Small-scale urban agriculture: Drivers of growing produce at home and in community gardens in Detroit

Small-scale urban agriculture is associated with positive health and environmental outcomes. Previous studies examined factors that drive people to grow foods in urban areas mainly drawing on qualitative data. This research investigates quantitatively what determines consumer preferences for growing foods in community gardens, informing efforts to upscale urban agriculture. We conducted choice experiments in North America and performed latent class analysis of contextual and intrapsychic factors affecting consumers’ preferences for growing foods in cities. Results show that providing tools and guidance are the most important contextual factors affecting community garden participation. The preferences of proponents of growing foods are explained by their high subjective knowledge about growing foods and reasons tied to the benefits of participating in community gardening. Opponents of growing foods at community gardens are characterized by low knowledge. The findings can be used to design policies that promote sustainable food systems in urban areas.

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Visceral Encounters: A Political Ecology of Urban Land, Food, and Housing in Dubuque, Iowa

Social Sciences ◽

10.3390/socsci8040122 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 122

Author(s):

Chennault ◽

Klavitter ◽

Sutton

Keyword(s):

Political Ecology ◽

Community Gardens ◽

The Body ◽

Small Scale ◽

Community Gardening ◽

Marginalized Communities ◽

Social Lives ◽

Racial Relations ◽

Food Gardening ◽

Political Ecologies

Through a praxis of co-authorship between a university scholar and two community gardeners/organizers/activists, this article showcases the ways in which knowledge, practices, and relationalities emergent in community gardens in Dubuque, Iowa USA directly engage with the politics of food, land, and housing. The authors engage in co-authorship across university and community boundaries to ontologically reframe knowledge production and draw critical attention to the everyday livelihoods and political ecologies experienced within marginalized communities. We use extended conversations and interviews to analyze the food, land, and housing issues that emerge in the context of uneven racial relations and neighborhood revitalization. We then organize our analysis using a Political Ecology of the Body (PEB) framework to consider how people’s bodily, emotional, and social lives impact their relationalities with food, gardening, and neighborhood spaces. Our findings show that community gardening efforts are transforming the Washington and North End neighborhoods—even if these changes appear to outsiders to be small-scale or difficult to measure—while also calling attention to the anti-oppression and anti-racism work that remains to be done. Our co-authorship demonstrates how community gardeners and university partners can work together to contest histories of marginalization and foster more socially just relations.

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Urban agriculture as a keystone contribution towards securing sustainable and healthy development for cities in the future

Blue-Green Systems ◽

10.2166/bgs.2019.931 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-27 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

S. L. G. Skar ◽

R. Pineda-Martos ◽

A. Timpe ◽

B. Pölling ◽

K. Bohn ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Urban Agriculture ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Food Systems ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Healthy Development ◽

Vertical Farming ◽

Integrated Agriculture ◽

Water Waste

Abstract Research and practice during the last 20 years has shown that urban agriculture can contribute to minimising the effects of climate change by, at the same time, improving quality of life in urban areas. In order to do so most effectively, land use and spatial planning are crucial so as to obtain and maintain a supportive green infrastructure and to secure citizens' healthy living conditions. As people today trend more towards living in green and sustainable city centres that can offer fresh and locally produced food, cities become again places for growing food. The scope of urban agriculture thereby is to establish food production sites within the city's sphere; for example, through building-integrated agriculture including concepts such as aquaponics, indoor agriculture, vertical farming, rooftop production, edible walls, as well as through urban farms, edible landscapes, school gardens and community gardens. Embedded in changing urban food systems, the contribution of urban agriculture to creating sustainable and climate-friendly cities is pivotal as it has the capacity to integrate other resource streams such as water, waste and energy. This article describes some of the current aspects of the circular city debate where urban agriculture is pushing forward the development of material and resource cycling in cities.

