Living labs and research questions 2024

Living Labs in development

The presented living lab subjects and questions are still in development for the coming year. These will be fully updated by the end of January 2024.

Montpellier « L’agriparc des Bouisses » Living Lab /France

Periurban agricultural park

Indicated for French speaking students (as many actors or resources around this project only speak French or are only published in French). An agriparc is an agricultural park included in the urban space, combining different functions around agriculture. It is a landscaped place of production, marketing in short circuit, a refuge for fauna and flora, but also a place of green leisure open to all. Subjected to intense urbanization and heavy automobile traffic, the inhabitants of the western sector of Montpellier have suffered a degradation of their quality of life and their environment. With the Agriparc des Bouisses project, the ambition is both to create a new place of attraction for the entire sector, and to offer the inhabitants a quality landscape and natural area. An innovative participatory approach has been launched with the inhabitants so that they can contribute to the agriparc project (on which the teams of landscape designers, urban planners and urban agriculture specialists will work).

Assignment questions for local students

Governance/public consultation

• What lessons can be learned from the public consultation process?
• What recommendations to make for the next process?
• How to ensure that the public's opinions are taken into account during the project?

Management of the agriparc

• How to connect this agriparc to the city, ensuring that it is inclusive of all populations?
• How to reconcile leisure, recreational, environmental/biodiversity preservation, commercial and productive activities?

Connections

• How to make this agriparc an urban-rural connection point?
• How to relate this agriparc to a network of various agriparcs on the territory of the metropolitan area? Around which type of activities?

Assignment questions for remote students

• How to reconcile leisure, recreational, environmental/biodiversity preservation, commercial and productive activities?
• How to make this agriparc an urban-rural connection point?

(Answering those two questions with inputs from other experiences elsewhere - that you know, by inquiring on local case studies, or by literature)

• Building a typology of urban agriparcs, based on literature.

Mastering French to a certain extent is a preference since much of the references and stakeholder responses will be in French, a comparative case study of other countries can of course be carried out in English.

Warsaw “MOST Urban Farm” Living Lab/Poland

Production and collaboration with local farmers

Short video presentation, Short pdf description 2023-01_MOST_LL_en, Extended description https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FZvY1t1ptUOfIXTSJ8XrFWJecCt6WlrU/view?usp=sharing

The Warsaw Urban Farm initiative was born out of the need to prepare the city for the upcoming effects of the environmental and food crises. Our goal is to create a local center for agro-ecological education and food production, and to develop and network future leaders in the field of sustainable food planning to contribute locally to food security and a healthier environment. To strengthen the city's resilience, we want to establish Warsaw's first farm (MOST), which will also be an incubator for further initiatives in the area of sustainable food system of Warsaw and surrounding suburban and rural areas.

Assignment questions for the local students

• In addition to finances, what are the potential benefits of establishing the MOST farm in the selected location?

(methods: a literature review on relevant examples of urban farms and food hubs in other cities; analysis of spatial planning documents; field trip; spatial analysis; identifying key partners and stakeholders; identifying main problems and challenges faced by farmers operating in the selected area; SWOT analysis for the Warsaw agriculture of the upper Vistula)

• What should be an economic model of the MOST farm?

(methods: a literature review on relevant examples of urban farms and food hubs in other cities; academic papers review; field trip; identifying main problems and challenges faced by farmers operating in the selected area; SWOT analysis for the Warsaw agriculture of the upper Vistula, developing an economic model )

• Who are the stakeholders (municipality, neighbor community, involved institutions, and farmers) and what are their needs and influence?

(methods: field trip; analysis of land ownership; identifying key partners and stakeholders; mapping all actors and their needs and power; define potential partnerships and alliances)

• What is the attitude of local farmers towards urban agriculture initiatives, particularly MOST?

(methods: field trip; mapping local farmers; interviews and questionnaires; designing a food hub)

• What edible plants are the best to cultivate in MOST farm? Considering climate factors and socio-economic factors (production feasibility, retail).

