Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Food justice and citizen-driven governance of urban agriculture. Assessing the co-creative design of multi-stakeholder governance of urban agriculture initiatives." "Ingrid Moons" "Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change, Marketing" "Food justice and citizen-driven governance of urban agriculture. Assessing the co-creative design of multi-stakeholder governance of urban agriculture initiatives Food has been absent as a concern for urban studies. This proposal reframes food as an urban question through a focus on citizen-driven governance of urban agriculture (UA) and its role in stimulating food justice. UA is a fast developing field and challenges top-down as well as bottom-up urban planning. This project responds to the need to improve our understanding of how multi-stakeholder governance models can be designed to enhance UA's contribution to food justice. The proposed research consists of three research phases. It starts with an overview of the state of the art literature from social sciences (sociology and political sciences), economic sciences (marketing and human behaviour) and design sciences (service design, design for complex systems). All influential parameteres are mapped into a digital system. The second research phases starts by mapping all urban agricultural initiatives in Flandres, based on the research outcomes and variables from the first research phase. A semi-qualitative research is set up (n=50) to evaluate the existing initiatives on their strenghts and weakenesses (eg. actors involved, contribution to food fairness, use of open spaces). The aim is to gain insights in the way citizens and other stakeholders govern urban agricultural initiatives and with what kind of mechanisms concerning inclusion and exclusion they are confronted. The third research phase consists of a co-creative seven steps design process (alternation of workshops, field research, concept development, concept testing) that gives input for the governance and the creation of three urban agricultural initiatives. The aim of this Participatory Research (PAR) phase is to gain insight in the complexity of governance processes by means of initiating co-creative interventions (common problem, common goal, common value creation) and to learn from their effects. The three studies will result in a report with recommendations to enrich the existing literature. The researchers aim to publish four scientific articles. Given the scope of the proposed research, the researchers moreover aim for a wider validation and desimilation of the results." "Governance of urban agriculture in a comparative perspective : a sociological analysis" "Joost Dessein, Elke Rogge" "Rural Development, Social Sciences" "Main research question/goalIn this project, we analyze how the phenomenon of urban agriculture in four western cities is developed and managed, and to what degree the (different) context leads to a different type of urban agriculture, with differences in degree of innovation and professionalization. In a number of urban regions, urban agriculture is appearing as an alternative production, distribution and consumption system alongside rural agriculture. The actors and policy representatives link this phenomenon to the sustainable development of cities. By comparing four contexts, we strive for explanations and insight into our own (Flemish) context, and we hope to arrive at recommendations regarding integration (in the urbanized region and with the rural production apparatus), innovation, and professionalism.Research approachWe use a comparative case study research of four European contexts in western and eastern Europe. To achieve a better understanding in how urban agriculture is being governed, data is collected concerning governance, development processes, information and knowledge dissemination, and social networks. The analysis is carried out using a variety of qualitative methods so that all the relevant data in the research can be analyzed in the most effective way. For each case interviews and focus groups are organized for stakeholders and pioneers. Content analysis is done from formal (policy documents) and informal documents (media sources like internet sources, newspapers, etc.) From these empirical observations, we derivel a theoretical framework that is useful for our own context. The analysis ultimately leads to a evaluative comparison of the cases. This comparison of different contexts will supply recommendations on “best management practices” for stakeholders and policy workers.  Relevance/ValorisationA content analysis of the collected data will result in recommendations for 'best management practices' for stakeholders and policy makers in the selected cases.  More specific and concrete knowledge about the context of reference makes that we no longer have to depend on findings from other research that have little to do with the context to which we wish to refer.  If, in the different cases, there are different discourses and management practices observed, it can be analyzed whether this also affects the outcomes for urban agriculture.  Explanations can be sought, for example, for the following questions: Why are urban agriculture innovations in the case of Ghent nearly nonexistent (in contrast to other cases)? What are the preconditions for innovations and professionalization of urban agriculture? In addition, it is the goal of this inductive research to translate the empirical observations into assumptions and then to develop a theoretical frame. The theoretical frame will then make a contribution to the disciplines of sociology and public administration." "The Resilience of Urban Agriculture in Industrialising Societies: a social-agrosystemic approach applied on 19th-century Belgium." "Tim Soens" "Centre for Urban History" "Urban agriculture in periods of rapid urban growth is confronted with the encroachment of urban open space, but also with more mouths to be fed. Previous studies could not explain why urban agriculture disappeared in some areas and survived in others, because they either focused on one aspect of it (like market gardening) or studied only one city and ignored household economics. My hypothesis is that a fuller understanding of urban agriculture can only be obtained by accounting for the social organisation of urban food production. Therefore, I propose the analytic tool of 'Social Urban-Agricultural Systems' (SUAS), in which income strategies of different categories of urban food producers in correspondence to several macro-conditions, determined the resilience of urban agriculture in a particular urban context. 