Urban farm projects: 7 ways Europe’s cities are changing

From rooftops and abandoned warehouses to forgotten lots and shared gardens, urban farming is transforming Europe’s cities. These green spaces don’t just grow food – they connect communities, tackle environmental challenges, and turn underused corners of the city into creative hubs.

By 2050, almost 8 in 10 Europeans will live in urban areas. In this “citified” world, growing food closer to where we live can improve our lives for many reasons. Urban farms bring people together; help wildlife flourish; connect us with nature, and they often run education programmes that inspire people to learn and get involved. 

Urban agriculture can also make our cities more resilient when unexpected things happen – whether it’s a pandemic, extreme weather, or global disruption.¹ By growing food locally, we rely less on long-distance transport and keep our food supplies secure.

With imagination, teamwork and creativity, city farms can thrive anywhere. And anyone can join in – by visiting, volunteering, buying products, or simply being inspired to plant a few herbs on a windowsill.

Here are seven urban farming projects changing Europe’s cities for good.

1. PAKT, Antwerp

Located between Antwerp’s city centre and an old military hospital, PAKT is a former warehouse reborn as a green space with many uses. Today, PAKT is a lively blend of food, creativity, and a community centre. 

At its heart is a rooftop farm, created in 2017 with the help of an agro-biologist and a community expert. Spread across nearly 2,000 square metres, it produces vegetables, herbs and fruit for local chefs and residents. The farm is a food hub, linking restaurants, growers and neighbours through shared harvests, workshops and events.

PAKT is also the base of De Volle Grond (meaning ‘the fertile ground’), a cooperative of local farmers who sell their produce across Antwerp. Together, they show how city spaces can support sustainable food systems and community life.

With its car-free courtyards, cafés, and community gardens, PAKT is a strong example of what urban planners call a “Third Place”.² Spaces like PAKT offer a balance between home (your first place) and work (your second place) – they play an important role in city life, providing somewhere to meet, eat, share ideas and reconnect with nature.

2. Gardens4Good, Paris

On the rooftop of the Annie Girardot nursing home in Paris, a simple yet beautiful vegetable garden has become a source of connection and care for residents living with Alzheimer’s. This is Gardens4Good, a non-profit founded by Christophe Gadenne, a former police officer who retrained as a vegetable grower. 

Christophe first volunteered at the residence, helping elderly residents plant and tend a small garden – and quickly saw how meaningful the experience could be. The garden provides seasonal vegetables for the residents, with some left over for Bunny, the much loved garden rabbit! 

And the garden provides far more than food production. Nursing staff noticed that some residents often forgot to eat, a common challenge in advanced dementia care. Walking through the rooftop garden – seeing flowers, smelling the herbs, eating a few strawberries – helped many of them reconnect with food. 

Staff observed that after spending time among the plants, residents are more likely to head to the canteen and eat a full meal.³ The garden also encourages moments of calm, communication, and shared purpose, even for those who rarely speak.

In January 2024, Gardens4Good received European funding that will enable the initiative to expand its impact beyond Paris. Through online tutorials and accessible “how-to” guides, the project now inspires people worldwide to turn balconies, rooftops, and courtyards into small food gardens.

Gardens4Good shows how even modest urban growing spaces can help wellbeing, strengthen communities, and bring people back into relationship with the food they eat.

3. MOST Cooperative Urban Farm, Warsaw

On the edge of Warsaw’s Siekierki district sits MOST, a cooperative urban farm. Once a cluster of allotments cleared for a bridge project, the 3.6 hectare plot sat untouched for decades. Today, residents have reclaimed it by forming a cooperative, giving them shared ownership, a shared harvest, and a community space.

MOST has grown into an edible landscape. Seasonal vegetables, herbs and fruit mix with plants that provide nectar and pollen for bees and butterflies. Everything is designed for urban conditions: raised beds, plant containers that can be easily rearranged, and a focus on turning kitchen waste into compost. Running costs are kept low through features like solar-powered tools, or capturing rain to water plants during dry periods.

Education is central to the farm. MOST hosts gardening classes, eco-workshops, school visits and open days that bring the local people together to gain environmental skills. It’s a living example of how unused urban land can support food, biodiversity and community life, all at once.

In 2025, the farm joined AMPLE Warsaw, a programme to empower underprivileged communities through food, culture and skills training. Participants spent months learning everything from plant history and culture, to recipe development, marketing and design – they even created their own “hyperlocal” drink called Holobiont.⁴ They grew the ingredients, brewed it, designed the packaging and launched it themselves.

MOST shows what can happen when cooperation, circular thinking, and creativity come together in an abandoned patch of city land.

4. GrowUp Farms, UK

Urban farming isn’t only about community plots and local benefits. Some projects show how city-grown produce is leading to fast-growing businesses that can have an impact across a nation. GrowUp Farms in the UK is one of the clearest examples of this shift.

Founded in 2013 by Kate Hofman and Tom Webster, GrowUp began as a small experiment inside a converted shipping container in London. Today it operates Pepperness, a large vertical farm in the southern English town called Sandwich. (Yes, that’s really the town’s name!) Salad leaves are grown, harvested and packed under one roof. 

