This chapter analyzes the implications of urban sustainable growth, development, and governance structures for the revitalization of open vacant spaces in agriculture and farming. After reviewing the extensive corpus of literature on the subject, the authors used the critical socio-ecological analysis methodology to determine the main issues, trends, practices, and implications of the urban vacant spaces in relation to the urban sustainable growth and development, the use of urban vacant land in urban agriculture, farming, and gardening, and the collaborative urban governance structures and revitalization of open vacant spaces. It is concluded that transitional use of vacant land and parcels are to be used and utilized for developing a sustainable green city. However, urban vacant land and parcel spaces are required to be utilized for revitalization purposes to be stimulated. Social-ecological analysis focusing on vacant lots in underdeveloped urban spaces hold potential for urban transformation to meet the social needs and improve the ecological services.
TopUrban Vacant Spaces
Urban vacant land, as a broad concept, include diverse forms and sizes from greenfields, greenbelts, brown-fields, wastelands, abandoned land, derelict and uncultivated land, etc., all of them that have different types of land in urban areas which have subtle differences (Bowman & Pagano, 2000; Bowman & Pagano, 2004; Kremer et al., 2013). Vacant land has been described as wasteland (Mathey & Rink, 2010) dead space (Coleman, 1982), derelict landscape (Jakle & Wilson, 1992). Dead spaces are derelict land, vegetated wastelands, and abandoned buildings, construction sites, materials dumps, etc. Another typology of urban vacant land was identified as post-industrial, derelict, unattended with vegetation, natural, and transportation-related (Kim, Miller, & Nowak, 2018).
Urban vacant space is defined as unused and unexploited spaces in the city, as well as the parking lots (Communauté Urbaine de Montréal, 1996). Open land private or public have been intrinsically associated with the underdeveloped nature of the land, vegetated or not. A building or lot is vacant if it has been vacant for two years or more (Accordino & Johnson 2000). Small public and private-owned vacant and unused land plots and open green spaces located in inner and dense urban areas are usually easy to be utilized. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (2015) defines vacant address the one that mail delivery staff on urban routes have identified as not collecting for 90 days or longer, which increases the accuracy of data.