Workshop Overview
The Scaling Urban Agriculture for Resilient Cities workshop, implemented by the GReenSCape Project Team on 2.18.2025, united passionate urban agriculturists from Metro Manila under the common goal of co-creating holistic strategies which harness its multifunctionality to strengthen resilience and improve sustainability.
Workshop Participants
Workshop objectives
Enhance the collective understanding of how different types of urban agriculture are, and have the potential to, contribute to Metro Manila's resilience and sustainability goals.
Co-create innovative urban agriculture activities and identify strategic opportunities to amplify their social, environmental, economic, and governance impacts.
Foster an inclusive and empowering space for diverse stakeholders to reflect on key challenges, co-design practical solutions, and strengthen collaborations to scale urban agriculture’s positive impact.
Key Takeaways
Urban Agriculture is a Powerful Urban Development Strategy: Urban agriculture contributes more than food production to cities, as it fosters environmental stewardship, strengthens community well-being, improves urban livability, and builds resilience to climate change. Its multifunctionality makes it a strategic solution for more sustainable, inclusive, and adaptable cities.
Empowering Communities Through Education and Localized Support is Essential: Hands-on training, knowledge exchange, and tailored capacity-building help communities develop skills not only in cultivation, but also in sustainability, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. Support mechanisms like seed provision, farm consultancy, and participatory learning are key to ensuring equitable access and long-term engagement.
Scalable Change Requires Layered, Context-Sensitive Strategies: Effective scaling depends on a mix of approaches, from expanding expert networks (Scaling Up), deepening impact through tailored education and diverse partnerships (Scaling Deep), and replicating models via decentralized networks (Scaling Wide), to developing cross-sector collaborations (Scaling Across), and shifting mindsets through inclusive planning and public engagement (Scaling Soft).
Policy, Partnerships, and Visibility Drive Systemic Integration: Supportive governance frameworks must go hand-in-hand with meaningful participation from civil society, local communities, and diverse areas of expertise. Public-private and cross-sector partnerships help embed urban agriculture into policy agendas, while inclusive planning and strong communication strategies ensure that urban farming is both visible and valued within broader urban development efforts.
Workshop Process: Co-Creating Urban Agriculture Pathways
Participatory Systems Mapping Approach
Participatory systems mapping brings together actors from academia, governance and urban planning, civil society, and the private sector, to co-create knowledge and strategies for achieving shared sustainability and resilience goals.
Through the co-creation process, participants gain insight into one another’s perspectives, build mutual understanding, and develop a sense of shared ownership over both challenges and solutions. This strengthens cross-sectoral alignment and lays the groundwork for collective action.
The visual and interactive nature of systems mapping helps make the complexity and interconnectedness of urban challenges more tangible. It encourages systems thinking, supports dialogue across disciplines, and reveals leverage points for impactful change.
Workshop Guide
Step 1: Urban Agriculture’s Key Impacts
Participants identified the urban agriculture impacts they valued most — like food access, climate resilience, and community empowerment. In groups, they clustered these into four shared priorities: Social, Economic, Governance & Urban Planning, and Environmental, which helped establish shared ownership and priorities.
Step 2: Co-Creating Impactful Activities
Building on their experiences, participants designed practical UA activities that could help them achieve their desired impacts — from organic farming workshops and circular economy initiatives to youth advocacy and public education. This exchange sparked mutual learning and highlighted the multifunctionality of UA, showing how one activity can contribute to multiple goals at once.
Step 3: Strategically Scaling Impacts
To amplify impact, participants identified how to scale their activities by aligning efforts with available time, resources, and community momentum. They explored five complementary strategies:
- Scaling Up: Reach more people
- Scaling Deep: Enhance quality for current beneficiaries
- Scaling Wide: Replicate in new places
- Scaling Across: Extend impact to other domains (e.g., health, education)
- Scaling Soft: Shift mindsets and foster long-term cultural change
Step 3 & 4: Overcoming Challenges & Designing Successful Plans
Finally, participants reflected on the barriers they face — from resource gaps to lack of policy support — and co-developed strategies for overcoming them. This step surfaced shared struggles and unlocked collective solutions, drawing on the diverse knowledge, experiences, and creativity in the room.
Step 1 Results: Urban agriculture Impact Clusters
Economic Impacts
Household Financial Security: Lowers food costs and increases household income, improving financial stability.
Job Creation: Generates employment and supports the develop of small, local businesses that combine Filipino goods, knowledge, and traditions in creative ways.
Community Economic Empowerment: Strengthens local food economies by enhancing resilience to external shocks, and unlocking access to funding opportunities and partnerships.
