Abstract

The UrbanFarm Student Challenge, now in its seventh edition, was established to promote innovation, sustainability, and interdisciplinarity in the field of Urban Agriculture. Since its launch in 2019, the competition has engaged students from universities across Europe and beyond in the co-design of urban agricultural systems integrated into real-world spatial contexts. Each edition has focused on different specific sites, inviting participants to propose feasible solutions that combine food production, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and economic viability. This year’s edition, UrbanFarm2025, continued on the path set by the previous editions by addressing the transformation of an underutilised lot located within the KTH Royal Institute of Technology campus in Stockholm, Sweden. The selected site presented both spatial and socio-environmental challenges such as perceived isolation, limited functionality, and low ecological value. At the same time, it offered substantial potential for regeneration through the lens of Urban Agriculture. Participating teams were invited to respond to this context by developing design proposals that integrate productive landscapes with multifunctional public uses, aiming to activate the space as a node of food production, education, community interaction, and ecological enhancement. The challenge required students to work across disciplines combining design thinking, agronomic knowledge, environmental engineering, and socio-cultural analysis, while aligning their proposals with the principles of circularity, climate resilience, and urban sustainability. The projects presented in this volume reflect the diversity of interpretations, methodologies, and conceptual approaches developed by the teams. While differing in the proposed strategies and solutions, all proposals share a commitment to leveraging urban agriculture as a driver of positive change within the urban fabric and as a useful tool to restore vacant spaces within cities. They also reinforce the educational objectives of the UrbanFarm initiative: to foster transdisciplinary collaboration, practical problem-solving, and critical reflection among the students, inviting them to work at the interface between food systems and urban development. This collection of student-led work contributes to an evolving discourse on the role of agriculture in urban regeneration. It demonstrates how targeted design interventions rooted in agroecology, systems thinking, and local knowledge can respond to pressing urban challenges while enhancing the liveability, resilience, and inclusiveness of cities.