Untitled <b>Urban Allotment Gardens and Climate Change: Assessing Food Production, Cooling Potential, and Gardener Perspectives in Valladolid, Spain</b>

The renaissance of interest in urban agriculture and urban green spaces is driven by their potential contributions to fostering more sustainable, healthy, and renaturalized cities. While urban allotment gardens are primarily designed to improve food security and support low-income populations in Valladolid, Spain, they also have the potential to offer additional socio-environmental benefits such as urban cooling in a climate change context. This research found that urban allotment gardens provide more stable and cooler temperatures compared to urban gray spaces, although not as significantly as urban parks. The cooling effect was most evident during the summer, a season with the largest number of crops in the gardens and the highest temperatures. Additionally, the study highlighted that greater crop cover above soil had a more significant cooling effect at the plot level. Surprisingly, crop abundance and crop diversity showed a weak correlation with cooling microclimate benefits. Surveys conducted with gardeners revealed their awareness of climate change and its perceived direct threat to their crops, health, and city. The future concerns of gardeners regarding the availability of water for both crop growth and the development of urban allotment gardens are emphasized. This study adds a new continental-mediterranean city to existing research on urban cooling effects of urban gardens. The findings suggest that, to effectively evaluate the contributions of urban gardens to cities, their benefits should be analyzed as a multifunctional entity, with cooling potential recognized as an added value. This research can be useful for policymakers in integrating urban gardens into climate strategies.