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This paper aims to describe how social capital is mobilized in the mediation of periurban water insecurity induced by urbanization and climate change. Investing in social capital through the process of creating mechanisms for civic engagement is an important means of building resilience of periurban communities.

This paper draws on ethnographic and action research. The main sources of data were direct observation of water appropriation and access and semi-structured interviews. Convenience, snowball and theoretical sampling were used.

The residents of periurban Gurgaon have lost access to water on account of urbanization and climate change. In this context, they mobilize social relationships to collectively improve their access to water. Norms of cooperation and kinship play an important role in the mediation of water insecurity. Creating social capital by building platforms for civic engagement helped to improve their water security.

While there has been much interest in issues of periurban water insecurity, the role of social capital in the mediation of water insecurity has received scant attention. At the same time, while scholars have been interested in the role of social capital in adapting to the impacts of climate change, it has scarcely been studied in a periurban context. This paper seeks to bridge this research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how lessons learnt from a case study of a sanitation project undertaken in periurban Vietnam can indicate a more sustainable scale of operations by decentralization. In context of high urbanization in South‐East Asia, periurban areas suffer increasing environmental pressure and lack access to environmental infrastructures. As the government of Vietnam has not yet defined its supply programme for sanitation, central governmental supply and operation is questioned by various small non‐governmental organizations (NGO) that could successfully provide community‐managed projects.

A pilot wastewater management community project by an international NGO serves as a case study for capacity‐analysis at the local level. Using interviews with experts and user‐oriented focus groups, both the village and household capacities to participate in the project are analyzed.

The research identifies the skills and expertise necessary for the management of a sustainable sanitation service. Observing local skills and resulting outputs of the community‐managed system provides comprehensive insight about the highest needs of local support and clarifies coordination priorities between stakeholders.

This paper is limited to one country and context, while findings can be useful in similar contexts it cannot be generally applied.

The Lai Xa project demonstrates that operation decentralization could be highly profitable for the authorities compared to the traditional approach of government supply and maintenance. Local communities could, with proper training, manage and maintain a simple sanitation system. The sustainability of these community services finally depends on proper coordination by water and sanitation authorities providing specialized technical and managerial support.

There is a dearth of literature on project case studies in the NGO world and this paper helps to broaden the understanding of the interface between project management and aid project delivery by providing useful insights on how the project uses a complex system of capacities at various levels.

This research presents an ontological model, to communicate the impact of dynamic preconditions for peri-urban communities. As such, this paper approaches perturbation communities as social-complex-adaptive-systems.

Previous assessment of dynamic preconditions have typically been based on top-down approaches. Through the lens of social-complex-adaptive and systemic design approaches (requiring a range of different disciplines), this work focuses on providing a broader view towards periurban research. The methodological approach involved academic literature, fieldwork observations, in-depth discussions with community, government, experts and research groups, focusing on a region called “Xochimilco” on the outskirts of Mexico City, a unique pre-Hispanic, Aztec ecosystem. This evolving man made agricultural/ecological structure of island plots, still provides environmental services to Mexico City. This region provides the basis of the research and subsequent ontological model. Ontology, in this instance, refers to the nature of being within a range of constraining dynamic forces relating to resilient behaviors of the current Xochimilco perturbation ecosystem.

Xochimilco can be considered as a longitudinal phenomenon that contributed to the understanding of observable resilient and precondition elements between the past and present of a living complex-adaptive-system.

The research has provided a better understanding of community resilience through preconditions, contributing towards preparation of environmental change and future urbanization. To this end, the research focused on visualizing key dynamics elements for communities attempting to absorb new urban conditions (being continuously pushed into it).

The outcomes of this research have provided specific systemic, bottom up approaches with ontological modeling to assist with visualizing and understanding intangible dynamic conditions that impact high complex areas of perturbation regions.

Despite the potential of open innovation (OI) to reduce barriers to the adoption of the circular economy (CE), little is known about the integration of the two themes and how OI could contribute to a more sustainable economy. The objective of this study is to investigate how OI can contribute to the adoption of the CE.

This study adopts a systematic review of the literature sampled from the Scopus and Web of Science scientific databases.

The main findings of the study are (1) the utilization of OI within CE is still a recent phenomenon, one which emphasizes the collaboration between stakeholders and the co-creation approach; (2) the collaboration of stakeholders can be applied to align the objectives of interested parties, in a joint effort to resolve the environmental problems of the three levels of CE and (3) an action-creation approach can be adopted as a strategy to encourage the participation of consumers in the development of environmentally sustainable products, which may favor the transition to the CE.

The article presents the state of the art on the CE guided by OI, highlighting the opportunities and challenges of the correlation between the two themes. The article also shows the theoretical and practical implications for an OI-driven circular economy.

As a response to global population growth and increasing demand for food, farmers have been complementing traditional agriculture practices with vertical farming (VF) and indoor hydroponic systems. To facilitate the growth of the VF industry, this paper aims to identify business model elements and their configurations that lead to high firm performance.

The research goals were met by conducting literature reviews coupled with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on five business model elements, “superior” OR “strong” performance as two possible outcomes, and the top-ranked global VF growers listed in the Crunchbase Database.

