Enhancing scalable innovations and new business models based on urban farming ecosystem values

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CityZen responds to the growing number of cities and regions that recognize benefits of urban farming for sustainability and revenues. The project aims to influence various policy goals like food quality and security, waste management, resource efficiency, community development and quality of life by introducing urban farming to policy makers as a successful business area. CityZen will explore values that urban farming as ecosystem brings and links them with new business models, entrepreneurship, innovative supply chains and support policies to transform cities and regions. The project aims to create a knowledge pool of urban farming policies, initiatives and business processes that support decision makers and leverage the efficiency of their actions. Being an emerging sector and a crossroad of many policies and sectors, urban farming is a valuable source of good practices and innovative ways to transform social and business settings in favour of growth and sustainability. Showcasing how improved policies impact partner regions, create entrepreneurship opportunities and drive business and social transformation is set a priority of the CityZen project. CityZen’s main outputs spell out in 5 Action Plans for policy change in the regions, a good practices ‘marketplace’, accelerators for policy makers, design thinking and serios gaming by a JRC SES technique and compelling guidelines on how urban farming changes city landscapes. The partners represent public bodies, a think-tank and research center coming from Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Germany. The project will scale up capacities in 5 regions by enhancing governance and monitoring systems, as well as by maturing new projects on urban farming and resource efficiency that foster interactions among local stakeholders and transform city areas into productive green spaces.

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