Analyzing perceptions of urban agriculture's contributions to sustainable city development

Implementing urban agriculture could reduce several urban inconveniences, such as biodiversity loss, food insecurity, health issues, and local economic decline, thereby supporting the sustainability of modern cities. The research investigates inhabitants' awareness of urban agriculture in three major cities in western Romania. The survey was built around three main hypotheses. It examined correlations between age groups, professional status, and several aspects of urban sustainability, using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Tukey range test to establish confidence intervals for matched sets in SPSS-IBM. Urban agriculture is largely perceived as a food source and as a contributor to the “food short chain” concept. Significant differences emerged across age groups in the effect of implementing urban agriculture on the availability of foods containing fresh cereals, vegetables, and fruit. There was no disagreement about its positive therapeutic and health impact on city dwellers, with 80.0% considering this to a very large or large extent. However, notable differences emerged across occupational status categories in their impact on poverty reduction, social exclusion reduction, well-being improvement, and employment growth. The study also examined the structure of social perceptions of urban agriculture's role in urban ecosystem sustainability using an exploratory factor analysis. Combined with a biplot, this analysis identified latent dimensions shaping these perceptions and showed how respondents conceptually associate environmental, social, and economic benefits.