About the Project

The overall aim of this project is to review and assess the development and proliferation of urban farming systems in Stockholm for identifying competitive, resilient, sustainable and robust food systems; addressing many of the goals of the call for creating more sustainable cities, new products and processes for urban farming through collaboration with the industry. The research will focus on real and planned case studies for producing food which will include analysis of different indoor and outdoor urban farming methods and techniques, business models as well sustainability and feasibility of the different approaches to review innovation and increased capacity building in the urban horticulture sector.

The research project’s objectives (O) are to:

O1- Analyse and review different approaches and expectations for urban farming initiatives in Stockholm

O2- Investigate business models for these urban farming systems and conditions and regulations required for their realization

O3- Assess the social, economic and environmental sustainability implications of urban farming techniques

O4- Disseminate knowledge of urban farming and sustainability to important stakeholder groups to promote more sustainable choices and resilient food systems

The project will first review the various urban farming methods and case studies available in urban environments. Thereafter, we will review the current discourse enfolding in promoting urban farming systems, i.e., expectations and the potential effects this will have on conventional food systems (e.g., among social stakeholders, media, and academic literature). In order to meet the aims and objectives of our study, we will need to understand and review developing and existing case studies of urban farming, taking extreme care in choosing them for our research. The viability of these systems will be reviewed to understand the configurations, business models offering large potential, challenges, and opportunities for their scale-up. Finally, we will review the social and environmental sustainability through socio-economic assessments and life cycle methodologies.

The study reviews urban farming in a variety of contexts. By ‘urban,’ we focus both on urban and peri-urban farming systems that supply urban environments with food. Furthermore, we focus primarily on urban farming operations, which are commercially driven, i.e., with an economic incentive for producing and supplying food to a market.