The waterfront community of Sydhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark is architecturally praised, but also criticized for its lack of public green space. Residents in the area have self-organized a community gardening initiative to combat this lack of greenery. The thesis aims to explore this occurrence by providing an analysis of the attitudes and behaviors towards social and environmental aspects of sustainability and individual residents’ resistance or support towards community gardening initiatives. The research design is based on quantitative methods with an exploratory purpose, using an online survey methodology. The main findings show that there is an association among knowledge of sustainability concepts, sustainable attitudes and behaviors, and interest in community gardening participation in the study population. Moreover, individuals who indicate no interest in community gardening lack a desire to join in the future, although they may be encouraged to do so with more education and advertisement. Generally, the study population feels positively towards community gardening and feels there is a need for it in the area. Further research may investigate aspects such as politics and policies related to community gardening and replicate a similar study in a different sociodemographic context to see how the results differ. The results of this study have practical implications for academics, built environment practitioners, and community gardening organizers.

Cities in the Global South are undergoing rapid urbanization, where a high percentage of the urban poor live in informal settlements that lack basic services, are associated with unemployment, low-income levels, and insecurity. The impacts of climate change, intensive agricultural practices, and highly globalized food systems pose challenges to food security. Urban farming is one of the alternative practices to tackle food insecurity and urban poverty. In this study, urban farming was examined through grassroots innovation theory, which focuses on creating innovative sustainable development solutions from the bottom up. However, insufficient research has been done on urban farming initiatives in highly deprived areas. A qualitative approach was adopted, where semi-structured interviews were conducted, that were triangulated with observation and documentation data, providing multiple sources of support. The data was analysed through the Resources-Rationales-Relations Framework, which has been also used by other researchers to analyse grassroots initiatives. The results demonstrate that water is a crucial resource in urban farming grassroots initiatives, as water availability is limited due to droughts and climate change. Furthermore, resource-scarce environments experience limited access to water due to the unequal distribution of resources. Another identified resource that urban farming grassroots initiatives imply is climate-smart innovative technologies, such as the hydroponic system, that gives farmers good exposure. Sustainable livelihood creation was the main rationale to be involved in urban farming grassroots initiatives, by creating employment, giving back to the community, and influencing youth’s food and lifestyle choices. Relations were found to be crucial between farmers and organizational intermediaries, as they have increased their visibility and enabled them to engage with a wider context. The study concludes that the urban sustainability transition in Global South’s informal settlements is achieved when it cuts through all three levels of knowledge production, which was done by the climate-smart innovative farming technologies that raise attention and interest beyond the local context up to the political arena.