Cultivating Publicness Through Urban Agriculture: Learning from Aarhus and Rotterdam

Abstract

This chapter sets out to explore how urban agriculture can contribute to the development of the capabilities of gardeners and the larger urban community. Our study of cases in Aarhus (Denmark) and Rotterdam (the Netherlands) aimed to understand how different municipalities facilitate urban agriculture and how different urban agriculture initiatives perform in public space. In the analysis of the initiatives, we drew on a conceptualization of publicness focused on interactions in and products from physical space that link people. With an emphasis on a definition of public that is greater than the gardeners involved in each initiative, we identify four trajectories in urban agriculture’s public service, which include increasing access and animation in public space, contributing to social services, producing and distributing food, and building communities to spread cultivation knowledge. These trajectories structure our presentation and discussion of selected urban agriculture initiatives. While not mutually exclusive, the four areas of service place different strains upon the public space ideal of physical access. We find that food production and social services may be little suited for urban spaces that demand high levels of public access, though these benefits can reach broad public if localized and facilitated appropriately.

1 Introduction

In cities worldwide, urban agriculture – defined here strictly as food cultivation in publicly accessible outdoor urban spaces – is becoming increasingly popular both among urban agriculture actors and municipal authorities. Urban agriculture is believed to have multiple benefits, such as food security (Warren et al., 2015), community building (Audate et al., 2022), increased well-being (Kirby et al., 2021) and enhanced quality of life of citizens by contributing to a range of capabilities (see Chap. 2). In this paper, we focus on public benefits of urban agriculture which go beyond those offered to individuals. Integrating urban agriculture into public space can, however, breed both synergies as well as conflicts with the other pressing needs and uses of public space, which proves an especially relevant challenge for cities experiencing population growth and densification. Public space in this chapter refers to all urban spaces that are publicly accessible, regardless of ownership or maintenance responsibility.

In exploring synergies and conflicts between different urban agriculture benefits, it is useful to ask to whom these benefits are provided. In the “Cultivating Public Space” (CPS) research project, which formed the basis for this anthology, we followed the division of primary, secondary, and tertiary users suggested by Eason (1989). In the context of urban agriculture, we distinguished urban gardeners as primary users, local residents occasionally engaged in urban agriculture activities as secondary users, and the larger urban community as tertiary users. Benefits for one of these groups can be either advantageous or disturbing for other groups. To explore relations between different public benefits of urban agriculture, we engaged with scholarship on publicness (Tornaghi & Knierbein, 2014; Varna & Tiesdell, 2010), which can be captured through the magnitude of user groups attracted to urban space and tensions therein. This chapter looks at how different kinds of publicness can be cultivated through urban agriculture and examines how different municipalities facilitate urban agriculture and how that facilitation plays out in urban agriculture in public spaces.

For this chapter, we collected empirical material from two cities: Aarhus in Denmark and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, chosen due to contrasting approaches to facilitating urban agriculture. Both cities are active in urban agriculture and have contextual similarities to Norwegian cities, the focus of the CPS research project. Aarhus (municipal size: population 355,328; area 468 km²) and Rotterdam (municipal size: population 651,157; area 324 km²) are the second largest cities in their countries. They are situated in coastal areas in the Northern part of Europe. Both cities are governed using a parliamentary model with left-wing parties being in power during our fieldwork in 2018.

In both Aarhus and Rotterdam, we studied urban agriculture on two levels: the policy level of municipal facilitation and the ground level of specific urban agriculture initiatives. Our empirical material included urban agriculture-relevant policy documents, interviews, and field observations. At each site, we conducted formal and informal interviews with gardeners and visitors, making field notes, photographs, and maps. The analysis of the empirical material employed a people-centered, critical policy ethnography approach which highlights the interrelationship between the policy and ground levels (Dubois, 2015). This approach allowed us to consider the context specificity of each urban agriculture initiative as well as how the policy level plays out on the ground.

In this chapter, we offer an in-depth review of seven cases in Aarhus and Rotterdam that illustrate the variety of the ways urban agriculture initiatives can perform in public space. We selected these seven cases from a wider range of the initiatives in the two cities. In selecting them, we aimed for a diversity in types, organizational models, and design solutions. The exploratory nature of the early fieldwork activities, together with limitations due to informant availability and field visit length, provided a varying amount of data from each case. While we focus on the cases with most data, we find the inclusion of secondary cases useful for this chapter to illustrate the variety we have witnessed in these cities. The description of the cases is supplemented with photographs and, for some urban agriculture initiatives, with maps of the sites.

This chapter begins with an outline of our conceptual framework built around different aspects of publicness. A presentation of empirical material from Aarhus and Rotterdam covers both municipal policies and descriptions of specific urban agriculture initiatives. This information generates a cross-case discussion highlighting four trajectories for how urban agriculture can benefit different publics and contribute to the development of the capabilities of gardeners and the larger urban community. In the conclusion, we summarize our findings and identify the trade-offs between these trajectories.

2 Conceptual Framework: Publicness

The CPS research project wanted to explore the dynamic relationships between urban agriculture activities and the public spaces where these activities take place. Our theoretical foundation for this chapter’s analysis ties together scholarship on publicness (Tornaghi & Knierbein, 2014; Varna & Tiesdell, 2010), theory of the commons (Eidelman & Safransky, 2021; Feinberg et al., 2021; McNutt, 2000), and the capabilities perspective as operationalized in Chap. 2. We also outlined our theoretical foundation in more details elsewhere (Murphy et al., 2022; Murphy et al., Unpublished manuscript).

Nussbaum’s (2011) capabilities approach grounded this work in an understanding of the basic benefits (safety, education, food, recreation, contact with nature, exposure to diversity) which everyone should expect, so we can assess who gets which ones from public space. For Nussbaum (2003), capabilities are also vital to entitlement – giving back power to those (like women or minorities) whose agency has been undermined by past policies and practices. While the capabilities perspective focuses on the dimensions of individual well-being, the concept of publicness offers an understanding of the breadth of user groups public space can support and several areas where space may discourage use.

Acknowledging vivid scholarly debate on the meaning of the concept of publicness (see, e.g., Kohn (2004), Langstraat and Van Melik (2013), Madanipour, (1999), and Németh and Schmidt (2011)), we found it necessary to tie together different conceptualizations to address the many ways that urban agriculture can interact with people and public space. Following a relational, socio-material definition, publicness can describe interactions in and with physical space that link people (Tornaghi & Knierbein, 2014). Such a relational and inclusive definition allows us to analyze the built environment together with the social interactions that happen there and to understand its materiality as generative of potential social links between people and publics.

Analyzing the material aspects of urban agriculture in this approach is further supplemented with scholarship on public space. Design principles for supporting public use by urban designer Jan Gehl (2010) give a background for what kinds of materials and design moves can support different kinds of public uses in urban space. Varna and Tiesdell’s (2010) “star model” of publicness further brings together aspects of design and spatial management that can limit or discourage use by a variety of groups and individuals.

