Urban Agriculture (UA), i.e., the production of crops or rearing of livestock in cities, is growing in popularity. Upscaled UA is increasingly gaining support from policy makers, funders, local authorities and other key actors across the globe. Radical forms of the concept, in the form of edible rooftops, urban farms and high-tech growing projects, are becoming more commonplace in our cityscapes; enabling production on a level not witnessed previously. With the mainstreaming of large-scale UA comes the potential to further the social, environmental and economic value of the practice, through job creation, biodiversity enhancement, the creation of short food supply chains and other benefits. Yet, despite this growth, there are barriers to upscaling city farming. Evidence suggests that a core issue surrounds urban soil contamination and hesitation with regards to crops in the city. This paper uses a qualitative approach to explore the UK’s largest urban farm and a spectrum of other UA sites to illustrate such barriers. We reveal how public hesitation, financial barriers and soil quality prevent development. We reflect on the breadth of the issue and call for a more pragmatic approach to these barriers. In doing so, we propose a path forward for enabling UA at scale.

Cities in developing countries are urbanising at a rapid rate, resulting in substantial pressures on environmental systems. Among the main factors that lead to flooding, controlling land-use change offers the greatest scope for the management of risk. However, traditional analysis of a “from–to” change matrix is not adequate to provide information of all the land-use changes that occur in a watershed. In this study, an in-depth analysis of land-use change enabled us to quantify the bulk of the changes accumulating from swap changes in a tropical watershed. This study assessed the historical and future land-use/land-cover (LULC) dynamics in the River State region of the Niger Delta. Land-use classification and change detection analysis was conducted using multi-source (Landsat TM, ETM, polygon map, and hard copy) data of the study area for 1986, 1995, and 2003, and projected conditions in 2060. The key findings indicate that historical urbanisation was rapid; urban expansion could increase by 80% in 2060 due to planned urban development; and 95% of the conversions to urban land occurred chiefly at the expense of agricultural land. Urban land was dominated by net changes rather than swap changes, which in the future could amplify flood risk and have other severe implications for the watershed.

Dementia is a global health challenge and currently the focus of a coordinated international response articulated through the notion of ‘dementia‐friendly communities and initiatives’ (DFCIs). Yet, while increasing research attention has been paid to the social and spatial dimensions to life with dementia in a neighbourhood setting, the temporalities of dementia have been largely overlooked. This article sets out different aspects of the lived experience of time for people with dementia and unpaid carers, before exploring the temporal politics of formal dementia care and support. The authors show that time is a site for material struggle and a marker of unequal relations of power. People with dementia and unpaid carers are disempowered through access to formal care, and this is illustrated in their loss of (temporal) autonomy and limited options for changing the conditions of the care received. The authors advocate for a time‐space configured understanding of the relationship with neighbourhood and foreground a tempo‐material understanding of dementia. Set against the backdrop of austerity policy in the UK, the findings reveal that ongoing budgetary restrictions have diminished the capacity for social care to mediate in questions of social justice and inequality, at times even compounding inequity.

This paper reports on an innovative interprofessional education (IPE) initiative conducted in three care homes across Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom (UK). Students from a variety of professions including nursing, physiotherapy, social work, podiatry, counseling, and sports rehabilitation worked collaboratively in the homes to address the residents’ individual goals. We found that care homes provided students with many opportunities for interprofessional working and learning. Through better understanding the dimensions of different perspectives and approaches, students improved their education and transformed their perceptions of aged care. Having a diverse range of professionals allowed staff to gain insight into the latest evidence-based practice and address the multiple needs of the residents more holistically. Residents gained an enriched sense of meaning and purpose in their daily life by engaging in fulfilling and meaningful activities. The complexities of undertaking an IPE initiative in this setting are also considered and we conclude by proposing important avenues for future research.