Allotment Gardens: Empowering Communities, Enriching Urban Green Multifunctionality and Ensuring Food Security in Urban Settings

The rapidly increasing population worldwide has led to an increase in the rate of urbanization in parallel with developing technology. While 30% of the world's population lived in cities in 1950, this rate increased to 55% in 2018 and is expected to reach 68% in 2050 (United Nations, 2019). In this process, cities spreading rapidly to the periphery have brought along many environmental problems (Akseki, 2011). In addition to air, water and soil pollution; urban sprawl has started to put great pressure on surrounding forest areas, water resources, natural landscapes and agricultural areas. Agricultural areas have been affected the most by this pressure (Akseki, 2011). In this context, the need for food increases on the one hand, and on the other hand, problems related to food security and safety grow in the process of rapid agricultural production (Wiskerke, 2015). The design of open and green spaces is one of the important outputs of urban landscape planning. Urban open and green spaces are indispensable elements of urban planning as an important response to climate change-related problems with their socio-cultural functions as well as their ecological benefits. The demand for agricultural uses is increasing within the open and green space system in rapidly expanding areas with planned or unplanned urbanization. Allotment gardens and other urban agricultural areas constitute one of the system elements of open and green spaces. The increase in urban areas causes people to move away from agricultural production spatially and cognitively; and increases food security concerns due to the increasing reduction of agricultural areas, in addition to damaging natural areas. The most effective way to reduce the distance to food is to support food production in urban areas and areas around the city, it is in other words urban agriculture (Bakkaloğlu & Şahin, 2022). Urban agriculture has played an important role in the improvement and sustainable development of cities throughout history. Establishing the relationship ...