To focus on the benefits urban agriculture provides, we looked at urban agriculture spaces from the public and club goods perspective connected to the theory of the commons (McNutt, 2000). According to Webster (2007), “public goods” are universally accessible benefits that people should not compete for (e.g., air, lighting, safety). Conversely, “club goods” favor a particular community – a club – to prevent competition between members. A goods-based model of publicness implies diversity of the benefits, while also highlighting possible synergies and conflicts between different activities in public space and groups.

Drawing from this conceptual background, we constructed a theory grounded in publicness dimensions refined in an iterative process with data collection throughout the study. Varna and Tiesdell’s star model (Varna & Tiesdell, 2010) points to five dimensions of publicness: ownership, control, civility, physical configuration, and animation. These focus on what is happening in an urban space itself, who can access it, how different activities are supported, and who feels welcome to use it. We summarized the publicness described by the star model as “Access and Animation” (Varna & Tiesdell, 2010: 585) to include public space aspects that draw users and maintain high levels of activity. In considering the goods that can be produced in public space and how they can relationally link people, we add three dimensions specific to urban agriculture in public space: community, food, and knowledge. These dimensions allowed us to see the benefits of urban agriculture for broader publics rather than limiting them to the people who physically visit the sites. The resulting model enables comparative descriptive analysis of publicness of urban agriculture initiatives of different scales, typologies, and organizational modes.

This conceptualization was further refined through findings in our data collection, allowing us to identify four trajectories through which urban agriculture supports publicness:

• Access and animation: increasing accessibility and vitality in public space

  Urban agriculture initiatives affect who controls public space and how. Control can both decrease access and animation by having restrictive regulations as well as increase it by adding safety when gardeners are present in public space. Among our cases, there were several which were fenced because their functioning was dependent on production and selling of the harvest. Urban agriculture initiatives can increase animation by creating a comfortable, welcoming, and aesthetically pleasant environment. Urban agriculture, however, can also challenge access and animation by reducing diversity of user groups and comfort because of, for example, neglect.

  Access and animation impacts depend largely on the spatial context of urban agriculture initiatives and how the space works with its surroundings. For example, we found that urban agriculture can increase accessibility and publicness of neglected and peripherical spaces. For more central and well-connected areas, urban agriculture can in fact decrease this type of publicness by privatizing space. Urban agriculture can either be an attraction which works as a magnet for new users, or an obstacle to publicness in urban fabric.

• Community: contributing to social services

  When people like urban agriculture actors engage in a specific public space, they have the potential to use it and generate activity to welcome others in. We see urban agriculture serving school groups and collaborating with welfare organizations to provide a variety of therapy, job, and social training.

• Food: producing and distributing food

  By its nature urban agriculture can contribute to food production; to increase publicness this food should benefit the public and be distributed broadly, such as in examples we have seen that collaborate with food pantries for the disadvantaged. However, cultivation can also put additional pressures on the issues of control and setting limits to physical access.

• Knowledge: building communities to spread cultivation knowledge

  Urban agriculture activities have the potential to provide benefits to the public by disseminating cultivation awareness and skills – shared public goods for which different user groups do not have to compete. Such knowledge can include not only food cultivation per se but also cooking, nutrition, health, and management of an urban agriculture initiative.

  Urban agriculture can help different communities emerge and take shape: not only communities of gardeners but also more heterogeneous communities of passers-by, neighbors, and consumers. To what extent gardeners’ community should be inclusive in order to increase publicness of space and grow food is an open question.

The discussion presents a detailed description of these trajectories and how they interact, linked to the capabilities operationalized within the CPS project (see Chap. 2). The next two sections will present urban agriculture of Aarhus and Rotterdam: both how the municipalities enable and regulate it and how urban agriculture initiatives play out on the ground. For each of the seven described initiatives, we provide their ranking with regard to the four publicness trajectories highlighted above.

3 Aarhus: Urban Agriculture as a Tool for Citizen Engagement

In Aarhus, urban agriculture facilitation is placed in the context of co-creation and active citizenship (similar to Trondheim in Norway; see Chap. 11). Here, the municipality’s efforts to promote urban agriculture are channeled through a citizen engagement team. This team belongs to the technical department but works across administration silos. Our informant from the technical department suggested that by creating this team the municipality wanted to move away from the new public management agenda, to make citizens more active and engaged, and to shorten the distance between the municipality and citizens. The citizen engagement team is tasked with supporting co-creation with citizens. The team also actively collaborates with other municipal agencies and educates them regarding the importance of citizen involvement in decision-making.

The program “Taste Aarhus” (Smag på Aarhus¹) is one of the primary projects of the team. It was initiated in 2014 to engage citizens and prioritize high-quality, edible green spaces. The idea came from the citizens themselves and was later supported by the municipality and funded by a philanthropic foundation for the first five years of the project. The program team includes people with different backgrounds, among them a planner, a gardener, and an architect working with citizen engagement. They provide detailed advice on projects; help citizens to navigate planning issues, infrastructure, and pollution; and facilitate possible conflicts and accessibility challenges. In that sense, the citizen engagement team is not a controlling authority but an advisory agency that, when asked, can provide tools and knowledge. They also facilitate networking across urban agriculture groups and disseminate information.

Within the program, a contract for using municipal land was formalized and a minimum set of rules for the initiatives was imposed. Membership to urban agriculture initiatives must be open to all residents, not just one particular group. The urban agriculture initiatives are to be registered as organizations with a five-member board, provide public access to the gardens, give the public opportunities to harvest part of the produce, and clean the land upon termination of the lease. The organizations themselves can define how public access is maintained and how much of harvest can be shared with the public. They must also host biannual public events and report their activities to the municipality yearly.

Two major challenges with urban agriculture facilitation in Aarhus became clear from our municipal informants. First, public perception of the quality of urban soil challenged early recruitment to the program. The citizen engagement team worked hard to communicate clearly and convincingly that it was safe to grow food in the soil within the city. They asked a researcher to test city soils and hold public sessions disseminating the results (only soils around petrol stations were found contaminated). Second, the temporality of lease contracts for land is seen by some as deterrent for long-term initiative investments. The municipality’s main challenge with granting longer-term permissions is in cases when initiatives use land slated for future redevelopment.

The citizen engagement team both facilitates citizens’ projects and implements municipal projects. The team is directly involved in urban agriculture projects connected to kindergartens, schools, hospitals, elderly homes, social housing, and prisons. In order to secure ongoing funding from the municipality, the urban agriculture projects need to demonstrate how their benefits align with the existing goals of the city authorities, for example, public health, education, and integration. An informant explained in a following way:

So, when they talk a lot about health then I talk about getting people to move a lot. If people walk outside to get apples one day, they can walk five kilometers collecting apples. Then I can refer to the health agenda and raise funding money from there. Or education, we can make school gardens, for social agendas, we can pick up integration… There is really nothing this project cannot speak to because it is about food, meals together, community, education. [an informant from the municipality of Aarhus].

