Urban agriculture in world and Polish literature and in planning documents of selected Polish cities

In highly developed countries, the topic of agriculture in urban areas is becoming increasingly popular. The main premise for its development is the rediscovery of the benefits that agriculture can provide to urban organisms. The aim of the article is to present the concept of urban agriculture, as well as to recognize the social interest in this issue. In addition, it assesses the importance of agriculture in planning documents and development strategies of selected Polish cities. A secondary aim of the article is to promote knowledge and research on urban agriculture. The study uses biliometric, webometric and desk research methods. The research has shown that globally the issue of agriculture in cities is gaining increasing interest among scientists. The number of scientific articles shows an upward trend. Similar trends are also observed in Poland, as evidenced by the growing number of Polish-language scientific texts devoted to this subject. Nevertheless, the research is at an early stage of development and is often fragmentary (concerning only selected threads). Polish scientists also relatively rarely publish their own research (on the topic of urban agriculture) in recognized English-language scientific journals. The research also showed that Polish Internet users (using the Polish language) rarely search for information on the analysed topics, which translates into the content of planning documents of Polish cities. Agriculture, both in studies of conditions and directions of spatial development, and in city development strategies, is omitted or marginalized. Although in the analysed cities (except for Warsaw and Krakow) agricultural land is covered by various forms of protection, this does not translate into operational activities. Only in the case of one of the analysed cities, i.e. Wrocław, was agriculture given much space in the development strategy, creating a vision of a garden city, where agricultural land and urban greenery constitute an important element of space.