From the fsQCA results, it was observed that several business model configurations lead to strong firm performance. Vertical farms growing in urban settings and having strong customer engagement platforms, coupled with a presence of business-to-business (B2B) sales channels, are more consistently associated with superior performance. These results imply that the decision configuration of location, along with customer engagement activity and sales activity are differentiating factors between good firm performance and superior firm performance in the case of vertical farms.

This paper contributes to expanding the knowledge of business model theory, business model configurations and VF management, providing specific guidelines for vertical farm owners and investors related to decision-making for higher firm performance, as well as positive environmental, social and economic impact.

Actors of territories faced with new managerial innovations have to develop new knowledge and behaviours to seize these innovations and create a vision of the territory. This is part of what we call governance learning: the ability of individuals to create new knowledge and behaviour for collective action within the territory. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this concept.

Drawing from a case study of a periurban territory in France, we analyse how the board members of a Community of Communes can learn to work together, articulating organisational learning theories, actor-network theory and the concept of organisational myths.

We explore the enrolment process necessary to ‘build’ the network and interest them in using the innovation; identify three types of governance learning that turn the network into a collective: sensemaking, instrument-seizing and sensegiving; show how these myths are necessary to turn collective knowledge into organisational knowledge.

With both a behavioural and evolutionary approach to governance, we show that power, relationships and learning processes are tightly intertwined within the governance networks. Our use of organisational learning theory also demonstrates how it can be used in a more systematic way to describe the learning processes witnessed in governance situations.

This research brings new light to the understanding of how territorial governance can be developed and how managerial innovations can provoke learning situations and more specifically how stakeholders learn to define common goals and a shared vision of their territory to enable collective action.

Urban agriculture is increasingly recognized for its potential contribution to more sustainable urban development. Urban agriculture includes the cultivation and raising, processing and marketing of food and non-food crops, medicinal and aromatic herbs, fruit trees, as well as animal products within urban and periurban areas. Urban agriculture positively impacts urban food security, local economic development, environmental management and community building. To reconcile the demands posed by urban growth with urban agriculture activities of high social and economic value, urban agriculture however should be included into land use planning and design, and regulated by municipalities, assuring its proper management and avoiding potential health and environmental risks. Open and green urban spaces could be designed for multifunctional urban agriculture and combine natural habitat, food production, educational, recreational and leisure activities. Such design processes would benefit from broad participation of urban planners and architects, urban farmers, citizens and slum inhabitants as to enhance ownership and engagement, more effectively use available local resources and give the process a higher credibility and wider outreach. This article shares the experience of Rosario, Argentina where the city planners and University staff collaborated with two low-income communities in the design and implementation of a multifunctional neighborhood park, public square and road reserve. A step-by-step participatory design process was followed: starting from initial visioning, defining and relating the various existing and multi-functional land uses desired, to elaborating the site plan, and agreeing on implementation procedures. The article briefly contextualizes the site and its inhabitants, illustrates the design process and the results achieved and highlights some of the problems encountered. Participatory design of open spaces for urban agriculture in Rosario- though a complex process- proved to have contributed to improving socio-economic and environmental conditions in the city, while also serving as a source of inspiration to other cities in the region.

Purpose – European studies of alternative food networks have covered primarily rural or periurban initiatives that connect producers and consumers directly. For the most part, those studies overlook nonprofit urban community initiatives. This chapter begins to address the gap by presenting preliminary findings from a study that examines the development of community food initiatives that sell green produce in London.

Design/methodology/approach – The first part of the chapter draws on content analysis of literature produced by 15 initiatives and presents a brief overview. The second part presents case study analysis of the organizational, physical, and social context of two of the initiatives.

Findings – The findings indicate that many urban green produce initiatives have an explicit emphasis on the demand side of the producer–consumer connection. Those that emphasize sustainably produced food and fair trade may have difficulty drawing low-income customers, even if located in areas with high levels of deprivation. Initiatives oriented toward basic food access rather than sustainability are expanding their scope to include more “local” food.

Originality/value – Although this study does not represent urban green produce initiatives throughout England or beyond, it provides some examples of how such initiatives can develop and the extent to which they claim social justice and environmental considerations in their efforts. This study is a step toward empirical examination of nonprofit urban green produce initiatives, and contributes to a broader, more inclusive conceptualization of alternative food networks.

This paper aims to analyse the capacity of rural and urban spaces to promote innovation in the agro‐food firms. The purpose is to determine if the rural/urban division affects the innovative behaviour of agriculture, food processing and food distribution firms.

Business data have been obtained for over 2,000 firms based in the Valencia region, Spain. Out of them, over 200 declared to have taken part in R&D&i activities, mainly in partnership with public support institutions. The database supplies data of micro and small enterprises, which have been typically underestimated in the Spanish Survey on Technological Innovation in Enterprises. The database also makes it possible to identify the main location of agro‐food business, and the territory is divided in Local Labour Systems (LLS). LLS were in turn classified as rural or urban according to alternative criteria (OECD, national legislation). A logit model has been used in the analyses.

The location of enterprises according to the rural/urban divide does not appear relevant concerning innovation, although businesses orientated to the primary sector seem less innovative. Co‐op businesses appear to be more innovative.

The paper offers an approach of innovation in the agro‐food traditionally considered as a non‐innovative system. It explores how territory affects innovation using data from firms.