Chapter 7. Territorial innovation in the relationships between agriculture and the city

The concept of territorial innovation is used in the literature to analyse centre-periphery relationships, the quality of the environment and the territorialgovernance. Our research uses this concept to apprehend the multiple dimensions of relationships between agriculture and the city, and thus to understand the transformations of agriculture in the context of an urban society. To this end, we analyse social, spatial and organizational arrangements in local agri-urban initiatives. Starting from the history of the recent integration of agriculture in urban planning and local policies, we use the example of Montpellier to illustrate how these ‘agri-urban’ arrangements are sources of territorial innovation. In fact, innovation becomes territorial through the accumulation of micro-changes, which end up influencing established practices, uses and norms that regulate city-agriculture relationships. This process of scaling up opens up new research perspective on the relationships between territorial innovations and global transitions.