Abstract

The phenomenon of urban farming was developed to address issues related to population growth worldwide and to ensure that healthy and nutritious products can be easily accessible. In Italy, urban gardens appeared for the first time in 1941 with the name “allotments of war,” during a period when lack of food established the ideal conditions for the cultivation of food in any vacant lot, especially in urban areas. Today, urban farming represents a new frontier of wellness, a viable response to the food crisis in terms of socioeconomic issues, and provides an instrument for combating material and immaterial poverty. Many Italian municipalities are now using a Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)-supported tool through which poor families or victims of unemployment can improve their own social statuses as well as their city. The aim of this study is to understand whether urban gardening can become a viable and innovative response to the economic crisis. To this end, we analyzed the peculiarities of this phenomenon and observed some of the most virtuous examples from the Campania region.