A clear, concise set of contributions on the role of agriculture in a range of urban settings is presented here. The dozen chapters demonstrate the huge diversity of farming activities in cities across the world, in terms of scale, and their social, environmental and economic dimensions. They range from allotments in London, Berlin and Sydney to gardens in Bangkok and several cities in Sri Lanka, to maize and sorghum fields in Accra. City farms provide half the vegetables consumed in Hong Kong and Karachi, more than four-fifths in Shanghai and all of those eaten in Havana.

The collection is of particular interest in the attention it pays to questions of governance and municipal planning. The urban poor are especially vulnerable to food price rises and, hence, any ability to grow some of their own food can make a big difference to their vulnerability in times of crisis, such as the commodity price spike of 2007/08. Yet city planners often squeeze areas for farming out of their schemes, because they don't ‘fit’, and municipal by-laws may forbid such activity. Urban agriculture offers a valuable means to foster civic engagement, build communities and celebrate local food. The landscapes of agriculture create a recreational resource as well as enabling the recycling of organic wastes. With rising risk of floods due to increased urbanization and impacts of climate change, farmed areas can help reduce the costs, by helping water percolate the soil and providing vegetation which slows runoff. The collection concludes by calling for a reinvigorated urbanism that bridges the false divides between city and countryside, and which greens our townscapes in ways which nourish both body and spirit.