Farming the City

Editors: Erich Landsteiner and Tim Soens

Urban agriculture is a highly diversified and multi-layered phenomenon, and its roots are both very old and very recent. Throughout European history, it has appeared in different forms and guises. In some periods and regions, urban agriculture seems to have declined at an early stage, whereas in others urban economies and societies remained firmly based on more or less specialized and commercialized agrarian production until the recent past. At the beginning of the 21st century, in an urban world characterized by globalizing food markets, social polarization, but also increasing food insecurity, it is again rapidly gaining importance. Citizens practice urban agriculture in a combined effort to diversify their food supplies, shorten the food chain and strengthen community life. In order to understand the organization, the resilience and failure of urban agriculture in different contexts, this volume aims to develop a comparative and long-term approach, with a particular focus on the actors involved in urban agriculture, their income strategies, and the social and economic configurations in which they operate.

Table of Contents

Special Issue: Farming the City

Erich Landsteiner/Tim Soens
Editorial: Farming the City

Tim Soens
Urban Agriculture and Urban Food Provisioning in Pre-1850 Europe: Towards a Research Agenda

Roberto Leggero/Mirella Montanari
Two Experiences of Urban Agriculture in Medieval Piedmont. A Comparison of Chieri and Novara (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries)

Henry R. French
“… a great hurt to many, and of advantage to very few“. Urban Comon Lands, Civic Government, and the Problem of Resource Management in English Towns, 1500–1840

Piotr Miodunka
The Longue Durée in Polish Towns: Agriculture from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century

Pieter De Graef/Wouter Ronsijn
From Home Food Production to Professional Farming. The Social and Geographical Continuum of Urban Agriculture: Nineteenth-century Oudenaarde and Kortrijk, Belgium

Ines Peper
Between Village, Utopian Settlement, and Garden City: Urban Agriculture in the Company Housing Project of Eisenheim (Founded in 1844) in Historical Context

Åsa Ahrland
Fields, Meadows, and Gardens – an Integral Part of the City. The Example of Södermalm in Stockholm, Sweden

Erich Landsteiner
Urban Viticulture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Central Europe

Johannes Koder
Landwirtschaft beiderseits der Stadtmauern. Konstantinopels Versorgung mit Gemüse aufgrund der Geoponika

Articles

Carine Pachoud/Markus Schermer
Reconciling Tradition and Innovation in Traditional Mountain Cheese Value Chains: The Role of Social Capital. The Case of the Artisanal Serrano Cheese Value Chain in Southern Brazil

 

Orders and Review Copies: StudienVerlag (ISBN: 978-3-7065-5115-1, ISSN: 2523-2185)