“Taste Aarhus” is regarded as a success by the municipality. According to an informant from an urban agriculture initiative we visited, this project helped the initiative to navigate within the bureaucratic system. Our informants in the city suggested that the main motivation for the municipality to promote urban agriculture is primarily the re-engagement of citizens in decision-making and taking responsibility for public spaces, being less reliant on authorities to take action. In that sense, on the municipal level, urban agriculture is appreciated not for its food production capacity but for other functions which can improve quality of life of Aarhus residents. Such functions include getting people to be more active, facilitating socialization and recreation, and beautifying the urban environment. Our respondents further suggested that for the city administration, labeling green spaces in new redevelopment areas as “edible areas” helps to secure budget and a level of quality for these spaces, as people can easily relate to this purpose: “being pretty is not enough” (an informant from the municipality of Aarhus).

Three initiatives (Fig. 4.1) were chosen to present public benefits of urban agriculture in Aarhus: PIER2 Haven, “edible pathways” project, and Gallo Gartneriet. These initiatives are different in scope and level of municipal involvement, demonstrating the span of urban agriculture that can be found in Aarhus.

• 1. PIER2 Haven: Waterfront cultivating and culture^a

Fig. 4.1

Location of the studied urban agriculture initiatives in Aarhus. (Basemap: OpenStreetMap)

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Significantly present, reaching a large public	Not present or reaching beyond members	Present, smaller public	Significantly present, reaching a large public

^ahttps://www.pier2haven.dk/

Location and Connectivity

A raised-bed garden initiative (Figs. 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5) started in 2017 on a 1390 m² site along the waterfront of Aarhus, 8 minutes by bike from the central railway station. The whole waterfront is part of a redevelopment process, changing it from an industrial area into a multifunctional urban district. The garden is situated on a peninsula with no through traffic. There are no fences except one bordering a nearby construction site. The whole area is open visually from all sides. The initiative collaborates closely with two neighboring organizations: the Dome of Visions² (a cultural institution and a café) and Fra grums til gourmet³ (an entrepreneur growing mushrooms on used coffee grinds). Some crew of both the Dome of Visions and Fra grums til gourmet are members of the initiative’s foundation and facilitate collaboration as they have similar visions: “Dome of Visions and some of the community wanted a green park in the area close to the sea. So we have gotten together and are forming a dialogue about it. Many people have dreams about the space, like more gardens and boat access…” (an informant from the urban agriculture initiative).

Fig. 4.2

Map of PIER2 Haven in Aarhus with entrances (red arrows) and paths (red dash line). (Map design: Kristin Sunde)

Fig. 4.3

The pallet boxes of PIER2 Haven in Aarhus. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.4

The grill zone at PIER2 Haven with both formal and informal sitting opportunities. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.5

Views from the siting area next to PIER2 Haven. (Photo: authors)

Management and Funding Mechanism

The garden was initiated by a group of residents who came together to establish a garden community and got help from the municipality to find a space for it. The initiative is run by a foundation the group started, with an annually elected board. According to our informants, it attracted people who had small apartments with no green spaces and wanted to have a yard, as well as those who wanted to be a part of a community in addition to having a garden. Middle-aged women were reported to be the most active members of the board of the urban agriculture initiative. Three groups are actively involved, including a garden construction group, a workday organizing group, and a communication team. According to our informants, the structure is flexible, and anyone can get involved in the groups’ work without any special permission from the board. The foundation uses social media to attract new members and to invite visitors to come on Sunday picnics. The municipality owns the land and leases it for free to the garden community, but at the time of our fieldwork, the plot was likely to be sold for development. The “Taste Aarhus” program provided materials and financing for the first year of the initiative. Beyond that, the garden has been run on financial contributions from the members and supporters.

Design and Amenities

The garden consists of 45 pallet boxes, mostly kept by individuals, but some are reserved for public harvest according to the rules stipulated by the Aarhus municipality. The garden’s rules and information presented on site aim to distinguish between private boxes and boxes for the public. Initially, an architect suggested building an integrated, designed garden, but this option seemed to be too expensive, given the unknown future, and was not realized. PIER2 Haven instead appears as a tidy, well-kept series of pallet boxes with some low-threshold DIY berms and decorations. Empty space around the garden allows some flexibility, and the garden can often be adapted and transformed. There are both formal (benches, pallet deck chairs) and informal (grass mounds, large rocks, etc.) seating opportunities at the grill and fire pit, all built by the gardeners themselves.

Activities

The initiative grows fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Everybody can come to the garden, sit, and enjoy coffee from the nearby Dome of Visions. During our visits, there were many visitors there, many attracted by the fresh air and by nearness to the water: young people, students, locals from downtown, and young families with children. The initiative organizes pancake dinners and concerts, plus days of collective voluntary work. The site facilitates interaction between the garden community and different groups that visit the Dome of Visions. Together they offer a variety of outdoor and indoor open space for larger events as well as for retreating to more intimate spaces.

Relations to the Municipal Authorities and Policies

The garden was originally established under the municipal program “Taste Aarhus.” This case demonstrates the typical support “Taste Aarhus” gives to new urban agriculture initiatives: helping with the first steps and establishment of the foundation, finding land, providing a 1-year lease contract and initial funding. The contract is up for renewal annually. Our informants reported satisfaction with the relationship with the municipality as they felt the rules were not strict. The garden community became engaged in the area’s development and wanted to be included in future plans. The garden aims to showcase to politicians its value and the importance of having accessible green spaces. Among the challenges the initiative faces are funding ongoing maintenance and predictability in the length of lease.

• 2. “Edible pathways”: traffic interventions^a

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Present, smaller public	Not present or reaching beyond members	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Present, smaller public

^a http://smagpaaaarhus.dk/byhave/danmarks-maaske-laengste-jordbaerbed/

Location and Connectivity

Under the “Edible pathways” project, we collect several urban agriculture initiatives (see Figs. 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8) – or interventions – aimed to complement bicycle and pedestrian paths through edible edges and zones. These are multi-departmental municipal projects along existing paths which lead out of the city toward residential areas and suburbs. They include both commute routes, where riders were cycling faster than the municipality wanted, and walking paths the municipality hoped to activate further. Edible edges together with recreation areas were supposed to slow the cyclists. As “surprise elements,” they could cause the cyclists to slow down and make walkers more observant of the natural surroundings.

Fig. 4.6

Bike lanes along fruits trees in Aarhus. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.7

Picking berries along the bike lane in Aarhus. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.8

An information board with a revised old Danish law regarding harvesting in nature. (Photo: authors)

Management and Funding Mechanism

This urban agriculture initiative is an example of top-down projects realized by the municipality, without local grassroots involvement. The interventions are facilitated by the citizen engagement team and maintained by the technical department. The team worked with the forestry department to thin the forest along bicycle paths in order to allow sun, slow bicycle traffic, and make public berry cultivation possible. The role of the citizen engagement team as facilitator of this top-down project might be seen surprising. However, the team’s mandate includes not only supporting citizens’ initiatives but also working across sectors and reaching out to the people. By connecting the “Edible pathways” to the “Taste Aarhus,” the team could stimulate citizen awareness of edible food in the city.

