Motivations, Supporting Factors and Challenges for Urban Agriculture in Public Space: Experiences from Oslo

Abstract

In this chapter we present case studies from Oslo (2018–2020), in which we explore ways of integrating urban agriculture in urban public spaces. We collected project initiators’ and managers’ experiences through interviews from eight urban agriculture projects representing a range of typologies, scales, and organizational models, from the city farm to small experimental cultivation projects. The objective is to uncover motivations, organizational issues of urban agriculture in public space, potential well-being impacts for city dwellers, and publicness aspects for a broader community. We find urban agriculture projects’ motivations emphasizing creating social meeting places and learning arenas for cultivation and ecological knowledge. Urban agriculture has also been used as a tool in local urban space development to improve well-being by using urban agriculture in public space to activate and unused space safer, as well as integrating cultivation in green space management in innovative ways. We discuss supporting and challenging factors to succeed with practicing urban agriculture in public space. To ensure accessibility for large and diverse segments of urban populations, we found that perceived publicness of spaces could be increased through deliberate design.