Skill Development for Financial Sustainability: Training and education in urban agriculture entrepreneurialism equips individuals and communities with income-generating skills that extend beyond urban farming.
Innovation in Urban Agriculture & Business Models: Advances technological innovation, such as those aimed at growing in highly dense areas, and contributes to novel business strategies and circular economy networks to enhance the economic sustainability and impact of urban farming.
Social Impacts
Strengthened Food & Nutrition Security: Contributes to reliable access to affordable and nutritious food for urban communities, while providing hands-on experience that helps to foster a strong sense of health consciousness.
Community Resilience & Engagement: Fosters social cohesion and a sense of community through the co-creation of shared goals and collective action towards more nutritious and sustainable futures.
Youth & Public Participation in Urban Agriculture: Facilitates intergenerational learning, be enabling youth and a diverse range of community members to actively engage in urban farming activities, and more broadly, action to transform unsustainable food system practices.
Social & Environmental Sustainability Education: Educates people and raises awareness about the connection between the the food system, food and nutrition security, and aspects of social and environmental sustainability.
Strengthened Human-Nature Connection: Deepens the emotional and psychological bond between people and nature, supporting well-being and mental health through meaningful interaction with the natural environment.
Environmental Impacts
Waste Reduction & Circular Resource Management: Converts food and material waste from local markets and households into valuable resources, such as compost and growing containers, promoting circular city practices.
Creation of Biodiverse Microclimates: Develops small-scale green environments in cities that enhance biodiversity, support pollinators, and strengthen overall ecosystem health.
Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation: Helps reduce urban heat island effects, absorb rainwater to prevent flooding, sequester carbon, and build resilience against climate-related stresses by integrating nature-based solutions into the urban fabric.
Safer & Environmentally Friendly Food Production: Reduces harmful pesticide, herbicide, and fungicide use and promotes safe, organic, and sustainable food production methods that incorporate aspects of permaculture and agroecology.
Environmental Stewardship: Encourages responsible actions and care for natural resources by empowering communities to actively protect and sustain their local environment.
Governance & Urban Planning Impacts
Expansion of Green & Productive Urban Spaces: Transforms idle and underutilized spaces into community greenspaces and food production areas, which helps inspire urban planners to integrate urban agriculture into cities.
Improved Urban Livability: Enhances urban spaces to meet communities everyday needs by creating cleaner, cooler, and more vibrant neighborhoods that foster social interaction, active lifestyles, and environmental sustainability.
Enhanced Policy & Governance Support: Illustrating and communicating urban agriculture's multifunctionality to a diverse range of audiences helps to increase government and public interest in integrating it into policymaking.
Strengthened Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration: Builds inclusive partnerships by actively connecting communities, farmers, civil society, and policymakers, enabling co-creation, knowledge exchange, and the joint implementation of urban agriculture initiatives.
Strategic Planning & Program Development: Supports the design of long-term urban agriculture strategies by aligning policies, resources, and planning frameworks with sustainability objectives and future urban development goals.
Step 2 Results: URban Agriculture ACtivities
Empowering People Through Education & Livelihoods
Urban agriculture is not just about growing food — it’s about empowering communities through knowledge, care, and connection
Skill-Building Through Practice: Hands-on training in sustainable farming, entrepreneurship, and community leadership.
Peer Learning & Knowledge Sharing: Connect communities to amplify local knowledge and replicate success.
Accredited Training Programs: Standardize certification to boost credibility, attract youth, and scale participation.
Market Access & Livelihood Support: Strengthen local supply chains and create opportunities for small-scale producers through improved infrastructure and targeted support.
Public & Private Investment: Mobilize institutional and corporate actors to fund training, equipment, and business development.
Strengthening Community Roots & New Growers
Urban agriculture cultivates not just food, but social bonds, trust, and a sense of belonging.
Community-Driven Growing Spaces: Support citizen-led farms that serve as hubs for awareness, resilience, and collective stewardship.
Social Cohesion & Place Attachment: Foster deeper connections between neighbors, strengthen trust, and create shared pride in local spaces through collaborative growing and shared responsibility.
Access to Starter Resources: Distribute seeds, soil, and essential materials to empower first-time growers and reduce entry barriers.
Inclusive Growing Cultures: Encourage experimentation, celebrate diversity, and make space for local values and lived experiences
Advancing Environmental Sustainability & Innovation
Eco-Friendly Practices: Training on composting, waste recycling, and organic pest management
Blending Innovation & Tradition: Combine modern tools (e.g., aeroponics) with traditional knowledge for resilient and culturally rooted systems
Technological Innovation: Introduce water-efficient systems like hydroponics and vertical gardening for high-yield urban farming
Context-Driven R&D: Invest in research tailored to Metro Manila's realities—such as heat, storms, and space limitations
Building Supportive Systems: Policy, Planning & Partnerships
For UA to thrive, supportive systems must be in place—from governance to research to cross-sector collaboration.
