, and economic impacts, alongside policy guidance. It will evaluate existing urban agriculture impacts and potential future scenarios, while exploring new innovative models. With local actors of six cities-regions across Europe, FOODCITYBOOST adopts a living labs approach. This approach is supportive in the leverage of unique regional experiences and policies to EU level and vice versa. Consisting of 20 partners from 9 countries the project brings together expertise in social, environmental and economical sciences, and policies across Europe, which will ensure a diverse but coherent perspective on (peri-) urban agriculture and its future.

Such a coherent perspective will contribute to new multi-level policies of urban food system innovation. These new policies are needed. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, like community gardens, vertical farms or urban farms, emerges as a potential alternative route of food production by concomitantly addressing climate change mitigation, resource efficiency, social cohesion and economic opportunities while reconnecting urban and rural areas. However this alternative route is not always recognised as such. Policy-makers and urban planners, at multi-levels, urgently seek an understanding of the benefits and risks of urban agriculture to shape effective governance. It is FOODCITYBOOST’s aim to provide them with tailormade information on the impact of urban agriculture across Europe.

Wageningen Plant Research-field crops is one of the 20 partners of FOODCITYBOOST. It coordinates Work Package 2, the assessing and appraising of the social, environmental and economical impact of urban agriculture. More over it is closely involved in work of one of the six living labs of the project: Flevo Campus.