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Temporal Dynamics and Motivations for Urban Community Food Gardens in Medium-Sized Towns of the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Land ◽

10.3390/land7040146 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 146 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Sky Roberts ◽

Charlie Shackleton

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Urban Agriculture ◽

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Healthy Lifestyle ◽

Urban Community ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Spatial Dynamics ◽

Eastern Cape ◽

Community Gardening ◽

Food Gardens

Urban agriculture is said to be increasing with global urbanization. However, there is little examination of the temporal or spatial dynamics of urban agriculture. We investigated the benefits and challenges experienced by community gardeners in four towns in South Africa, along with GIS analysis of the number, area, and location of urban food community gardens over the last three decades. Common reasons for practicing community gardening were cash poverty (37%) and the need to grow food (34%). The most common benefits reported by respondents were a healthy lifestyle (58%) and consumption of the food produced (54%). Theft of garden infrastructure or produce was a noteworthy challenge to continued motivation and engagement in urban community gardening. There were declines in the number and area of urban community gardens, and more central location over the last three decades. Only 16% of the gardens present in the 1980s were still operating in the 2000s. Clearly community gardening is temporally and spatially dynamic, which requires context-sensitive policy initiatives.

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Evaluating urban agriculture program effectiveness using CIPP model: a review

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/202130603007 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 306 ◽

pp. 03007

Author(s):

Munifah Siti Amira Yusuf ◽

Norsida Man ◽

Nur Bahiah Mohamed Haris ◽

Ismi Arif Ismail ◽

Amar Maruf

Keyword(s):

Food Security ◽

Urban Agriculture ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Program Effectiveness ◽

Evaluation Model ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Related Services ◽

Slow Development ◽

Food Security And Nutrition

The art of planting, preparing, and distributing food around urban areas is known as urban agriculture, farming, or gardening. Individuals and organizations generally work in urban agriculture for general purposes: 1) enhancing their own health and economic circumstances; 2) improving their communities’ access to nutritious food; 3) enhancing their community wellbeing; and 4) developing a community and ecosystem. The Urban Agriculture Program (UAP) has been set up by the Department of Agriculture (DOA) Malaysia since 2014 to facilitate and transfer information regarding urban farming practices to the community. However, the program was less effective and had a low success rate due to the local community's minimal participation, slow development, and sustainability of the agriculture community gardens. This article primarily examines the UAP implementation based on the four components of the CIPP Evaluation Model: Context, Input, Process, and Product. The UAP is a sustainable development tool that can provide food or related services within or on the edges of urban areas. Malaysia addresses food security by providing urban dwellers with adequate nutritious, safe, acceptable, and cost-effective food. Therefore, the study is relevant as achieving food security and nutrition that has been set in the urban agriculture program outcome by 2025.

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Localise It

10.26686/wgtn.17136836 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Anna Sobye

Keyword(s):

Landscape Architecture ◽

Large Scale ◽

Local Community ◽

Central City ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Small Scale ◽

Fault Line ◽

Community Gardening ◽

Physical Form ◽

Civil Defence

<p>Wellington is located on a fault line which will inevitably, one day be impacted by a big earthquake. Due to where this fault line geographically sits, the central city and southern suburbs may be cut off from the rest of the region, effectively making these areas an ‘island’. This issue has absorbed a lot of attention, in particular at a large scale by many different fields: civil engineering, architecture, infrastructure planning & design, policymaking. Due to heightened awareness, and evolved school of practice, contemporary landscape architects deal with post-disaster design – Christchurch, NZ has seen this. A number of landscape architects work with nature, following increased application of ecological urbanism, and natural systems thinking, most notably at larger scales. To create parks that are designed to flood, or implement projects to protect shorelines. A form of resilience less often considered is how design for the small scale - people’s 1:1 relationship with their immediate context in exterior space - can be influential in forming a resilient response to the catastrophe of a major earthquake. This thesis intends to provide a response to address the shift of scales, as a paradigm for preparation and recovery. After a large-scale earthquake, state and civic policies and agencies may or subsequentially not go into action. The most important thinking and acting will be what happens in the minds, and the immediate needs, of each and every person; and how they act communally. This is considered in general social terms in state and civic education programmes of civil defence, for example, but much less considered in how the physical design of the actual spaces we inhabit day-to-day can educate us to be mentally prepared to help each other survive a catastrophe. Specifically, the identification of design of typologies can provide these educative functions. Typology inherently a physical form or manipulation of a generic and substantial prototype applicable in contexts is something that exists in the mind. Working with the physical and social appearance and experience of typologies can also/will change people’s minds. Socially, and economically driven, the community-building power of community gardening is well-proven and documented, and a noticeably large part of contemporary landscape architecture. The designs of this thesis will focus on community gardening specifically to form typologies of resilience preparation and response to disaster. The foundation will remain at the small scale of the local community. The specific question this thesis poses: Can we design local typologies in landscape architecture to integrate community gardens, with public space by preparing for and acting as recovery from a disaster?</p>

