Increasing the integration of urban horticulture into cities: Challenges and opportunities
Urban horticulture, the growing of fruits and vegetables in cities and towns, provides a healthy food source close to the majority of the human population.
It also provides many other key benefits to urban dwellers including improved health and wellbeing, social cohesion, flood mitigation and carbon storage. Within a city, fruit and vegetables can be grown in both soil-based horticulture in green spaces and controlled environment horticulture in the built environment.
Development of these forms of growing presents an opportunity to shift to a more sustainable fruit and vegetable production system close to the urban population; however, there are key scientific, engineering and socio-economic challenges that must be explored to enable successful integration of growing into cities.
We welcome submissions for a special issue of Plants, People, Planet, which will bring together an exciting body of interdisciplinary research, reviews, reports and opinion pieces exploring the potential of urban horticulture, for both food security, and human and environmental co-benefits.
A key focus will be exploring how to overcome the barriers to expansion, including the engagement of urban dwellers, developing sustainable controlled environment horticultural systems (e.g. aquaponics), and understanding the ecosystem service trade-offs of expansion of urban horticulture into other urban greenspaces.
Answering these questions is especially timely following the Covid-19 pandemic, which has seen a large increase in demand for space to grow food by urban dwellers, coupled with a growing recognition by local and national governments of the potential role of urban horticulture in a healthy food secure population.
We welcome submissions by 1 November 2022, covering the interdisciplinary challenges of the integration of horticulture into the urban landscape.
Please contact the editorial office if you have any questions, or a potential manuscript that you would like to discuss.
With best wishes,
Jill Edmondson, Sam Caton, Paul Norman, and Hamish Cunningham
Guidelines and submission procedure
Plants, People, Planet, published by the not-for-profit New Phytologist Foundation, is an Open Access journal that aims to celebrate everything new, innovative and exciting in plant-focused research that is relevant to society and people’s daily lives.
Articles submitted for consideration in Plants, People, Planet will be subject to peer review and must meet the aims and scope of the journal. Articles should include an engaging 100 word Societal Impact Statement to highlight why the work matters to people, society and the planet.
Please refer to the full Author Guidelines before submission, which contain information on article types and format, as well as details on how to compile the electronic version of your manuscript. Please contact us if you have questions or a potential manuscript that you would like to discuss.
Submission procedure
Please click the button below to submit your manuscript on ScholarOne Manuscripts (opens in a new tab).
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