Sustanaible cities vs sustanaible agricultures. A scientific project on agro-urban systems, North and South of the Mediterranean

This paper describes the objectives, the process, and the expected outcomes of a scientific project named DAUME (acronym for Durabilite des Agricultures Urbaines en Mediterranee or in English: Sustainable Urban Agriculture in the Mediterranean area). Daume is a research program funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-2010- STRA-007-03). It involves five French teams (UMR Innovation, UMR Metafort, UMR Tetis, UMR Ecodeveloppement, UMR Ades) and four teams of other countries of the Mediterranean (University of Constantine, Algeria, SSSA Pisa, Italy, Ecole Nationale d'Agronomie de Meknes, Morocco, Centro d'Estudos Geograficos, Lisboa, Portugal). It focuses on the concept of sustainable agro-urban systems, and aims to address sustainability stakes in periurban areas. It examines the hypothesis that agro-urban systems sustainability rests on a multi-scale reorganization of urban-agriculture linkages. It presents DAUME's comparative approach that analyzes sustainability issues in five Mediterranean cities (Europe and Maghreb) at farm, local, and regional level.(Résumé d'auteur