Urban agriculture has become a growing and relevant field of inquiry within both the natural and social sciences. However, its study continues to face limitations derived from fragmented approaches that hinder a comprehensive understanding of its complexity. This essay aims to analyze the contributions of systems thinking to the understanding and management of urban agriculture. Three analytical domains are examined: (i) the physical domain, associated with infrastructure and inert material elements; (ii) the biophysical domain, which encompasses living components and ecological processes; and (iii) the human–biophysical domain, where sociocultural practices, values, institutional arrangements, and forms of collective organization converge. In addition, teleomatic, teleonomic, and teleological processes are discussed as explanatory frameworks for the internal dynamics and directional tendencies of urban gardens. The essay concludes that a holistic systems perspective enables a deeper understanding of the structure, emergent properties, and functional dynamics of urban agriculture. Likewise, these conceptual tools can inform public policy and guide more effective interventions that integrate ecological and sociocultural dimensions in pursuit of sustainable urban agriculture.

Keywords: complexity, urban gardens, strategic interventions, urban planning, sustainability.

Urban agriculture is a long-standing and complex phenomenon that involves the cultivation of food in proximity to human settlements within cities.¹ In recent decades, it has become a key strategy to address contemporary challenges such as food insecurity and the erosion of food sovereignty.² More broadly, urban gardens have gained importance in metropolitan contexts where population growth, restricted access to food, and increasing pressure on natural goods generate profound socioecological tensions.³ However, urban gardens have progressively evolved into multifunctional spaces that transcend food production alone.⁴ They are now linked to educational, cultural, ecological, and political aims and are commonly used as a means to tackle urban challenges such as decontextualized education,⁵ weakening of territorial belonging⁶ lack of ecosystem connectivity,⁷ fragmentation of the social fabric,⁸ and even territorial defense,⁹ among others.

Currently, urban agriculture has expanded significantly across cities in both the Global South and the Global North.¹⁰ Parallel to this expansion, the number of academic publications on the topic has grown considerably in recent years, demonstrating a strong research interest in understanding this phenomenon.¹¹

Nonetheless, research on urban agriculture continues to face limitations resulting from partial or reductionist approaches that hinder the development of frameworks capable of addressing its complexity.¹² Although this has begun to change with the incorporation of complexity sciences, sustainability approaches, and transdisciplinary endeavors,^13,14 analytical frameworks in this field still tend to focus mainly on organismic diversity, ecological benefits, agricultural productivity, therapeutic impacts, social organization, and, more recently, sustainability.¹⁵ Few studies, however, integrate multiple scales, components, and processes in a way that produces a holistic understanding of the phenomenon.

This ontological reality generates problems not only for research but also for governance and management, as it affects the application of academic knowledge in practice. Among these problems is the fragmentation of knowledge,¹⁶ particularly when studies remain confined to isolated disciplines such as ecology, agronomy, or sociology, which obstructs the construction of integrative perspectives. Another limitation derives from the disarticulation of scales: many studies fail to show how microscopic processes connect to management practices, how these practices affect local strategies, and how they are embedded within regional or even global socioecological dynamics such as climate change.¹⁷ For instance, deficiencies in essential soil microelements, composting practices, food crises, and climate change represent interconnected challenges across scales. A further difficulty is the scarcity of systemic indicators that encompass a broad range of interrelated components to monitor urban agriculture, identify the drivers shaping it, and develop projections under future scenarios.¹⁸ These analytical gaps directly translate into governance challenges, since public policies rarely consider the dynamic, multifunctional, and multi-actor nature of agriculture in contexts as heterogeneous as cities.

These limitations highlight the urgent need for conceptual frameworks capable of integrating ecological and social dimensions, including their emergent intersections.¹⁹ This raises a central question: what can systems thinking contribute to the study of urban agriculture? The underlying hypothesis is that a systemic approach provides a holistic perspectivethrough which urban agriculturecan beunderstood not as an assemblageof isolated components, but as networks of interdependent relations that generate feedback loops.²⁰ With this concern in mind, the aim of this article is to analyze and reflect upon the contributions and potential applications of systems thinking for the study of urban agriculture.

The systemic approach in urban agriculture

The systemic approach constitutes a powerful theoretical and methodological tool for the study of diverse disciplinary fields, often pushing inquiry beyond interdisciplinarity into transdisciplinary logics.²¹ First, systems thinking enables the identification of components, interactions, processes, signals, and system boundaries, providing a common language to describe complexity.²² Second, it facilitates the understanding of the hierarchical nature of systems, ecosystems, and socio-ecosystems, which are characterized by flows and interdependent relations.²³ Within this perspective, it becomes evident that there is an embedded coupling among the physical, biophysical, and human– biophysical domains.²⁴ Third, it is important to recognize that these nested domains are continuously shaped by teleomatic processes (automatic or self-regulating), teleonomic processes (directed toward intrinsic biological ends), and teleological processes (guided by conscious goals and value systems).²⁵ Consequently, this paradigm acknowledges that human beings—together with their cultural values, organizational arrangements, and regulatory frameworks—are integral components of these systems, influencing their resilience and long-term sustainability.²⁶

From this standpoint, urban agriculture can be understood as a socioecological system in which physical, biophysical, and human–biophysical components intersect.²⁷ One of the fundamental units within this system is the urban garden, which can be conceptualized as an agroecosystem²⁸ that is, an open ecosystem managed by individuals or collectives for agricultural purposes. This approach is particularly relevant not only for developing a comprehensive understanding of urban agriculture, but also for strengthening community capacities, informing public policy design, promoting socioecological transitions, and advancing sustainability-oriented interventions.