(methods: literature review; field trip; consultation with an expert)

• What is the Warsaw municipality's attitude toward biodiversity? Is it only a cost of maintaining vacant lands or a food production opportunity?

(methods: analysis of Municipality planning documents; interviews and questionnaires)

• What are the regional rituals associated with agriculture and how to transfer them to an urban context?

(methods: literature review; field trip; mapping local farmers; interviews and questionnaires; developing a proposal for an urban harvest celebration)

Assignment questions for the remote students

• What should the coop urban farm include in its programme? What are the potential benefits (social, economic, environmental, others), and how to increase them?

(methods: a literature review on relevant examples of urban farms and food hubs in other cities; academic papers review; field trips)

• What are the models of coop urban farms around the world? (Economic models, inner organization structures).

(methods: a literature review on relevant examples of urban farms and food hubs in other cities; academic papers review; field trips)

• What are the city's policies towards vacant lands considering its biodiversity and food production opportunities?

(methods: a literature review on relevant examples of urban farms and food hubs in other cities; academic papers review; analysis of Municipality planning documents; interviews and questionnaires)

Ghent AGROECOLOGICAL URBANISM FUTURE HERITAGE Living Lab/ Belgium

in collaboration with De Stadsacademie*, STA.M, ILVO

Starting with the Kitchen. Rethinking neighbourhood food systems from an agroecological perspective

To rethink and transform urban local food systems, the kitchen is a good place to start. Even in the highly commodified urban food system of a city like Ghent, the kitchen entertains a strong relation of proximity to the places of eating. That is true for the individual kitchens at home but is true for collective kitchen infrastructure. The kitchen is not only the place where food is prepared, It is also a place in which logic of consumption and production meet. This also makes the kitchen a place of potential solidarity between producers and consumers. In this year’s working cycle of the Living Lab, we will explore the agroecological transformation of neighbourhood food systems through the perspective of the community kitchen in the Bloemekenswijk in Ghent. While the Bloemekenswijk is historically part of the periphery of Ghent, it is today subject to new dynamics of urbanization that reposition the neighbourhood within the urban agglomeration and set up a new dialogue between local and supra-local relations. This gives an opportunity to think about the role of neighbourhood infrastructure in general and food infrastructure in particular. The neighbourhood contains an array of existing food initiatives that can be the starting point of an agroecological transformation of the food system. The focus will be in particular on the Bloemekenswijk, however, will include the documentation of initiatives in other neighbourhoods as well.

We will be exploring different transformative pathways together with actors within the neighbourhood.

• the possible connection of neighbourhood initiatives to farmland owned by the Public Center for Social Welfare (OCMW)
• the possible coproduction between the existing social economy cluster (VZW Ateljee & Balenmagazijn) with social economy initiatives active in food production (De Loods in Aalst)
• the possible creation of a food hub, supplying food to existing neighbourhood restaurants, institutional canteens, school kitchens, etc.
• the transformation of the existing market (Van Beverenplein) as a public site of local food supply in co-creation with neighbourhood food initiatives
• the reactivation of the bakery on the psychiatric campus Dr. Guislain

Assignment questions for remote student

Students can choose between track A (literature review) or B (case study)

A.Literature review on neighborhood food systems and what makes them transformative

• What are the main drivers behind the creation of neighborhood food systems?
• How can place-based initiatives be used to define solidarities that don’t remain limited to the local (and move beyond the local trap (Purcell 2006))?
• How do local initiatives cope with the tension between ecological and social goals?
• How can neighbourhood infrastructure be retooled to link up with local producers? What are the organizational and infrastructural implications of relying on direct supply?
• How dependent are food support initiatives on surplus food and how do they seek to break that dependency?

B.Documentation, discussion of existing practices connecting neighbourhood food networks and infrastructures to local suppliers, and questions of access to land?

Examples around public catering within public institutes (schools, hospitals, care facilities…) that make a direct connection between public food provisioning, agroecological farmers, and land management. Examples of neighbourhood-based initiatives around food support and place-based solidarity in connection with agroecological farmers. We are particularly interested in community kitchen initiatives building a food sovereignty agenda together with agroecological producers.