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The trouble with temporary: Impacts and pitfalls of a meanwhile community garden in Wythenshawe, South Manchester

Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems ◽

10.1017/s1742170517000291 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 33 (6) ◽

pp. 548-557

Author(s):

Rebecca St. Clair ◽

Michael Hardman ◽

Richard P. Armitage ◽

Graeme Sherriff

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Fresh Fruit ◽

Fruit And Vegetables ◽

Community Garden ◽

Therapeutic Effects ◽

Small Community ◽

Community Gardening ◽

The Uk ◽

The Impact

AbstractThe rise of Urban Agriculture projects across the UK has led to a surge of interest in their efficacy and resulting social impacts. Real Food Wythenshawe is a Lottery-funded urban food project in the UK that aims to teach the population of Wythenshawe to grow their own food and to cook from scratch. The area, popularly referred to as ‘Europe's largest council estate’, suffers from high levels of deprivation and has been described as a ‘food desert’ due to a perceived lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables (Small World Consulting, 2013). In order to encourage Wythenshawe residents to grow their own food and to increase access to fresh fruit and vegetables, Real Food Wythenshawe aims to transform unused areas of land into growing spaces, such as allotments and community gardens. This paper focuses on research conducted at a community garden in Wythenshawe, established by Real Food Wythenshawe as an example of a ‘meanwhile’ or temporary growing site for people affected by cancer. The research investigated the impact of the growing activities on community garden participants through a series of observations and interviews. The findings suggest that the benefits of the space were multiple and diverse, ranging from increased growing knowledge to therapeutic effects, while there has been minimal effect on participants’ dietary behavior. The organization of the community garden also raises questions over some of the practicalities of temporary urban growing sites and highlights the tensions that can arise between small community growing groups and larger institutions with control over land use. These findings add to a growing body of research that considers the value of growing in the city and reflects on the role of community gardening in deprived urban areas of the UK.

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Pathways for the Amplification of Agroecology in African Sustainable Urban Agriculture

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12072718 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (7) ◽

pp. 2718

Author(s):

Cristiana Peano ◽

Stefano Massaglia ◽

Chiara Ghisalberti ◽

Francesco Sottile

Keyword(s):

Agricultural Production ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Developed Countries ◽

Small Scale ◽

Agricultural Systems ◽

Social Resilience ◽

Natural Ecosystems ◽

African Countries ◽

Slow Food

A growing awareness that highly intensified agricultural systems have made a substantial worldwide contribution to the worsening of the resilience capacity of natural ecosystems has, over the last twenty years, brought general attention to agroecological management models. This aspect is even more evident in industrial agriculture, which is based on the use of multiple chemical products derived from non-natural synthesis. In more developed countries, a new idea of ecology linked to agricultural production has been increasingly developed and, for this reason, there has been a greater diffusion of differentiated agricultural models taking into consideration the environmental impact of production choices and policies addressed to the conservation of natural resources. In urban agricultural production, it is even more important to adopt resilient production models that, in addition to developing responsible production paths and allowing a positive connection with the needs of consumers, guarantees reasonable and positive behaviors respecting the environment in which most of the urban population lives; in other words, the implementation of goal 12 of the sustainable development goals (SDG #12 Responsible Production and Consumption) of the United Nations. In this work, we report some case studies inspired by the activities carried out by the Slow Food Association in Africa and demonstrate the importance of agroecological models in small-scale agricultural systems, related to the development of school and community gardens in small urban areas of different African countries, as a tool for integrating agricultural activities aimed at social resilience and the conservation of ecosystems.