Design and Amenities

Designed by the municipality’s technical department, the initiatives follow a high level of material quality. They rely on native species and plants that thrive in the wild with little maintenance. Vegetation is used both decoratively and to blend in with its surroundings, introducing or promoting edible plants corresponding to natural growth patterns. One of the interventions included a 600 m stretch of strawberries and fruit trees along a new bike path to the hospital. This edible edge was supplemented with circular planting beds with recognizable flowers and herbs. Recreational interventions alongside the path introduced a fireplace with a grill, benches, and picnic tables.

Activities

The edible paths have signage to provide information to the public regarding the interventions and let people know when they can pick berries and fruits. This information includes guidelines for how much it is reasonable to harvest – an old Danish law about filling your hat is today revised to suggest you can fill a small bag with what you harvest, leaving enough for others to enjoy (see Fig. 4.8). When we were sampling the strawberries during our fieldwork, we met some friendly locals who stopped to chat while also picking berries. Some other cyclists stopped to taste the strawberries as well, and then a local school group walked across the path to use the picnic area. The bicyclists who did not stop slowed down to see what everyone was doing, showing the project’s intentions at work.

Relations to the Municipal Authorities and Policies

These initiatives demonstrate synergies from the combination of urban agriculture with municipal budgets aimed for other purposes – in this case bicycle safety – to create edible and multifunctional spaces. Such initiatives provide an alternative to more typical member-driven urban agriculture projects. Besides being transport corridors, the various elements of the edible paths serve as safety and social, as well as edible features in the landscape.

• 3. Gallo Gartneriet: Therapy through urban agriculture-->^a-->^a

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Significantly present, reaching a large public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Present, smaller public

^ahttps://www.gallogartneriet.dk/

Location and Connectivity

The garden Gallo Gartneriet (3531 m²) is situated in a northern suburb of the city, next to an old train line which may soon be reactivated (Fig. 4.9). The garden is open to the public during the daytime of the growing season, when members of the gardening community are there. It is closed at night and through the winter in order to protect tools and harvest. Some passers-by use the garden just to cross to the adjacent park or beach (see Fig. 4.12).

Fig. 4.9

Map of Gallo Gartneriet in Aarhus with entrances (red arrows) and paths (red dash line). (Map design: Kristin Sunde)

Management and Funding Mechanism

The garden was established in 1990, originally as a part of the local psychiatric hospital to serve as a pilot project for garden therapy. At the time of our fieldwork, the hospital had moved and transferred the garden to the county, which owned it and leased it for free to the gardeners. The garden today is both a therapeutic and community garden, maintaining a portion of social program-funded volunteers and a waged coordinator to aid in reintegration and job-training skills on site. A member describes the garden as “the only place in Aarhus where people work as a community.” The initiative is connected to a larger foundation with an art gallery among other things. The foundation’s board is well established and meets six to eight times a year.

Around 70 people are involved in gardening activities over the season (from April to November) and 12–15 daily. The community is open for anyone to join and has different levels of membership to share produce and access. Half of the volunteers are members of the community and pay small annual membership fees which also allows them to get a 20% rebate off the garden’s produce. The paid part-time coordinator position is unique to this garden and external to the “Taste Aarhus” program, funded rather by a social welfare department of the municipality. The coordinator facilitates, organizes, and helps people to collaborate, inspects the garden daily in order to check what needs to be done, hosts morning meetings, and allocates tasks. According to the informants, the salary helps to ensure continuity and consistency in leadership, though the tasks are distributed democratically among those present each day. People choose what interests them from the task list depending on skill and strength or energy required. The gardening community has a roadside kiosk where they sell their produce at affordable prices. The profits go entirely back to the operations. That is why it is so important to protect the harvests as they are vital for the financial sustainability of the garden.

Design and Amenities

The garden has predominantly raised cultivation beds with hedges and fruit trees (see Figs. 4.10 and 4.11). It is a well-designed and comfortable space, even if aging and built in several phases in a DIY fashion. The whole garden has a feeling of having evolved over time with different interests represented. There is a lot of moveable seating and flexibility, making it a peaceful and comfortable place for relaxation and interaction with others. The garden also has greenhouses, toilets, and beehives run by the urban beekeepers’ community BiStad.

Fig. 4.10

Gallo Gartneriet initiatives in Aarhus: polyculture cultivation beds, grass paths, and a seating area under a shady cherry tree. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.11

Well-maintained cultivation beds in Gallo Gartneriet in Aarhus. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.12

A path from the garden to the beach through a train line. (Photo: authors)

Activities

This garden was the only urban agriculture initiative we visited in Aarhus where food was cultivated communally by the gardeners (since 2016 there have been a limited number of individual boxes). They cultivate fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in an ecological manner. The garden involves the unemployed and offers programs for youth struggling with education. The members of the community we talked to described the garden as “the best doctor” – relieving stress – and explained that the gardeners together form a warm and welcoming community. The members are helpful to provide information to the visitors, offering tours and coffee. The community hosts an open garden event a couple of times during the summer since joining the “Taste Aarhus” network. The garden facilitates socialization both between the members of the community and between the members and passers-by.

Relations to the Municipal Authorities and Policies

This garden with a 30-year history only recently joined the “Taste Aarhus” network and did not receive any financial support from them as it was not a new initiative. Other municipal departments, however, support the garden through welfare and disability funding and financing some of the volunteers. “Taste Aarhus” assists the garden with visibility and event promotion. During our fieldwork, this garden faced an uncertain future because of the pressure for land development in the area. No longer owned by the hospital, the land could be highly valuable for development due to its location. Our informants hope that the local government will help them to secure the land and provide funding to upgrade their aging toilets and equipment.

4 Rotterdam: Different Budgets, Different Benefits

Rotterdam has been early engaged in urban agriculture and alternative food systems movements. The municipality drafted an urban agriculture policy already in 2012 to make the city greener, but because of political change and financial difficulties, the policy has not been adopted. Urban agriculture in the city at the time of this study relied on bottom-up initiatives, was supported by different departments on a case-by-case basis, and was not covered by a specific policy or program like in Aarhus. Our informants name several departments as particularly significant for supporting urban agriculture initiatives: city planning (land use policies), city maintenance (maintenance of public spaces), community services (well-being and social cohesion), and social affairs (employment and welfare policies). Funding of initiatives is always tied to specific outcomes (especially related to health and job creation) and requires specific reporting. On top of that, there are citywide support measures for community-based initiatives in public space⁴. The city district authorities can also support urban agriculture as part of urban renewal projects. The informants point out that the lack of coordinated activities between the departments (often run by different political parties) – coupled with a slow bureaucratic process – is a barrier to urban agriculture initiatives in the city: urban agriculture facilitation remains fragmented and inconsistent.