19th-century Belgium as the first industrialising country on the Continent is an ideal case to study urban food production strategies in different types of cities. The SUAS-concept will be tested by scrutinising the impact of macro-conditions (access to land, size and shape of a city, a city's economic orientation, type of nearby agro-system, transport improvements and market access) at country-level (based on census data), and further clarified by a micro-investigation at household level (by probate inventories in sample years and cities) to explain how different configurations of urban food production answered the challenges and opportunities of urban growth. -" "Urban agriculture as an alternative to classic green structures in an urbanized environment: economic and spatial analysis." "Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change, Product development, Marketing, Centre on Inequality, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City" "Research objective: which economic models are suitable for maintaining the open green space in an urbanized environment in a profitable way via urban agriculture? How can economically profitable green structures be built into an urbanized environment?" "Urban agriculture in Brussels" "Nature & Society, Nature and society" "Brussels Environment wishes to objectify the chances and limits of agro-ecological farming in urban green areas. On the basis of inland and foreign experiences, a SWOT-analysis of a selection of cases will be conducted. The results will be discussed with Brussels stakeholders, in order to identify opportunities for Brussels." "Informal public governance: The cases of primary education and urban agriculture in peri-urban Kinshasa (DRC)." "Tom De Herdt" "Poverty and well-being as a (local) institutional process" "After a period of transition and civil war, the development priority goes to the reconstruction of the state structures. Yet, throughout the years, a system of 'informal' governance has been founded, which is accepted by the population and by the state. This research focuses on these forms of local governance in interaction with the existing and newly created state policy. Sectors of research are primary education and urban agriculture." "Agriculture and open space in the urban region Gent" "Eva Kerselaers, Joost Dessein, Elke Rogge" "Rural Development, Social Sciences" "Main research question/goalFor its new spatial structure plan “Space for Ghent – Structure vision 2030”, the city of Ghent has requested information on the agricultural activities in Ghent. What area is currently being used for agricultural activities in Ghent? Which trends do we see? Which needs do farmers have and what are the spatial implications? What area will still be available for agriculture in 2030? In order to answer these questions, Ghent commissioned ILVO and the consultancy offices of SumResearch and Paul de Graaf to develop a vision on agriculture in and around the city of Ghent in 2030, and to translate this spatially.Research approachFor this research, we first mapped the current agricultural activities by means of GIS analysis and available farm data. Through a forum, workshops, site visits and interviews, we asked stakeholders about the threats and opportunities for agriculture in and around Ghent. In a second phase of the research, we used five spatial cases to provide input in discussions with stakeholders. Starting from the concrete cases, policy recommendations for a sustainable Ghent have been formulated.Relevance/ValorisationThe city of Ghent intends to use the research results as input for its new spatial structure plan “Space for Ghent – Structure vision 2030”. This new plan should help the city to tackle the spatial planning challenges within the city limits. The new plan should also contribute to reaching the ambition of being a climate neutral city in 2050. Central concepts are sustainability, interweaving and diversity. The research report (in Dutch) can be downloaded at the website of the city of Ghent. (see link below) A brochure with the most important results can be ordered with sofie.claeys@ilvo.vlaanderen.be" "Monitoring agricultural land conversion induced by urban sprawl and transportation in Northeast Iran (MONALISA-T)" "Proper monitoring can restrict agricultural land conversion (ALC) and direct urban expansion to desired ways that protect fertile agricultural lands. This project aimed at monitoring ALC induced by urban sprawl and transportation in Northeast Iran ending up with different scenarios of urban expansion and transportation. The study showed how urban sprawl and transportation modes can result in different ALC patterns." "Medieval urban agricultural land use in Flanders and Brabant (6th-13th centuries AD): phytolith research as a novel tool for the understanding of cultivated soils in towns" "Christophe Snoeck, Barbora Wouters" "History, Archeology, Arts, Philosophy and Ethics" "This proposal focuses on medieval agricultural urban land use in Flanders and Brabant. The overarching goal is to answer longstanding questions on the role and practice of agriculture in medieval town development. On the one hand, the project aims to investigate the cultivated crops on urban medieval fieldson one hand, and soil intensification processes on the other. In addition, the spatial evolution of these urban fields is investigated to contribute to our understanding of medieval urbanization processes. The methods used derive from archaeobotany and geoarchaeology. Phytolith research (the investigation of microskeletons of plant tissues) and micromorphological research (the study of thin sections of undisturbed soils and sediments under the microscope) are applied. The project is innovative from a methodological perspective as well as from an archaeological one. It is the first study that will systematically combine two complementary methods: 1) the study of extracted phytoliths from bulk samples, which is a traditional method used in phytolith research; 2) the study of phytoliths in soil thin sections, a less frequently applied method with many benefits. From an archaeological perspective, the study will contribute new data from these archaeological sciences to the research of medieval urbanism and urban agriculture fields that have previously predominantly been studied based on historical datasets." "FLEXIBI:Small-scale flexi-feed biorefineries: experimental evaluation and development of a decision support tool devoted to agricultural and industrial urban and peri-urban wastes" "Jan Van Impe" "Chemical & Biochemical Process Technology & Control (BioTec+)" "FLEXIBI aims to study, on the basis of integrated experimental and modelling strategies, the use of biomass residues from the Flemish primary agricultural and horticultural sector for small-scale biorefineries that process a variable feed of biomass (flexi-feed biorefineries). More specifically, these biomass residues are evaluated for the production of (precursors for) biobased materials, chemicals and cosmetics, depending on the biorefining process. The entire process chain will be integrated, from biomass / raw material collection to the optimization and development of biorefining processes and the end product (bio-based material). The experimental data and expert knowledge will lead to better modelling and engineering. The ultimate goal of FLEXIBI is to develop decision support tools for the development of small scale flexi-food biorefineries for specific configurations at the local level."