Socio-economic and urban form characteristics driving urban agriculture development: A spatial analysis across 11 large European cities

Urban agriculture (UA) is a multifunctional land use that is thought to enhance urban resilience and sustainability while promoting community cohesion and connection to nature. However, its spatial emergence may have led to an inequitable distribution of these services due to largely unexplained factors driving its development. This study aims to uncover the conditions that might enable UA at a 1 km² scale in 11 large European cities. UA initiatives were mapped for each city based on a systematic manual web scrape. Negative binomial regression models were used to test the spatial relationship between UA count per km² and 14 socio-economic, land use, and urban form explanatory variables. The model was run separately for each city and then on the full dataset, uncovering differences within and between the cities. The intercity model suggests that UA is more likely found in greener, central neighbourhoods with lower property prices and lower proportions of locally born residents. The cities vary notably in their individual models, although the most common predictors also indicate that UA is found closer to the city centre and is often associated with urban green spaces (UGS). This may imply that coexistence of UA and UGS enhances and diversifies ecosystem services while protecting UA as a temporary land use. It also suggests that UA benefits community-seeking people living in the dense city centre without private gardens. However, there is not a consistent set of factors that imply UA presence, indicating other social and policy factors might be at play.