Urban agriculture initiatives in Rotterdam must register as foundations. These foundations then get approval from the city to use public land or land reserved for redevelopment. The municipality of Rotterdam has a policy⁵ for the adoption of green spaces which gives a framework for providing land for urban agriculture initiatives. This policy outlines opportunities, rules, and available guidance. It seeks to promote voluntary maintenance of outdoor space which should, nevertheless, maintain public character and public access. The municipality keeps minimal regulations but focuses on safety, accessibility, and aesthetic qualities. According to the policy, the municipal authorities accept initiatives, including urban agriculture initiatives, in public land if they are found to be appropriate: easy to manage, have support among local residents, and are reconciled with other existing functions of the space. The policy stipulates that “in the main district structure, private initiatives that change the layout are in principle not desirable, unless they join (in image, use, material use and management) the prescribed structures” (our translation).

At the time of our fieldwork in Rotterdam, the maximum land lease time for urban agriculture initiatives was five years, which was considered not enough for serious investments. As a result, “most initiatives are not living up to their full potential” (a local researcher/urban agriculture activist). Development pressure and uncertainty regarding the future of land contracts affect how the initiatives are run and how much money and labor they invest. In the case when urban agriculture land is up for redevelopment, the municipality does not always provide a replacement plot to the initiative affected. If new land is provided, it can be of a smaller size or in a very different location.

The urban agriculture initiatives in Rotterdam we visited relied primarily on their own fundraising and membership fees. Other financial sources included social housing providers, philanthropic foundations, commercial companies, and regional banks. Social housing providers see the benefits of urban agriculture in enhancing the feeling of ownership and care important for the local residents, reducing crime, and lowering maintenance expenditures for public spaces. The municipal authorities are not so active in providing funding for urban agriculture but can support the initiatives through sources related to other municipal objectives, including welfare, integration, social inclusion, landscaping, and green space management. Our informants point out that it was easier to find funding from sources indirectly connected to urban agriculture. Hands-on support is provided by civil servants tasked with facilitating residents and social entrepreneurs. The maintenance department employs a city gardener that gives gardening advice and helps with maintenance work. It is also possible to borrow tools and equipment from the municipality.

Fig. 4.13

Location of the studied urban agriculture initiatives in Rotterdam. (Basemap: OpenStreetMap)

We chose to describe four of the urban agriculture initiatives (Fig. 4.13) we studied in Rotterdam: Tuin op de Pier, Rotterdamse Munt, Hotspot Hutspot Krootwijk, and Voedseltuin Rotterdam. They do not represent all the variety of typologies of urban agriculture in the city but illustrate the span of different trajectories in how it can benefit the general public.

• 4. Tuin op de Pier: waterfront permaculture^a

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Significantly present, reaching a large public	Present, smaller public	Present, smaller public	Present, smaller public

^ahttp://www.tuinopdepier.nl/

Location and ConnectivityThe initiative began as a collective garden in 2011 and in June 2018 occupied a site (4500 m²) designated for future residential development (delayed due to the economic crisis) at Rotterdam’s waterfront. After 2018 this urban agriculture initiative moved to another site, but the description here captures the situation during our fieldwork (see Figs. 4.14, 4.15, 4.16, and 4.17). The site was surrounded by recent residential and office buildings, a parking lot, and green space. The area was characterized by low traffic and oriented toward walking and cycling. Our informants described typical residents of the area as white and affluent. The site we visited had open access and partial fencing but no gates, thereby both visually and physically permeable for the public. The garden itself provided great views over the harbor. Together with the adjacent green space and playground, the garden was part of a bigger multifunctional area with a variety of recreational activities.

Fig. 4.14

Map of Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam with entrances (red arrows) and paths (red dash line). (Map design: Kristin Sunde)

Fig. 4.15

Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam has a variety of plants in their cultivation beds of a circular form. Surprise elements like sculptures and curiosities can be found throughout. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.16

Design elements of Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.17

Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam: minimal protection from bad weather, a storage, and a pizza oven. (Photo: authors)

Management and Funding MechanismThe garden was run as a communal one – without individual allotments, with tasks shared by the 10–15 members of the urban agriculture initiative. It was managed by a foundation, whose board were residents of the neighboring high-rise (marked by above-average market prices). The land was owned by the municipal authorities, which gave permission for use through a 7-year rent-free lease contract, while the plot was awaiting development. In 2018, the site was slated for development, and the garden was preparing for relocation to a smaller (750 m²) spot nearby when we visited. The urban agriculture initiative was established through the voluntary work of members with a financial grant from a bank along with help with material and equipment loaning from the regional and municipal authorities. Maintenance was covered by membership fees and supporting business: each donated around 25€ per year in exchange for their name on the garden sign.

Design and Amenities

The initiative was a designed garden focused on permaculture – an alternative to the industrial agriculture movement emphasizing eco-design principles, site specificity, and the importance of agroecological configuration (Ferguson & Lovell, 2014). The garden was designed by a member of the initiative who happened to be a landscape architect and consisted of permaculture beds, a greenhouse, sheds for storage of tools, and a pizza/bread oven. It also had a limited number of picnic tables and benches. The site lacked any lighting but was lit from the nearby areas. The design of the garden allowed the presence of loose, adaptable, and unrestricted areas that could evolve over time. Between the growing areas, there was significant space that allowed movement.

Activities

Active participation in the gardening was limited to the members, although anyone was welcome to join gardening occasionally. The members grew vegetables, herbs, and flowers and took care of the garden. There were regular weekend meetings followed by joint work and socializing. A few members of the urban agriculture harvested and stored food for others to pick up when some were not available. According to our informants, the initiative facilitated socializing and community building by allowing people to get to know each other and develop relationships: “It’s a place where people meet and BBQ together” (a member of the initiative). The initiative also engaged with people outside of their community. The garden held two major events per year (in December and July), attracting up to 100 visitors, and invited groups from local schools to pick strawberries. The initiative tried to reach nearby disadvantaged communities but attracted few new members, as many wanted individual plots, which the garden did not offer. The gardeners also experienced homeless labor migrants loitering and stealing harvest, despite being invited to share in the work and harvest in shorter periods.

Relations to the Municipal Authorities and Policies

As mentioned by several of our informants, this initiative helped the municipality of Rotterdam to transform an earlier dumping ground associated with drug dealing and prostitution into a safe and clean area ready for redevelopment. The municipality assisted with initial soil remediation and provided access to water, but the foundation itself brought in additional soil, suitable for gardening, from local farms. The municipal authorities were not involved in the management of the initiative, except for establishing some standards for aesthetics and maintenance and sending occasional complaints if these standards were not met. As mentioned by one of the gardeners, they wanted as little involvement from the municipality as possible. In general, the initiative had a good working relationship with the municipal authorities. The initiative was a part of the “Green connection”⁶ – a city walking tour used in public health and tourism promotion of Rotterdam.

