Recreational area trends in the rural-urban fringe: case study of Kórnik gmina (commune)

notatka naukowa, tekst równol. pol., ang

Natural conditions and tourist issues in the planning documents of selected communes of Poznań poviat

Recreation grounds which city residents have at their disposal enhance their living conditions and improve the quality of life. The provision of short-term (after-hours) and weekend recreation is one of the major tasks of the suburban zone. However, an uncontrolled spread of Poznań into areas attractive in recreational terms may mean their irreversible loss. The fast rate of absorption of suburban areas by the city, especially those of high natural and cultural value, calls for measures protecting them against investment, so as to help them maintain their recreational function both today and in the future. What can secure Poznań's suburban areas against detrimental effects of suburbanisation is proper space management. Given the investment pressure and a great demand for new building lots, this is sometimes a very difficult task. Maintaining old and establishing new recreation grounds in communes is only possible through the adoption of suitable provisions in planning documents. Such decisions can crucially affect the operation of recreation space around Poznań. Therefore, an analysis was made of tourism-related issues addressed in selected planning documents in terms of direct and indirect provisions concerning recreation and leisure. (Direct provisions include, e.g., the delineation of recreation grounds, while indirect ones concern the rules of protection of the environment, nature and cultural landscape, or prospects of transport development.) The analysis embraced 12 communes neighbouring on Poznań and forming its suburban zone

Possibilities of economic valuation of the planned land use changes in terms of the natural environment

The land use structure is changed in consequence of implementing decisions taken in spatial planning documents. The change is usually set along the directions of modifying stable ecosystems into unstable ones, which has an adverse impact on the biodiversity and ecosystem services. Including the concept of ecosystem services into the strategic assessment of the environmental impact would form a basis for a quantitative valuation of the effects which the delivery of spatial planning decisions exerts on the environment. The main objective of this study is to present financial effects of the changes in the land use provided for in the local spatial management plan, currently reflected in the financial projection, as well as to present the Biotope Valuation Method (BMV) as an example of a tool to value the above changes, and finally to present the concept of ecosystem services as a perspective to estimate environmental changes resulting from spatial planning decisions

"We have been part of the response": The Effects of COVID-19 on Community and Allotment Gardens in the Global North

© 2021 Schoen, Blythe, Caputo, Fox-Kämper, Specht, Fargue-Lelièvre, Cohen, Ponizy and Fedenczak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Throughout history, urban agriculture practitioners have adapted to various challenges by continuing to provide food and social benefits. Urban gardens and farms have also responded to sudden political, economic, ecological, and social crises: wartime food shortages; urban disinvestment and property abandonment; earthquakes and floods; climate-change induced weather events; and global economic disruptions. This paper examines the effects on, and responses by, urban farms and gardens to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is based on data collected in the summer of 2020 at the onset of the pandemic when cities were struggling with appropriate responses to curb its spread. It builds on an international research project (FEW-meter) that developed a methodology to measure material and social benefits of urban agriculture (UA) in five countries (France, Germany, Poland, UK and USA) over two growing seasons, from a Food-Energy-Water nexus perspective. We surveyed project partners to ascertain the effects of COVID-19 on those gardens and farms and we interviewed policy stakeholders in each country to investigate the wider impacts of the pandemic on UA. We report the results with respect to five key areas: (1) garden accessibility and service provision during the pandemic; (2) adjustments to operational arrangements; (3) effects on production; (4) support for urban farms and gardens through the pandemic; and (5) thoughts about the future of urban agriculture in the recovery period and beyond. The paper shows that the pandemic resulted in multiple challenges to gardens and farms including the loss of ability to provide support services, lost income, and reductions in output because of reduced labor supply. But COVID-19 also created several opportunities: new markets to sell food locally; more time available to gardeners to work in their allotments; and increased community cohesion as neighboring gardeners looked out for one another. By illustrating the range of challenges faced by the pandemic, and strategies to address challenges used by different farms and gardens, the paper illustrates how gardens in this pandemic have adapted to become more resilient and suggests lessons for pandemic recovery and longer-term planning to enable UA to respond to future public health and other crises.Peer reviewe

Natural conditions as a premise for the development of the Poznań urbanised area

This paper presents the natural conditions in the Poznań urbanised area with a focus on lasting preservation of the resources both in respect of quantity and quality. The problem related sections concern the land surface, mineral resources, soil, water and assets of natural systems. The content shows elements of a nature potential diagnosis considering the forms of human pressure and condition of the environment’s components. Based on the above conclusions were drawn regarding the actions necessary to preserve or improve the nature-related aspects of the population’s quality of life. The purposefulness and scope of the current and planned co-operation between communes as regards environment management were assessed

