Present and Future Perspectives of Landscape and Urban Horticulture as Urban Regeneration Practices

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of urban food systems has been seeing increasing interest in the past decade, with multiple initiatives developed by researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. The rapid growth of urban food systems can be partially explained as local countermovements in response to decades of national and supranational food policies that tended to homogenize rather than recognize the diversity of local food systems, with high investments provided mostly to large companies, leaving little space for smaller companies to compete. Additionally, fostering urban food systems has been proven to provide important ecosystem services, implement urban green infrastructures, and foster sustainable and circular processes in urban areas. Accordingly, landscape and urban horticulture practices have rapidly grown and taken many forms, promoted by different actors and stakeholders, with different scales and purposes. Having initially emerged as possible solutions to increase regional, urban, and peri-urban food resiliency, taking advantage of the infrastructural gaps in modern cities, today, urban farming practices can also be seen as a new method of urban planning able to regenerate lost or vacant spaces and fostering new integrated green buildings solutions.

On this trail, for this Special Issue, we welcome conceptual and empirical studies, as well as theoretical or realized projects, that propose concrete actions to promote landscape and urban horticulture in modern cities, highlighting scopes and benefits that they could provide both to the urban food system and urban regeneration.

Papers can be submitted in the broader research area of landscape and urban horticulture. However, articles that focus on the below topics are encouraged:

• Ecosystem services provided by urban agriculture practices;
• Urban horticulture as new green infrastructure;
• Climate change mitigation and adaptation through landscape and urban horticulture practices;
• Water and waste management;
• Circular design processes;
• Integration of agricultural practices in and on buildings;
• Social, environmental, and economic innovations achieved through urban farming initiatives.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Michele D’Ostuni
Dr. Giuseppina Pennisi
Dr. Leonardo Zaffi
Guest Editors

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• urban farming
• building-integrated agriculture
• smart horticulture
• hydroponics
• vertical farming
• green infrastructure
• food-productive cities