Co-designing Urban Agriculture with Local Communities

This chapter illustrates the shared urban agriculture activities conducted between October 2014 and October 2016 in the neighbourhood where the Politecnico di Milano campus is located, in Bovisa, Milan. These activities involved the co-design and co-creation of shared community gardens conducted together with various neighbourhood communities. Specifically, it analyses the various co-design actions carried out with: – the community of residents in the Bovisasca district, the associations 9 × 9 and CeLIM, and the Rodari Middle School for the creation of the neighbourhood garden Orto per Nove; – the community of children and teachers at the Catone Nursery School for the creation of a small vegetable garden in the school grounds; – the community of students and teachers at the Maffucci Middle School for the co-design and creation of a teaching garden in the school grounds. For each of these projects, the paper examines the actors, stakeholders and communities involved as well as the processes of co-design and co-creation with the different groups concerned, highlighting similarities and differences between them.