Multifunctional Urban Landscapes: The Potential Role of Urban Agriculture as an Element of Sustainable Land Management

Abstract

There continues to be a poor understanding of how transformation and socio-technological change in the specific field of sustainable land use and management can be effectively governed and supported. The aim of this article is to contribute to this knowledge gap by presenting the findings from a comparative case study of nine local innovation projects that sought solutions for sustainable land management (SLM). For each of the nine projects, we examined the (i) problem definitions and framings, (ii) the type and degree of innovation, (iii) the different approaches taken to manage innovation processes, and (iv) the leverage points of these solutions in the governance system of SLM. The results show that SLM innovations start from diverse problem framings and emerge from distinct action fields. We found a broad variety of innovation types following distinct solution strategies that can be clustered into (i) multiple land use, (ii) knowledge-based decision support tools, (iii) co-management approaches, and (iv) new organisations and institutions. All nine projects applied multi-actor approaches to facilitate reflexive processes of social learning and cognitive reframing by embedding experimental innovation management approaches such as real-world laboratories (thus optimising the solution) into larger transdisciplinary and participatory processes (to adjust to societal discourses and normative orientations).