TU1201 - Urban Allotment Gardens in European Cities - Future, Challenges and Lessons Learned

The main objective of the Action is to create a research platform on which Allotment Gardens (AG) and their relevance for sustainable urban development in Europe will be comprehend and managed, and also their impacts from social, ecological and urban design perspectives will be studied. During the last 20 years, there can be seen both, a revival of interest in AG by urban residents especially in large cities and a simultaneous competition from other kinds of land use. The multi-character and partly contradictory nature of the AG makes it a relevant issue to be studied within different European urban contexts. Through selected case studies and in-depth research (into the areas of policy and urban development, sociology, ecology, urban design), the initiative will showcase the state-of-the-art, challenges and opportunities. The relevance and potential of AG for urban development so far has not been studied from a European perspective. The Action will contribute to a better understanding of framing conditions for policy measurements in different European countries through different outputs such as the development of a Comparative Rating System.