• 5. Rotterdamse Munt: commercial herb garden^a

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Present, smaller public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Present, smaller public	Present, smaller public

^ahttps://www.rotterdamsemunt.nl/

Location and Connectivity

The initiative Rotterdamse Munt (see Figs. 4.18, 4.19, 4.20, and 4.21) started in 2014 and occupied a spot of 4600 m² reserved for future development in a socially disadvantaged neighborhood characterized by ethnic diversity of the residents. The urban agriculture initiative moved after our visit, but in 2018, its site was surrounded by two roads with car traffic as well as bicycle paths. It was enclosed by transparent fences with barbed wire. An informant from the garden explained this decision due to a lot of vandalism and theft at a nearby allotment garden. There were only two entrances, not otherwise connected to main paths or other activities. The garden was open to the public during the afternoons a few days a week, but as pointed out by the initiative leader, few people came despite open gates and welcome signs.

Fig. 4.18

Map of Rotterdamse Munt in Rotterdam with entrances (red arrows) and paths (red dash line). (Map design: Kristin Sunde)

Fig. 4.19

Cultivation beds in Rotterdamse Munt in Rotterdam with a permanent shelter and a cafe/shop in the background. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.20

Informal open-space seating area in Rotterdamse Munt in Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.21

An insect hotel in Rotterdamse Munt in Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Management and Funding Mechanism

The garden was initiated by a social entrepreneur who gathered partners and secured funding from the authorities (on the city, regional, and national scales) and private entities, such as a bank. The garden was started as a private social enterprise managed as a foundation with one main manager. The foundation per requirements was managed by a board and paid a partial salary to one coordinator also working in the shop/café. The land was owned by the Rotterdam municipality and provided on a temporary basis. The initiative managed to negotiate a permanent contract for a larger amount of land situated nearby and positioned over a metro line that stops it from future development and moved after our visit in 2018. The garden was run on the labor of volunteers who were mainly nearby residents or social clients from the municipality. The urban agriculture initiative was envisioned as a business that sells both products produced by the garden itself and local and sustainable products from other sources. The goal of the initiative was to become self-sufficient and cover the salary for its management along with material needs (the goal had not been reached at the time of our fieldwork). The initiative also invited sponsors and had signage with sponsors’ names, both public and corporate. The initiative had around 40 volunteers with diverse backgrounds and life situations; some of them were sent for support in integrating into work life. Volunteers spent different amounts of time in the garden and usually stayed for a year each. All volunteers went through a process to become involved, including an introduction meeting, communication of expectations, and mentoring with someone more experienced.

Design and Amenities

The garden was well maintained and beautifully designed with attractive solutions like clearly laid out raised beds with signage about each plant and windscreens over shipping containers. This garden demonstrated one of the ways to practice urban agriculture in an aesthetically pleasing and well-kept place. On the site, there were nicely designed beehives, greenhouses, and a shop/café with outdoor seating. The greenhouses function as space for education, plant production, and storage. There was also a sheltered gathering place for storytelling or group sessions. The visual identity was consistent in all the building cladding, down to the branding of the produce. At the same time, the space was the most controlled among all we visited during fieldwork and was strictly functionally planned. The space itself did not facilitate spontaneous interactions: it did not feel comfortable to just come in and sit in the garden without being a member or customer. There were no dedicated places for recreation aside from the gathering place and area near the café.

Activities

The garden produced herbs and honey from their own beehives and sold a range of sustainable products and gardening tools. Visitors could come to clip and buy herbs or purchase dried teas and herb mixes. However, the main mission of the garden was stated as connecting people with nature, with food (by developing people’s tastes), and with each other. The initiative organized events, at least two festivals a year. The initiative also held a variety of educational and social activities: they collaborated with nearby schools, organizing school visits that help to connect children to food cultivation.

Relations to the Municipal Authorities and Policies

The initiative relied on the good relationship with the Rotterdam municipality for their land and some of their funding. It also worked as a provider for the city in terms of school and reintegration services. According to our informant, some volunteers were paid by the authorities (through the municipality or the Dutch employee insurance agency) for their work from reintegration or social care budgets. Our respondents reported that the garden helped to rebuild people’s self-esteem and confidence: volunteers were successfully finding their jobs somewhere else after working in the garden. However, according to the manager of the garden, in municipal funding, the value of such things as rebuilding of confidence of people looking for jobs was underestimated as concrete results were difficult to report. The garden had to develop a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate to the authorities the value of their job reintegration services.

• 6. Hotspot Hutspot Krootwijk: social housing enterprise^a

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Present, smaller public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Significantly present, reaching a large public

^ahttps://www.hotspothutspot.nl/hotspot-hutspot-krootwijk/

Location and Connectivity

The initiative started in 2017 as a common garden built in the yard of a social housing complex (see Fig. 4.22) in a marginalized neighborhood. The garden is not fenced, which was a conscious decision of the initiative even though they experience cases of vandalism and theft. The project coordinator explains: “These kids are so poor. So, if they’re stealing vegetables for their families, then that’s actually great.”

Fig. 4.22

Hotspot Hutspot Krootwijk in Rotterdam is situated in the courtyard of social housing. (Photo: authors)

Management and Funding Mechanism

This initiative is one of several social enterprises in Rotterdam which combine urban agriculture with the provision of social services. It was established by an artist-activist. The initiative is financed by a variety of actors. The coordinator’s salary is paid by a subsidy from the municipality’s housing department, while other costs are covered by a grant given by a philanthropic organization to enhance social cohesion and participation. At the time of our fieldwork, the garden was primarily run by the project coordinator, who was also a chef in the subsidized café on the housing site. He has experience working with challenged youth and adults and engages local residents and their children in work both in the garden and in the café.

Activities

This garden and café together work toward combating local social issues. The café uses produce from the garden, a nearby farm, and grocery store discards. They provide affordable warm meals for any visitor and those who cannot afford to pay eat for free. Children from the neighborhood volunteer to wait tables and help with cooking as well as gardening and learning food-related skills. The café further hosts a free library of donated books and runs different activities in the neighborhood.

• 7. Voedseltuin Rotterdam: the food garden^a

Increasing access and animation in public space	Contributing to social services	Producing and distributing food	Building communities to spread cultivation knowledge
Present, smaller public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Significantly present, reaching a large public	Significantly present, reaching a large public

^ahttps://voedseltuin.com/

Location and Connectivity

The initiative started in 2010 and is the largest garden among those visited in Rotterdam. The garden (see Figs. 4.23, 4.24, and 4.25) occupies a previously vacant spot in a not-very-central area.

Fig. 4.23

Main path in Voedseltuin Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Fig. 4.24

Vegetation in Voedseltuin Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Figure 4.25

A seating area in Voedseltuin Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Management and Funding Mechanism

The garden is run by a group of 45 volunteers. According to the garden’s website, the initiative is both environmentally sustainable but also economically viable. The initiative invites different sponsors, listed on their website.

Design and AmenitiesThe garden was run using principles of permaculture, similarly to Tuin op de Pier described above. During our visit, they were discussing expansion and ambitions to give a park-like appearance to the area.

Activities

Voedseltuin Rotterdam works as an experimental space where experiments can be directly connected to new forms of gardening and food cultivation as well as welfare projects focused on the reintegration of people into work life. The garden produces fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs for Food Bank Rotterdam,⁷ which delivers free food packages to low-income households. The volunteers working in the garden were involved in construction work and growing, as well as the communication and marketing of the initiative. The initiative is also occupied with contributing to bettering the neighborhood’s development.

