ABSTRACT
This special volume showcases urban agriculture – its potential to provide multiple benefits and its challenges, generically grouped as social, economic and environmental goods and services (see Pearson et al., pp. 7–19; Leeuwen et al., pp. 20–25). The majority of the world's population now lives in cities, and this proportion, and the size of the cities themselves, will increase dramatically over the next 20 years. It is known that city gree and local food production bring multiple benefits, but these are mostly not recorded by researchers and ignored by public policy makers. Consequently, the retention of gree and the encouragement of food production are usually based on ad hoc decisions by elected local councils without the benefit of access to independently researched information.
