Urban Agriculture as an Innovative Lever for Sustainable Development, Resilient Cities, and Inclusive Governance

Abstract

Confronted with demographic pressure, urbanization, food insecurity and territorial im-balances, cities are increasingly rethinking their development models to make them more sustainable, inclusive and resilient. Urban agriculture is emerging as a multifunctional approach that promises ecological transition, social cohesion and innovative governance. Its implementation is however raising questions about long-term impacts, governance arrangements and institutional anchoring. This thesis deploys an interdisciplinary frame-work that combines various research articles evaluating urban agriculture, the analysis of its polycentric governance, along with in-depth empirical case studies in France and Spain, with the aim of assessing how different actors - local authorities, metropolitan in-stitutions, citizens, etc. - interact to promote sustainable urban development. The method-ology consisted of a mixed methodological framework, combining qualitative and quanti-tative approaches, through questionnaires, interviews, fieldwork and statistical data to analyse the dynamics of urban agriculture and its impact on residents and the city. Nu-merous results were highlighted, where the systematic literature review identified the key roles of non-commercial urban agriculture in supporting inclusion, ecosystem services and collective empowerment, while pointing out its limitations. Case studies of urban ag-riculture projects in France demonstrate that an appropriate polycentric arrangement ena-bles local involvement and joint construction, while also reflecting the underlying ten-sions between metropolitan governance and citizen initiatives. Regarding the urban agri-culture cases evaluated in Spain, they highlight strong citizen involvement with limited institutional integration in terms of financial issues and support, thus illustrating the im-peratives of territorial contextualization of governance models, thereby ensuring comple-mentarity between the local and international cases evaluated. Finally, the worldwide sur-vey revealed that while urban agriculture is widely perceived as part of sustainable devel-opment and food resilience, active engagement is low, reflecting weak institutional sup-port for urban agriculture despite the perceived benefits. Overall, the results confirm that urban agriculture is a strategic political and territorial lever, whose contribution to sus-tainable urban transitions depends on appropriate governance, technical and financial sup-port and greater institutional recognition.