Pepperness has impressive stats. It runs on 100% renewable energy, uses no pesticides, and recycles almost all its water – saving around 95% compared to traditional agriculture. In 2024, the farm captured and reused around 3 billion litres, roughly the daily water use of London’s population.⁶

The scale is striking. In 2024 GrowUp produced over 3 million portions of leafy greens in an area roughly the size of a square with 100-metre sides (similar to Trafalgar Square in London, or Plaza Mayor in Madrid). The site can grow the same amount of crops as what could be produced in four million square metres of Grade 1 farmland – that’s roughly the size of 567 professional football pitches.⁷

GrowUp is a B Corp, an official status that recognises a company for its high social and environmental standards. Last year the farm delivered thousands of portions to local charities.

5. Stadsbruk model, Malmö

Stadsbruk means “city farming” in Swedish – and it isn’t a single farm. It’s a concept that began life as a pilot project in Malmö, a city surrounded by the fertile fields of Skåne, Sweden’s traditional farming region.⁸ Malmö allows local associations to adopt public spaces – such as parks and squares – for free and turn them into community gardens that bring people together and grow food sustainably.

These associations support growers who want to develop sustainable food businesses. Farmers cultivate vegetables, herbs and flowers for local sale, often supplying restaurants or joining Stadens Skafferi, a monthly market in Folkets Park.⁹

A pioneer of the Stadsbruk model is Botildenborg, a social-innovation farm with a 7,000 m² site hosting a market garden, school garden and social farm. It offers internships in social farming - using food for social, economic and environmental sustainability. It’s described as  an incubator programme where aspiring urban growers test their ideas, develop organic and business skills, and gain the experience needed to build sustainable enterprises.

The Malmö model has since inspired cities like Gothenburg and Växjö to develop their own versions, showing how the urban-farming movement continues to spread across Sweden.⁹

6. Zukunftshof, Vienna

Urban farms don’t only build thriving communities in city centres. They are also important in the places where a growing city meets its surrounding countryside. (Geographers call these “peri-urban” areas.) 

Bit by bit, a city grows, and places that used to be farmland or forests become new homes and neighbourhoods. You may have seen this happen where you live. These places at the city edge can be important bridges between urban and rural life. A powerful example is the Rothneusiedl district on the southern edge of Vienna – home of Zukunftshof, meaning “Future Farm”. 

Before it became Zukunftshof, this site was simply Haschahof, a 19th-century farm surrounded by some of the most fertile land in the region. When plans emerged to redevelop Rothneusiedl into a large new housing district, the farm was set to be demolished. Local residents pushed back, arguing that agriculture should be part of the city’s future – not swept aside by it.

Today, the Zukunftshof hosts a mix of urban agriculture initiatives, including a snail farm, mushrooms grown on coffee grounds, beekeeping, a bakery, a brewery, and aquaponics (more on that in the box below).¹⁰ It also partners with universities on projects exploring more sustainable ways of using water and energy to produce food.

Looking ahead, the farm is set to be at the heart of a much wider urban development project within Rothneusiedl. The neighbourhood will become a “compact city” for 21,000 people with a strong focus on climate protection, climate change adaptation, and a circular economy.¹¹ Zukunftshof is showing how a growing city can remain a place of environmental balance, learning and connection.

7. Esta es Una Plaza, Madrid

Walking past these brick walls in Madrid’s inner-city Lavapiés neighbourhood, you’d never guess what lies behind them. Step through the gate and you find Esta Es Una Plaza, meaning “this is a square.” But unlike the other squares in the neighbourhood, which are concrete, this one is green, shaded and community-made. A long-abandoned 1,200 square-metre plot has become a welcoming garden and meeting place.

The project began in 2008, when a group of local residents – including architects, biologists and teachers – took part in a course on new ways of using urban space.¹² They realised their neighbourhood had this unused site full of opportunity. Instead of letting it decay, they imagined a multifunctional community space where people could gather, garden and create. 

Over time, the group organised itself into sub-groups responsible for different parts of the space. One for the vegetables, one for the carpentry, one for cultural activities, etc. The garden even has a simple solar-powered electricity supply, enough to host concerts and film screenings. 

Each month there is an open meeting to decide on future activities. But many other people participate more casually. Locals are welcome to drop by to help with maintenance sessions – whether planting, repairing or simply lending a hand.

Esta es una plaza is part of a growing network of over 20,000 community gardens across Spain. These are valuable spaces, especially in the south of Europe where cities get very hot in the summer, and many people live in flats without gardens. Green spaces like Esta Es Una Plaza provide cooler local spaces, shaded from the most intense heat.

Seeding the future of European cities

These seven projects show what’s possible when innovation meets community spirit. But for urban agriculture to truly flourish, city leaders have a vital role. Across Europe, cities are including food growing into their plans. For instance, Milan links urban farms to waste reduction and resilience, while Berlin includes urban agriculture in plans to adapt to climate change and bring more nature into the city.¹

Not all ventures will survive. Some high-profile vertical farming startups have struggled in recent years, partly due to rising energy costs – offering a reminder that urban agriculture is not about replacing traditional rural farming.¹³ Instead, it complements it, can inspire change, and build bridges between urban and rural communities. 

Do you have an inspiring urban farm near you? Pop along, or check out their website or social media pages to see how you can volunteer or buy their produce. You will be joining an exciting movement to make our cities that little bit greener, fairer and more fun!