ROOFTOP GARDENS: growing greens for social inclusion

With one of the four highest population densities in Europe (15 992 inhabitants per square kilometre), the city of Barcelona has few chances of growth due to the reality of the peripheral areas of the municipality. Despite not having available land, the city administration realised that it does have unused space, such as the rooftops of municipal buildings. Having these spaces and the demand for growing spaces has led to the creation of the ‘rooftop garden’ project. In this context, the project began in 2016 at the headquarters of the Area of Social Rights of the City Council of Barcelona as the building, right in the centre of the city, has a large rooftop which at the time had no other functionality.

A pilot project was drafted with the contribution of the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA, a key stakeholder in the sector) on the technical and agronomic side, and the participation of three occupational centres for people with intellectual disabilities in Barcelona. This project brings together several dimensions which make it unique and replicable at the same time:

• an educational dimension in the work with stakeholder organisations of people with disabilities, who are given the opportunity to experience growing vegetables in the centre of the city;
• an environmental approach of reuse and making the most of available space;
• the dimension of opening a new space for citizens with growing potential and scalability;
• innovation in the sustainable production of vegetables;
• a social dimension, as the crop production is donated to vulnerable groups through social lunches and food banks.

One of the key points of the project lies in achieving the economic sustainability of the project. At present, the economic difficulties of the project do not focus on both the initial costs of setting up the allotment and the maintenance costs. While it is feasible to obtain the initial investment to build the garden, the difficulty is concentrated on raising funds for maintenance and helping the extension of the project to other areas of the city. For this reason, the project will focus on rethinking costs as well as on searching for new financing means.

The costs of maintaining the project (between EUR 7000 and EUR 9000 a year per garden) are largely due to the professional support and advice in the various phases (planting, harvesting, pests, control of the mechanical elements of the hydroponic system, etc.). However, during the years of operation, the participants have progressively incorporated new tasks, even some that were thought to unsuitable for people with disabilities. So professional participation might reduce, although for the time being it is not feasible to disregard it. In this sense, the perspective is that in the short term, the current maintenance cost can be halved, reducing by half the attention that agronomic professionals dedicate to it. Additionally, with the aim to reduce costs and increase the value of the project, the coordinators of the project are studying the possibility of selling some of the produce in markets, emphasising the ecological and social value, and the close proximity of where the vegetables are grown.