Relations to the Municipal Authorities and Policies

The initiative aims to make Rotterdam a healthy city: “We support a sustainable urban society with healthy food for everybody; without poverty and social exclusion. Working towards people who actively shape their personal lives and take responsibility for each other and for their environment” (our translation from the initiative’s webpage).

5 Discussion: The Four Publicness Trajectories of Urban Agriculture in the City

The urban agriculture policies and initiatives described in the two previous sections show that great variation exists even in how the same municipal facilitation plays out on the ground. We saw that the Aarhus municipality developed a cohesive program focused on urban agriculture and aided gardeners by promoting existing initiatives, supporting new initiatives with funds and land negotiation, and initiating their own, top-down, urban agriculture-related projects. The initiatives described in Sect. 4.3, illustrate a variety of benefits to different publics provided by the urban agriculture – with or without municipal support. The municipality of Rotterdam lacked a cohesive urban agriculture policy but supported initiatives through land negotiation and through a variety of budgets for integrating, welfare, or green space management services. The initiatives presented in Sect. 4.4, differ in scale, organization, design, and which publics they serve.

This chapter critically examines the possibilities and trade-offs gained from integrating urban agriculture into public space, rather than providing a normative guide for how to facilitate urban agriculture. We discuss this across the cases through the four publicness trajectories identified at the beginning of this chapter: increasing access and animation in public space, contributing to social services, producing and distributing food, and building communities to spread cultivation knowledge.

• A. Access and animation: increasing access and animation in public space

For Varna and Tiesdell (2010), animation “involves the degree to which the design of the place supports and meets human needs in public space, and whether it is actively used and shared by different individuals and groups” (p. 585). This trajectory of publicness is largely restricted to the people who can pass through the borders of the urban agriculture’s plot and the associated public space surrounding it. The urban agriculture initiatives we studied in Aarhus and Rotterdam demonstrate a range of ways that positively affect access to, and animation in, the space they are situated. These include the following: making physical access easier for passers-by (PIER2 Haven), creating visually welcoming and aesthetically pleasant space (Gallo Gartneriet, Tuin op de Pier; see Fig. 4.26), organizing events, attracting new visitors (Rotterdamse Munt, Tuin op de Pier), increasing safety through regular gardener presence (PIER2 Haven), encouraging spontaneous interactions (Gallo Gartneriet, “Edible pathways”), and providing social opportunities (all).

Fig. 4.26

Welcome sign and open access in Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam. (Photo: authors)

Urban agriculture’s potential to increase animation and access is especially visible in places under redevelopment, like in the cases of PIER2 Haven in Aarhus and Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam. These qualities basically did not exist in these places before the urban agriculture initiatives activated them. As noticed by Larson (2006), urban agriculture has a potential to create sustainable communities by being a part of brownfield redevelopment processes. However, using urban agriculture as a tool in redevelopment is not unproblematic, as it can lead to gentrification in the long term, as suggested by literature devoted to green gentrification (see, e.g., Maantay and Maroko (2018)). PIER2 Haven and Tuin op de Pier can be seen as drivers and products of gentrification, as they help attract market-rate or higher development and draw resource-strong users to previously working-class and industrial areas. Urban agriculture, nevertheless, can be both a contributor and a resistor to green gentrification (McClintock, 2018). As Sbicca (2019) reminds us, if urban agriculture supports or resists green gentrification depends on the conditions where it is realized, including the role of the municipal authorities. Here we see municipal provisions in both Aarhus and Rotterdam for urban agriculture to maintain an amount of access for all – no matter who the gardeners are. In this manner, the initiatives are prevented from fully restricting access to public space, even if the animation sparked in some initiatives may draw narrower publics than others.

• B. Community: contributing to social services

In our empirical material from Aarhus and Rotterdam, we see that delivering social services, like educational and reintegration programs, is both a source of funding for urban agriculture initiatives and an argument for the municipalities to justify urban agriculture support. The provision of social services is especially vital for the survival of urban agriculture in Rotterdam, where a lack of urban agriculture-focused policy leaves financing to the creativity of initiative coordinators. In return, we see the initiatives strongest in this trajectory of publicness manage to reach a broad sector of society, including people with a variety of needs – well beyond local residents and gardeners. In this manner, the urban agriculture becomes a “public thing” – a matter of common concern, through which parts of our welfare system are exercised (Honig, 2017). This trajectory is fundamental for the essence of many – but not all – urban agriculture communities that strive to make the world a better place and frame themselves as an alternative path for societal transformation (McClintock, 2014).

Realizing urban agriculture as an agent of social services can meet some challenges, as the case of Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam shows in their struggle to engage the homeless outside of a municipal mandate or funding. Additional resources, especially human resources, and comprehensive facilitation can, however, make this task more feasible, as we see in the other Rotterdam initiatives. Rotterdamse Munt leans heavily upon government-supported organized volunteer work for job reintegration and skill training. Hotspot Hutspot krootwijk was established to deal with social problems on the very local scale of the neighborhood, with assistance from the municipal housing department. Gallo Gartneriet in Aarhus is also interesting in this publicness trajectory because it was originally created as a therapeutic garden for people with mental challenges and has continued to provide welfare services with financial support while opening access to others interested in gardening (trajectory “Access and Animation”). Similar to findings from Oslo (see Chap. 6), the paid position of a coordinator seems to be vital for both longevity of urban agriculture and their ability to provide social services that reach a broader, city-wide public.

• C. Food: producing and distributing food

Food production may be the most theorized area of municipal facilitation of urban agriculture (see, e.g., Meenar et al. (2017), Stanko ad Naylor (2018), and Thibert (2012)), but we see that it can also become a public good when the food is distributed beyond the garden. The food serves as a physical but mobile link between the area of the garden, the gardeners, and the people who receive what has been produced there – extending a public beyond the physical border of the garden and broader than the group of gardeners involved in production. We see that both the Aarhus and Rotterdam municipalities view food as a by-product of urban agriculture and not as an end unto itself, as they favor other benefits. For example, the primary aim of Aarhus’s “Edible pathways” intervention is to slow cyclists rather than strawberry production. For many urban agriculture initiatives, in contrast, food is the main motivation – Rotterdamse Munt is attempting to sustain itself as a commercial garden; Gallo Gartneriet’s produce is sold at a roadside kiosk to cover operations costs; Voedseltuin Rotterdam and Hotspot Hutspot Krootwijk began with the goal of distributing food to the poor (Fig. 4.27).

Fig. 4.27

Shop in Rotterdamse Munt. (Photo: authors)

Food is a limited resource; therefore the question of distribution is crucial to assess its public benefit. Horst et al. (2017) suggest “caution in automatically conflating urban agriculture’s social benefits with the goals of food justice” because “urban agriculture may reinforce and deepen societal inequities by benefitting better resourced organizations and the propertied class” (p. 277). We see this where initiatives in Aarhus largely have private boxes and produce remains within the gardening community. However, the municipality’s guideline to provide publicly harvestable produce is a measure in the trajectory to increasing the public that can enjoy the produce.

