Economic viability of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is the key requirement for additional social, environmental, and landscape functions within urban and peri-urban areas. However the rapid progress of urbanization drives the loss of farmlands to industrial, residential and other urban uses, and the decline of farms and population working in agriculture. Hence, the literature highlights the need to popularize new ideas and strategies of preserving and developing farms in urbanized areas.The main aim of this research is both to identify and assess determinants of success of farms located in urban and peri-urban areas. The key question that has arisen is: how do different adjustment strategies, locations and farm resources affect the success of farms? For this purpose a web survey was conducted among 199 professional urban and peri-urban farms in the Ruhr Metropolis (Germany). It is an old-industrialized polycentric urban agglomeration where agriculture has a comparably high level of significance in current land use. Analyses were conducted taking a resource-based view and using the classification tree method. The data indicate that farms which use various adjustment strategies are more successful. Elements of successful strategies, are include tourism services (mainly horse-riding) and direct marketing. Results further indicate that the effectiveness of those strategies (farm success) is mainly dependent upon a farms locations. Distance from the customer seem to be of utmost importance, because by minimizing transport costs, customers choose entities that have the most convenient location for them. By assessing farm success from a long-term perspective, it was noted that positive prospects of development apply mainly to full-time farmers who use appropriate adjustment strategies. In contrast, farms, which do not use any elements of strategies relating to customers from urban areas, seem to achieve success chiefly from having a relatively large surface area of farmland.

城市和城郊农业（UPA）的经济可行性是在城市和城郊地区实现更多社会，环境和景观功能的关键要求。然而，城市化的迅速发展驱使农田流失给工业，住宅和其他城市用途，以及农场和从事农业工作的人口减少。因此，文献强调需要推广在城市化地区保护和发展农场的新思路和新策略。本研究的主要目的是确定和评估位于城市和郊区的农场成功的决定因素。出现的关键问题是：如何采取不同的调整策略，位置和农场资源会影响农场的成功吗？为此，对鲁尔大都会（德国）的199个城市和郊区专业农场进行了网络调查。这是一个旧工业化的多中心城市群，农业在当前土地利用中具有相对较高的意义。以基于资源的视图并使用分类树方法进行了分析。数据表明，使用各种调整策略的农场更为成功。成功策略的要素包括旅游服务（主要是骑马）和直接营销。结果还表明，这些策略（农场成功）的有效性主要取决于农场的位置。与客户的距离似乎至关重要，因为通过最大程度地降低运输成本，客户选择位置最方便的实体。通过从长期的角度评估农场的成功，注意到发展的积极前景主要适用于采用适当调整策略的专职农民。相反，不使用任何与城市地区客户相关的策略要素的农场，似乎主要是通过拥有相对较大的耕地面积来取得成功。