Publications, podcasts, reports and other resources

In this section you can access a selection of my works (websites, reports, academic publications, speeches, podcasts, interviews, magazines) with a focus on urban agroecology and an agroecological urbanism. I also include some earlier works with a critical lense on urban agriculture. Most of this is in English, but some are in my mother thong (Italian), and others are translated in other languages.

[If any of the links does not work anymore, please get in touch!]

AGROECOLOGICAL URBANISM: What is it, why we need it and the role of UN-Habitat

[June 2024] - This long due policy brief is finally out! Written with particular reference to the way UN Habitat frames urbanisation trends and guidelines for best practice, this work aims to offer critical tools for a fundamental revision of UN-Habitat approaches, in line with the principles of ecological Earth stewardship, social equity, and planetary health that lay at the core of agroecology. Ultimately, the policy brief offers a succint overview of Agroecological Urbanism, as a new paradigm for urbanisation, decoupled from the logics of profit-oriented resource exploitation, techno-fixes and soil destruction, typical of current neoliberal urbanisation models. Download link here

PODCAST!

[7 March 2024] - In this podcast Marcella Arruda and myself discuss with Johannes Riegler how we envision the transformation of cities and food systems through urban agroecology https://www.anthropocene.city/podcast/10-reimagining-urban-food

L'agroecologia è necessaria

[2 March 2024] - Here I speak with Nicholas Bawtree in an improvised interview (in Italiano) for the Italian magazine Terra Nuova, in Rome, after my speech at the peasant conference "Cambiare il Campo", the first italian event for an agroecological convergence. We speak about the impact of urbanisation on peasant ways of life, the loss of land-based rythms and land care practices, and some political and practical avenues for re-grounding in agroecological practices. Watch on YouTube here.

Political pedagogies towards an Agroecological Urbanism

[2022] Working with Rob Logan, Havie Huxley (who designed the poster), and a number of key people and organisations from the Uk agroecology movement, within the Urbanising in Place project we produced this poster, illustrating six key principles that the political pedagogies of the movement should endorse, to build an agrecological urbanism.

Full text of the Political Pedagogies Building Block (on the Agroecological Urbanism website) is here.

From Agriculture in the City to an Agroecological Urbanism: The transformative pathway of urban (political) agroecology (2017)

You can read our initial manifesto for an Agroecological Urbanism at pp. 3-4 of this special issue on Urban Agroecology that I co-edited back in 2017 (whole issue in English here and in Portughese here). This is, to date, still one of the most diverse publications on the topic, with voices from activists, academics and practitioners from around the world.

Agroecological Urbanism (2022)

A web collection of multimedia materials for inspiring the political, policy amd practical work of building an Agroecological Urbanism. A toolbox rich of case studies, conversation starters, maps, historical overviews and videoclips with lived experiences. The section on the Building Blocks illustrates in detail eight areas where new society-farmers articulations and political work are needed.

Full access here

Resourcing an agroecological Urbanism (2021)

This is an anthology of articles reflecting on methodologies, concepts, policies and practices to resource the political and territorial journeys of transformation towards and agroecological urbanism. You can read the introduction, Chapter 1 and conclusions here, or see the book on the publisher's website here.

Urban Agriculture in the food-disabling city: (Re) defining urban food justice, reimagining a politics of empowerment (2017)

Building on several years of empirical research, in this article I illustrate the multiple ways in which the food-disabling city (which is the ordinary city of neoliberal and capitalist urbanisms) hinder the possibilities of food sovereignty and the right to grow through urban agriculture. Instead, I illustrate five points for contesting neoliberal urbanism (including the right to grow food), and a three-pronge strategy to connect urban food justice movements with peasant agroecology strategies. Read here

Building Medicinal Agroecology: Conceptual grounding for healing of rifts (2023)

In our chapter (chapter 1) in this anthology, we offer a reflection on the relation between health, food and medicine in the Western world, particularly in urban contexts, from the perspective of agroecology. You can read our article for free here, and see the full table of content here

The prefigurative power of urban political agroecology: rethinking the urbanisms of agroecological transitions for food system transformation (2020)

In this article we discuss the importance for agroecology movements to engage with the politics of urban transformation as a pre-requisite for agroecological transitions. We also illustrate a few examples of prefigurative politics in the realm of urban agroecology, that begin to transform urban life and build resourceful urban enviornments.

This article is open access, here

The making of a strategizing platform: from politicising the food movement in urban contexts to political urban agroecology (2019/2015)

"The Ramallah Letters" - This piece is the english original of a letter exchange (published first in a german translation in 2015), written in the weeks following the meeting of the authors at a session I co-organised with Barbara van Dyck at the International Conference of Critical Geography in Ramallah, Palestine, August 2015. We later published it in English in its original form, in the edited book Urban Gardening as Politics

Read it in English here or see the German book here

Research informed gardening activism: steering the public food and land agenda (2015)

Drawing on our experience within the Edible Public Space project (Leeds, UK, 2011-12), this paper Barbara and I explore the “spheres of influence” and contradictions that shaped the project's trajectory and aim to capture learning elements for scholarly activism, political gardening and radical urbanism. Doing so, we aim to contribute to the creation of an active memory of political gardening and to problematise the links between research-informed strategic thinking and actions, and the vocation of critical urban theory to provide and make visible alternatives for social change.

Open access here

Critical geography of urban agriculture (2014)

Written in 2012/2013, this paper aimed to define a research agenda for a critical geography of urban agriculture.
Open access here

Urban Metabolism and Urban Agriculture: How might growing food

in cities ‘mend’ the metabolic rift?

(2016)

Three short chapters that I co-wrote with Michiel Dehaene and Colin Sage, in the context of the project "Urban Agriculture Europe" COST action (2012-2016). Here we explore the role and limits of urban agrocological practices in beginning to mend the metabolic rift in cities. You can download them in one go, at this link (you will need to create a Research Gate profile first)

Urban food waste for soil amendment? Analysis and characterisation of waste-based compost for soil fertility management in agroecological horticultural production systems in the city of Rosario, Argentina (2024)

Can we use urban waste from the food industry and green space management for improving damaged urban soils for agroecological food production? Which of these waste stream are safer? How should policy try to regulate them? In this article we share the results of our pilot study in Rosario, Argentina, and begin to pose questions on what are the consequences for the way we conceive of agroecology in urban contexts. Read the full article open access here.

This is a selection of works that can contribute to converge peasant agroecological movements and urban food justice movements. For a full list of my publications, please consult my institutional webpage, or Google Scholar page (you can find the links at the bottom of the homepage/About page).