Supportive Policy & Legal Frameworks: Institutionalize urban agriculture in policy to provide long-term protection and support.
Participatory Urban Planning: Co-develop UA strategies with LGUs, barangays, and local residents.
Cross-Sector Collaboration: Align government, community, and private actors to develop integrated UA projects with shared value.
Urban–Rural Exchange: Strengthen cooperation between urban and rural farms to promote mutual learning and sustainability.
Research & Advisory Partnerships: Foster community–university–technical expert collaborations to test innovations and support long-term growth.
Step 3 & 4 Results: Strategies to Scale Urban Agriculture Activities
Scaling Up to Reach More people
Expanding Reach Through Education & Expert Networks
Establish a pool of trained farm leaders and experts to scale up capacity-building efforts and onboard new participants into urban agriculture.
A combined approach using both formal and informal education—integrated into school curricula and community training—ensures knowledge transfer across regions and generations.
Public-focused science communication and accessible learning modules can further democratize agricultural technologies and make urban farming more inclusive and widespread.
Scaling deep to Improve Existing Initiatives
Embedding Multifunctionality Through Tailored Learning
Develop localized proof-of-concept projects that showcase urban agriculture’s multifunctional benefits—building not only farming skills but also capacities in advocacy, ecosystem stewardship, and entrepreneurship.
Programs should be tailored across education levels, using learner-centered approaches that align with participants' skills, needs, and available resources to ensure content is relevant, empowering, and scalable within both formal and informal learning environments.
Initiatives should prioritize depth over breadth to engage diverse stakeholders based on the nature of local challenges, and foster well-rounded, context-specific solutions.
scaling wide to new geographic areas
Expanding Urban Farm Networks Through Demonstration & Decentralization
Support government-led demonstration farms that act as innovation hubs, showcasing viable models that can be adapted and replicated by civil society, schools, and local organizations.
Using a hub-and-spoke approach, innovations such as resource-efficient hydroponics and vertical farming systems which can be shared throughout Metro Manila
These initiatives should prioritize clear educational materials and transparent legal guidance to empower communities to establish their own farms and scale adoption city-wide.
Scaling across to diversify impacts
Strengthening Institutional Collaborations for Sustainable Impact
Foster interagency and multi-sectoral partnerships that go beyond formal agreements to deliver tangible outcomes—particularly in funding access and implementation.
Strong public-private partnerships (PPPs) can support the widespread adoption of sustainable practices in urban agriculture, such as organic farming, reduced chemical use, and water-efficient irrigation.
By aligning institutional resources and expertise, these collaborations can scale sustainability across various urban sectors.
scaling soft to co-create knowledge
Shifting Mindsets Through Inclusive Planning & Public Engagement
Use participatory planning to ensure diverse voices—across income levels, geographies, and cultural backgrounds—are meaningfully included in urban agriculture development.
Emphasize context-specific, community-driven solutions that align local knowledge with novel technological innovations and available resources and capacities.
Strive to influence public perception through targeted communication strategies, leveraging media, public figures, and relatable success stories to overcome misconceptions and foster widespread cultural acceptance of urban farming.
Thank you for Cultivating Ideas with Us
We extend a warm thank you to each of our participants for their time, energy, and invaluable contributions to the workshop. Their insights, experiences, and collaborative spirit helped shape a rich and inspiring discussion on the future of urban agriculture and its role in creating more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable cities.
Their participation made this a truly meaningful space for co-creation, reflection, and action. We look forward to building on this momentum together—and to seeing their ideas take root and flourish in the projects and communities they care about.
With gratitude, the GReenSCape Team
Growing Resilience with Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities (GReenScape)
GReenSCape Project Description: The GReenSCape project aims at exploring how the multifunctional benefits of different types of urban agriculture, from community gardens and building-integrated rooftop greenhouses, to indoor technology-driven farms, can contribute to city's resilience and sustainability goals.
To pursue this research, the Urban Studies Working Group, in the Geography and Regional Research Department at the University of Vienna established a fruitful collaboration with the Geography Department from the University of the Philippines.
Team Members
Praedoc James Vandenberg & Univ-Prof. Dr. Kerstin Krellenberg from the University of Vienna
Dr. Kristian Karlo Saguin & Dr. Yany Lopez from the University of the Philippines