We see that urban agriculture initiatives vary greatly in both the amounts of food grown and how broadly it is distributed. The initiatives that produced food beyond the gardening community clearly stand out as extending their public reach in this dimension (Voedseltuin Rotterdam, Hotspot Hutspot Krootwijk, Gallo Gartneriet, Rotterdamse Munt). Further, providing the produce for free or at subsidized prices appears to ensure a broader diversity of potential end users, whereas selling produce for profit narrows the potential pubic reached in this dimension (Rotterdamse Munt).

• D. Knowledge: building communities to spread cultivation knowledge

While food itself is a limited resource, knowledge about food and cultivation can benefit an infinite number of people – reaching the broadest public out of these publicness trajectories. All initiatives we visited in Aarhus and Rotterdam contributed to disseminating cultivation knowledge in different forms, both on-site and through potentially far-reaching internet resources. For example, at Rotterdamse Munt, each planter box had a sign with information about plants, and their website has a shop where shipping of products is possible within all of the Netherlands. In Tuin op de Pier in Rotterdam, the gardeners promote permaculture by creating a special gardening place, explaining their principles online, and inviting to seasonal events. Because of the design, just being in the garden increases awareness regarding alternative ways of agriculture. Aarhus has built this dimension of publicness into their urban agriculture program, requiring all supported initiatives to host two events a year. They further support this by hosting an umbrella web resource⁸ that connects all the initiatives and provides information as well as cultivation resources open to all. Even if food production has not been central, the knowledge of food cultivation is lifted as an arena to tie other qualities together and make public space with urban agriculture a matter of public concern.

6 The Publicness Trajectories and Capabilities

By briefly relating these four trajectories of publicness to the operationalization of Nussbaum’s (2011) capabilities (see Chap. 2), we can see that the two conceptual frameworks are intertwined in attempting to define differing extents people are able to lead fulfilling lives through the use of public space in cities. Publicness here has offered us a way of framing the extent and recipients of benefit from a given public space through an urban agriculture initiative. We see that the different trajectories may reach differing extents in both breadth and number of people but also correspond to slightly different capabilities that can be offered to the public included.

The publicness trajectory “Access and Animation” is essential for publicness of urban spaces and contributes to several capabilities operationalized in the context of urban agriculture in Chap. 2: Life and Bodily Integrity (safety), Bodily Health (access to green spaces, good quality of outdoor areas), Senses, Imagination, Thought (qualities of design), Other Species (access to nature), and Play (cultural activities). While there are many capabilities that can be supported here, they are relatively restricted to a local presence in a specific space and specific interactions, which demand more of the details of the design and activity program of urban agriculture initiatives. The concept of access further can come into clear conflict with that of food production, where attempting to offer the capabilities connected with the trajectory “Food” may require lessening access in trajectory “Access and Animation.”

Dealing with social challenges and providing social services are crucial for approaching human flourishing (see Chap. 2) and the publicness trajectory “Community” contributes to such capabilities as Bodily Integrity (crime prevention), Senses, Imagination, Thought (freedom of expression, opportunities for creativity, experience of well-being), Emotions (support of mental health, facilitation of meaningful relations with others, protecting from anxieties and fear), Practical Reason (opportunities for political engagement), and Affiliation (social inclusion, opportunities of various forms of social interactions). The social services we found approached in many urban agriculture projects presented here broaden the reach beyond one plot or demographic group, as can be a limitation among many gardening groups (Christensen et al., 2019). As we saw both in Aarhus and Rotterdam, urban agriculture initiatives can empower people and communities by enhancing their capabilities – thus contributing to social entitlements in Nussbaum’s (2003) terms.

Producing and distributing food (trajectory “Food”) can be identified within such capabilities in the context of urban agriculture as Bodily Health (access to local organic food), Practical Reason (bottom-up processes), and Other Species (involvement in growing food). The regulations around food production for distribution and the practicalities of food production in quantity can limit how accessible these are, defining one of the major tensions we find in urban agriculture in public space.

The publicness trajectory “Knowledge” supports several capabilities, including Senses, Imaginations, Thoughts (political activism, opportunities for creativity), Practical Reason (bottom-up processes, citizens’ participation), Other Species (relation to nature), and Control over One’s Environment (influence on physical settings). Here, urban agriculture initiatives can have much broader impacts, even to international publics from the activities they have in a singular, localized space.

Urban agriculture in public space becomes a resource for supporting these capabilities to different publics that can participate. This chapter clearly illustrates that the capabilities cannot be taken for granted as automatically growing from including urban agriculture in public space. They are possibilities for some that in certain situations exclude other people and possibilities. Both the organization and ground operations of each initiative and facilitation and regulation by municipal agencies must work together to maximize benefits to the majority, if not all users.

7 Concluding Remarks: Publicness Trade-Offs

In our research, we found that urban agriculture can contribute to a vast variety of benefits to different publics, reaching well beyond the boundaries of the garden. With urban agriculture, public spaces can engage in municipal and even international goals offering capabilities to both gardeners and more extensive publics. However, the different ways that urban agriculture can benefit external secondary and tertiary users (Eason, 1989) can come into conflict with its primary users – urban gardeners. In the urban agriculture contexts of Aarhus and Rotterdam, we identify both trade-offs and synergies between different urban agriculture benefits, as well as the extent benefits from one urban agriculture site may reach. We see that both food production and social services can lead to reducing access and animation within urban agriculture, as they produce particular needs for controlling access.

High levels of animation and easy and welcoming access are the starting point for most literature and normative goals for public space. We see that while they may come at the cost of what the space can produce, these qualities do contribute to the number of people exposed to cultivation knowledge – even without becoming active gardeners. This chapter offers a variety of trajectories for understanding what publicness can mean in urban space, allowing that inaccessible spaces may also provide public benefits. Retaining a balance and variety of publics served by urban spaces appears to be key for urban agriculture to contribute to a wide range of capabilities in a city.

Further study could attempt to understand the trade-offs between internal benefits, like the sense of community and personal growth and health, against the wider public benefits that this study has sought to bring forward. One may begin with a hypothesis acknowledged in public space literature (see, e.g., Hajer and Reijndorp (2001)), that the less intimate the space, the harder it may be to establish close and tight connections – highly animated urban agriculture projects may also struggle with supporting community and personal benefits.

How urban agriculture initiatives function in public space is complex, context-dependent, and defies simple normative or policy solutions. This anthology starts to point at a handful of potentially beneficial policy measures. To support human flourishing on the individual and community levels (see Chap. 2), cities need a variety of public spaces and urban agriculture initiatives that can alternately support internal relationships and reach out with a variety of public benefits. Not every urban agriculture project needs to be a physically accessible and inviting public space in order to benefit local society and support capabilities at personal, interpersonal, and societal levels. There are multiple ways that urban agriculture in public spaces can reach out to different publics, demonstrating that there are paths to publicness and capability building that can include physical fences and locks.