The physical domain of urban gardens

The physical domain refers to the structural configuration of inert material elements that constitute the infrastructure and physical support system of urban gardens, including physical and some chemical processes but excluding biological ones.²⁹ One of the most essential elements is soil and its nutrient content, composed of minerals derived from bedrock and local geological history, which often include key elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and potassium.³⁰ Another central component is solar radiation, as the sun acts as the primary source of energy for plants; the moon has also been recognized in some traditions as influencing certain plant physiological processes. Water is likewise a critical element, enabling all vital processes, including nutrient transport and mobility within the system.³¹ Teleomatic processes are evident, for instance, in the capacity of soils to restore part of their fertility through natural mechanisms such as weathering, runoff, sedimentation, and precipitation.

The biophysical domain of urban gardens

The biophysical domain represents the convergence of the physical environment with living components and the ecological processes that sustain the functioning of urban gardens.³² This level includes the three domains of life—Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya—with particular emphasis on microorganisms, which are crucial for nutrient cycling through biogeochemical processes. It also comprises the agrobiodiversity of plants, fungi, and animals—both edible and non-edible—that coexist within cultivated spaces. From an ecosystem perspective, urban gardens typically feature a predominantly herbaceous layer consisting of medicinal, aromatic, culinary herbs and vegetables.³³

Depending on size and design—agroforestry, silvopastoral, or food-forest configurations— they may also include shrub and tree strata, as well as understory and canopy layers. From the viewpoint of urban ecology and landscape ecology, all the urban gardens within a city form habitat mosaic that sustain high levels of functional biodiversity, including decomposers, pollinators, pests, parasitoids, predators, and scavengers.³⁴ Teleonomic processes emerge, for example, when soil fauna thrives and enhances soil fertility through the natural decomposition of organic matter.

The human–biophysical domain of urban gardens

The interaction between the biophysical dimension and human agency gives rise to the human– biophysical domain, which completes the characterization of the agroecosystem.²⁸ At this level, anthropogenic components introduce paradigms, perceptions, values, norms, and forms of knowledge that materialize through management practices—traditional, conventional, or sustainability-oriented—that modify urban gardens.³⁵

Human engagement with cultivated spaces shapes particular ways of relating to nature, such that interactions with food production often transcend the biological act of nutrient acquisition. In many cases, gardening practices integrate social, cultural, economic, political, or ethical meanings.³⁶ In collective gardens, sustainability depends on factors such as secure access to land and water, sowing calendars, community organization, funding mechanisms, and policy support, as well as the recognition of campesino knowledge systems. From a teleological perspective, humans intentionally separate organic residues from harvesting and household activities to transform them through ecotechnologies (eg. such as composting) to generate organic fertilizers that improve soil fertility and enable the production of nutritious food.

Advantages of systemic integration in urban agriculture

The strength of the systemic approach lies not in viewing the three domains separately, but in articulating and integrating them to construct a more accurate representation of reality.³⁷ Conceiving the garden as a system enables the design of coherent interventions grounded in the structural conditions that support urban agriculture. Understanding it as an ecosystem facilitates ecologically responsible management, where natural ecosystems serve as a reference for both design and practice. Finally, approaching it as a socioecosystem proves essential for fostering place-based identity, social appropriation of space, and sociocultural relevance.³⁸

Furthermore, explicit acknowledgment of teleomatic, teleonomic, and teleological processes enables a moreintentional and multi-objective approach to planning. This perspective allows for interventions across multiple scales while maintaining awareness of self-regulation capacities and the importance of collective values.³⁹ For instance, recognizing that soils fertilized through organic methods generate healthier crops— and that these crops, when consumed regularly, contribute to improved human health—reveals a socioecological feedback loop essential to sustainability thinking.

Practically speaking, an urban garden constitutes a subsystem that interacts with larger-scale subsystems such as the neighborhood, the city, the watershed, and the global food system, as well as with smaller subsystems such as plants, leaves, nutrients, and vitamins. For example, an urban garden may help mitigate urban heat islands at a neighborhood scale⁴⁰ and contribute to food security at the city scale.² Through this systemic framing, urban gardens are understood as dynamic rather than static entities, shifting management approaches from a focus on isolated components to one centered on dynamic relationships. A systemic lens also facilitates the design of crop rotations based on nutrient flows and the strategic placement of culturally significant species within the garden,⁴¹ opening pathways for the integration of local knowledge, values, and cultural traditions as part of the system itself—rather than as external, secondary variables.

A holistic approach to urban agriculture through systems thinking offers significant advantages not only for academic inquiry but also for recognizing the hybrid space in which natural and human processes intersect. This logical framework allows for the integration of diverse underlying and structural factors that shape the design, configuration, and functioning of urban agriculture, as well as its adaptive capacities and socioecological resilience. It also facilitates the identification of feedback loops, synergies, and conflicts among physical, biological, and human components that co-produce the dynamics of urban gardens. Simultaneously, acknowledging the coexistence of teleomatic, teleonomic, and teleological processes provides a deeper understanding of both the internal organization and external interactions of urban agriculture systems.

These conceptual contributions can inform new lines of research in urban agriculture and foster transdisciplinary approaches. They also open the possibility of developing integrated indicators that assess not only biodiversity and productivity, but also household-level economic savings in home gardens, social cohesion in community gardens, meaningful learning in educational gardens, or occupational well-being in institutional and government-led gardens. Likewise, such a perspective supports the design of projects, programs, and interventions that transcend a merely productive logic by aligning with the lived reality of practitioners. A systemic, ecosystemic, and socioecosystemic perspective can therefore contribute to the development of public policies that recognize the multifunctionality of urban agriculture. Ultimately, adopting this framework requires acknowledging that urban agriculture not only produces food but also generates ecosystem services, affective relationships, emancipatory spaces, social innovation, and, potentially, socioecological transformations toward more sustainable ways of living.

None.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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