A. Background: Vision, Objectives, Technical Potential

I. Situation before SiEUGreen intervention.

In the Aarhus Municipality, the program “Taste Aarhus” adopts an inclusive approach to facilitate different social groups to engage in urban agriculture. The project supports the implementation of more than 250 gardens in the city and uses different communication strategies to reach out to different groups. The program “Taste Aarhus” has a cross-sectorial outreach within the public administration, and through urban agriculture involves urban planning, social and health care, and educational sectors to address the challenges of segregated communities, obesity, lack of access to green areas, absence of physical activity.Taste Arhus uses different types of knowledge-rooms, such as food schools, events, pop-ups, networking, lectures, and courses, while encouraging people to ‘do-it-yourself’. Currently, the program has established small urban gardens, large gardens, community gardens, plantations, mushroom farms and use the green and blue urban spaces (e.g., beaches, forests, parks, meadows, and the sea) to raise awareness about edible resources in the city and encourage people to grow their own food. The program involves the residents, business, and local institutions in the planning of green areas, to provide education in UA and gardening, to support all residents in their different state of knowledge towards an understanding and experience of cooking and preparation of local harvest.
Another stronghold of the program is the focus on utilising, and thus preserving, tacit knowledge on how to grow food that can be passed to future generations. “Taste Aarhus” became part of the SiEUGreen project due to its maturity, as it involves diverse sectors of society and has supported the implementation of several gardens capitalising on available resources.In the context of SiEUGreen, two gardens have been selected as testbeds for testing technologies: Brabrand Fællesgartneriet and World Gardens. Brabrand Fællesgartneriet is one of the oldest gardens in Aarhus, established in 2014 in the peri-urban area of the city. The garden has 11 000 m2, which includes 6 000 m2 of open cultivation land, 3 000 m2 of greenhouses, and 2 000 m2 of other built facilities, where 100 families grow food. World Gardens is an association that runs community gardens in Gellerupparken and Toveshøj. Gellerup is located on the outskirts of Aarhus Municipality and is defined by the Danish Government as a ghetto due to the socio-economic characteristics of the residents (e.g., low income, high unemployment). In the Danish planning system, when an area is characterised as a ghetto, the municipality is responsible for implementing policies and projects to transform the area into an attractive urban district. In the case of Gellerup, such actions included the relocation of various municipal offices from the city centre to the neighbourhood and the refurbishment of residential units, also including the demolition of some buildings.

II. Work envisioned in the context of SiEUGreen project.

The Aarhus municipality will be creating “bridges” between the SiEUGreen project and its existing “Taste Aarhus” project, communities, and activities by providing contacts, space for testing recycling solutions, facilitating for upgrading of greenhouses and gardens, making the project knowledge available to the public, and facilitating events to promote it. During the showcase works and implementations, both public and private land will be used. The showcase will provide facilities for testing toilets, compost, moving mobile gardens and polytunnels in the two areas. In the Brabrand Fallaesfartneriet, where common gardens existing, including both common greenhouses and open land for among 100 households being rented from a private landowner. At the same time, an already initiated public-private initiative in the second area (World Gardens) will be supported by the SiEUGreen project in a vulnerable area of the city with different immigrant groups. Here the knowledge exchange is a large challenge and different activities on how to transfer and include will be tested here.