The General Context of the Ghent Living Lab and Earlier Work

The urban food policy of the City of Ghent, Gent en Garde, has been the subject of international attention including several prestigious prizes. At the same time, the systematic sale of public farmland in the peri-urban fringe of Ghent has alienated new and traditional farmers who are upset about the systematic loss of farmland. Farmers are rapidly disappearing from the peri-urban fringe, and new farmers face great difficulty in establishing themselves. Within the context of De Stadsacademie* civil society actors, farmers, urban civil servants, students and researchers have been engaged in the development of alternative policies regarding publicly owned farmland, and agricultural heritage more generally. The land currently being sold off by the city is the fruit of historical investment in urban agricultural heritage that has been handed down over several generations and is part of the permanent improvements (infrastructure, public space, heritage landscapes, drainage systems, etc.) that made farming possible. Contemporary urban constituencies seem to care little for the future of this publicly owned farmland. In the political debate on the sale of public land urban social goals are played against ecological concerns and the protection of local farming activities. The land is presented as ‘fragmented’ and off little public interest, and sold to finance the development of residential care facilities for the elderly. The campaign against the sale of public farmland has led to a moratorium on further sales in the neighbouring municipalities of Ghent. in the meantime, the city is preparing a vision on Agricultural land use in the city and the wider region. Within De Stadsacademie we want to enter into a dialogue with parties that could help to articulate a shared agenda regarding the way in which the public ownership of farmland could be leveraged to accelerate an agroecological food transition. This will happen in the framework of an agroecological urbanism (www.agroecologicalurbanism.org), which is a way of urbanizing that actively supports the care for soils and the growing of food in an equitable and ecologically sustainable way. We will try to imagine new forms of urban infrastructure and future heritage that contribute to the local support of agroecological farmers and re-inscribe the farming activities within a new urban geography of farming. Last year we worked within the living lab on various fronts, exploring possible connections between local food policy initiatives and public land management. The results of last year’s local work in the living lab were documented in a series of video portraits: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ5xVUeu3UV65ME7uF9RoRoNefUcVm3ba In July 2023 ‘De Stadacademie’ hosted the 2nd AESOP4FOOD Intensive Programme. A detailed programme of the IP can be found here: Programme IP Ghent - Future Heritage_Agroecological Urbanism This year we want to narrow the scope of the exercise and go deeper in one of the lines of investigation namely that of the community kitchen and the role of neighbourhood food infrastructure. part of this hypothesis has been explored in a master thesis that was produced in the context of ‘De Stadsacademie’. Master thesis Neighborfood

De Stadsacademie is a collaboratorium dedicated to transdisciplinary research and teaching on complex and urgent sustainability challenges faced by the city and the University of Ghent. De Stadsacademie works on several ‘trajectories’ that define the thematic scope of its work over a number of years.

Madrid Agroecologico Living Lab/ Spain

The Living Lab is conceived as a space of interaction with the platform Madrid Agroecologico, to provide support to make progress in one of their current main goals: consolidate the precarious network of agroecological farmers in the peri-urban area. . In the last assembly, Madrid Agroecológico identified the need to optimize food fluxes (and transport) to improve the feasibility of farmers.It was set as a priority action for 2023 and request for support to draw a detailed análisis of food flows and an ecobalance to re-define distribution and logistic processes. A second goal of the LL is to check the possibilities of adapting the concept of "agroecological biodistrict" to one of Madrid’s districts and an associated region, revisiting current nodes of production and consumption in order to expand.

Assignment questions for remote students

• What can be learned from agri-food cluster development to be applied to small scale and scattered agroecological farms?
• Examples and good practices on food hubs or collective facilities adapted to small scale farmers
• Examples and good practices to upscale agroecology from the farm to the landscape. Are alternative food networks and agroecological farmers recognisable in the landscape? and in the urban scene?
• Comparison of an alternative food network with the “standard” food chain, in which ways do the AFN have better performance?
• Which planning tools can be activated to address the needs of small agroecological farmers ?