The Socio-Cultural Benefits of Urban Agriculture: A Review of the Literature

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Despite extensive literature on the socio-cultural services of urban open spaces, the role of food-producing spaces has not received sufficient attention. This hampers advocacy for preserving and growing urban agricultural activities, often dismissed on justifications that their contributions to overall food supply are negligible. To understand how the social benefits of urban agriculture have been measured, we conducted a systematic review of 272 peer-reviewed publications, which drew on insights from urban agriculture sites in 57 different countries. Through content analysis, we investigated socio-cultural benefits in four spheres: engaged and cohesive communities, health and well-being, economic opportunities, and education. The analysis revealed growth in research on the social impacts of gardens and farms, with most studies measuring the effects on community cohesion and engagement, followed by increased availability and consumption of fruits and vegetables associated with reduced food insecurity and better health. Fewer studies assessed the impact of urban farming on educational and economic outcomes. Quantifying the multiple ways in which urban agriculture provides benefits to people will empower planners and the private sector to justify future investments. These findings are also informative for research theorizing cities as socio-ecological systems and broader efforts to measure the benefits of urban agriculture, in its many forms.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture

Urban agriculture (UA) is a widely proposed strategy to make cities and urban food systems more sustainable. Until now, we have lacked a comprehensive assessment of the environmental performance of UA relative to conventional agriculture, and results from earlier studies have been mixed. This is the first large-scale study to resolve this uncertainty across cities and types of UA, employing citizen science at 73 UA sites in Europe and the United States to compare UA products to food from conventional farms. Results reveal that the carbon footprint of food from UA is six times greater than conventional agriculture (420 gCO2e versus 70 gCO2e per serving). However, some UA crops (for example, tomatoes) and sites (for example, 25% of individually managed gardens) outperform conventional agriculture. These exceptions suggest that UA practitioners can reduce their climate impacts by cultivating crops that are typically greenhouse-grown or air-freighted, maintaining UA sites for many years, and leveraging circularity (waste as inputs)

Food production and resource use of urban farms and gardens: a five-country study

There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms. This hampers attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture or craft policies for sustainable food production in cities. To address this gap, we used a citizen science approach to collect data from 72 urban agriculture sites, representing three types of spaces (urban farms, collective gardens, individual gardens), in five countries (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and United States). We answered three key questions about urban agriculture with this unprecedented dataset: (1) What are its land, water, nutrient, and energy demands? (2) How productive is it relative to conventional agriculture and across types of farms? and (3) What are its contributions to local biodiversity? We found that participant farms used dozens of inputs, most of which were organic (e.g., manure for fertilizers). Farms required on average 71.6 L of irrigation water, 5.5 L of compost, and 0.53 m2 of land per kilogram of harvested food. Irrigation was lower in individual gardens and higher in sites using drip irrigation. While extremely variable, yields at well-managed urban farms can exceed those of conventional counterparts. Although farm type did not predict yield, our cluster analysis demonstrated that individually managed leisure gardens had lower yields than other farms and gardens. Farms in our sample contributed significantly to local biodiversity, with an average of 20 different crops per farm not including ornamental plants. Aside from clarifying important trends in resource use at urban farms using a robust and open dataset, this study also raises numerous questions about how crop selection and growing practices influence the environmental impacts of growing food in cities. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle these and other pressing questions on resource use at urban farms

Urbanisation pressure and its effect on the spatial structure of land use in selected suburban areas of Poznań city

A basic condition of preserving high-quality human life on Earth, not only for the present but also future generations, is a rational use of environmental resources. This also embraces proper management of space. Space mismanagement can result in an uncontrolled sprawl of cities and chaotic growth of suburban areas. Socio-economicdevelopmenthasbroughtaboutachangeinthedominantfunctionsofsuburbanareas,andhencein the space of the suburban zone. Detrimental effects of urban sprawl onto suburban areas were observed in Western Europe in the 1960s. An assessment of the costs of the present urbanisation tendencies places them in the group of undesirable phenomena. In order to identify the directions of change, a spatial-temporal analysis was made of large-scale (1:10,000) transformationsintheland-usepatternjustbeyondthelimitsofPoznañcity.Itwasfoundthatchangeshadtakenplace not only in the forms of land use, but also in the nature of buildings