Food production on the urban–rural fringe is under pressure due to competing land uses. We discuss the potential to improve resilience for urban–rural regions by enhancing food production as part of multifunctional land use. Through studies of peri-urban land in the regions of Gothenburg (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Gent (Belgium), recent developments are analysed. Arable farming has been declining since 2000 in all three areas due to urban expansion and recreational land use changes. In city plans, networks of protected areas and green spaces and their importance for human wellbeing have been acknowledged. Policies for farmland preservation in peri-urban settings exist, but strategies for local food production are not expressed in present planning documents. Among the diversity of peri-urban agricultural activities, peri-urban food production is a developing issue. However, the competing forms of land use and the continuing high dependence of urban food on global food systems and related resource flows reduces peri-urban food production and improvements in urban food security. The positive effects of local food production need to be supported by governance aiming to improve the urban–rural relationship. The paper discusses the resilience potential of connecting urban–rural regions and re-coupling agriculture to regional food production.

European rural landscapes are, with few exceptions, characterised by farming and forestry as key functions. Whilst farming has been dominant historically and is still a significant dynamic in most regions, urbanisation is also a vital factor. This involves rural–urban emigration, urban expansion and migration from cities into the countryside (counter-urbanisation). A conceptual framework for the analysis and understanding of change patterns in European rural landscapes is presented and then applied at two spatial scales. First, the combined effect on local landscapes of agricultural structural changes and counter-urbanisation is analysed using data from two Danish case studies. Second, their expression at a wider European scale is explored using available regional statistics. Research and policy implications of the change patterns are identified and discussed, highlighting data limitations and challenges of managing the organisational and regulatory interface between local landscapes and international market policy institutions.

Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 111(2):107–116, 2011 Rural landscapes are mainly maintained and changed through farmers' decisions and practices. As a landscape manager the farmer has many different roles of which three roles related to the farm as a whole is investigated in this paper: producer, owner and citizen. Although most farmers take landscape decisions in all these three roles production based decisions are assumed to be more important for full time farmers than for hobby farmers who have their main income outside the farm and who may consider their farm more as a living place than as a production place. Based on a large survey carried out in Hvorslev, Eastern Jutland, Denmark in 2008 farmers' landscape practices are analysed in relation to their background, occupational status and view of their farms as a production place versus a living place. Altogether 377 farmers were interviewed and some comparisons are made to a similar survey in the same area in 1996. It was found that a significant proportion of farmers are hobby farmers who mainly see the farm as a living place and who to a large degree have different landscape practices than full time farmers have. The findings indicate that more research is needed to fully understand the reasons for and implications of the differences in landscape management practices.