Investigating integration of edible plants in urban open spaces: Evaluation of policy challenges and successes of implementation

Urban landscape planners are gradually seeking opportunities to integrate edible plants in urban open spaces. The new demands to enhance urban biodiversity, food production and raise environmental awareness is bringing into the forefront the need to rethink the conventional ways of planning and designing urban open spaces. The new wave of integrating edible plants in parks and other green spaces consist of emerging policies like the edible city policy or edible district policy. Those policies assess urban green spaces towards a new approach of multi-functional use and on how to enable such places to host a wide range of edible plants. There is, however, a limited understanding of how effective these policies are in supporting and enhancing the integration of edible plants into urban open spaces.