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Socio-Economic Viability of Urban Agriculture—A Comparative Analysis of Success Factors in Germany

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su11071999 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (7) ◽

pp. 1999 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Thomas Krikser ◽

Ingo Zasada ◽

Annette Piorr

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Urban Agriculture ◽

Success Factors ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Sufficient Conditions ◽

Cost Benefit ◽

Value Systems ◽

Economic Viability ◽

Community Gardening ◽

Self Reliance

Socio-economic viability of urban agriculture (UA) is, especially regarding non-commercially oriented initiatives, at most a generically treated issue in scientific literature. Given a lack of data on yields, labor input, or saved expenditures, only a few studies have described it either from a cost-avoidance or a specific benefit generation perspective. Our hypothesis is that hybrid roles of consumers and producers in urban agriculture challenge the appraisal of socio-economic viability. This paper presents an empirical study from three prevalent urban agriculture models: self-harvesting gardens, intercultural gardens, and community gardens, combining qualitative and quantitative survey data. A multi-value qualitative comparative analysis was applied to grasp the perception of socio-economic viability and its success factors. This allowed us to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for economic and social success. Results give an indication of the existence of different value systems and cost–benefit considerations in different urban agriculture models. A service-focused business relationship between farmers and consumers ensuring self-reliance is important for success for self-harvesting gardens, while self-reliance and sharing components are relevant for intercultural gardens. Community gardening builds upon self-governance ambitions and a rather individually determined success and failure factor pattern beyond explicit production output orientation. It is shown here for the first time with a quantitative approach that participants of urban agriculture models seem to go beyond traditional trade-off considerations and rather adopt a post-productive perception, focusing more on benefits than costs.

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Localise It

10.26686/wgtn.17136836.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Anna Sobye

Keyword(s):

Landscape Architecture ◽

Large Scale ◽

Local Community ◽

Central City ◽

Community Gardens ◽

Small Scale ◽

Fault Line ◽

Community Gardening ◽

Physical Form ◽

Civil Defence

<p>Wellington is located on a fault line which will inevitably, one day be impacted by a big earthquake. Due to where this fault line geographically sits, the central city and southern suburbs may be cut off from the rest of the region, effectively making these areas an ‘island’. This issue has absorbed a lot of attention, in particular at a large scale by many different fields: civil engineering, architecture, infrastructure planning & design, policymaking. Due to heightened awareness, and evolved school of practice, contemporary landscape architects deal with post-disaster design – Christchurch, NZ has seen this. A number of landscape architects work with nature, following increased application of ecological urbanism, and natural systems thinking, most notably at larger scales. To create parks that are designed to flood, or implement projects to protect shorelines. A form of resilience less often considered is how design for the small scale - people’s 1:1 relationship with their immediate context in exterior space - can be influential in forming a resilient response to the catastrophe of a major earthquake. This thesis intends to provide a response to address the shift of scales, as a paradigm for preparation and recovery. After a large-scale earthquake, state and civic policies and agencies may or subsequentially not go into action. The most important thinking and acting will be what happens in the minds, and the immediate needs, of each and every person; and how they act communally. This is considered in general social terms in state and civic education programmes of civil defence, for example, but much less considered in how the physical design of the actual spaces we inhabit day-to-day can educate us to be mentally prepared to help each other survive a catastrophe. Specifically, the identification of design of typologies can provide these educative functions. Typology inherently a physical form or manipulation of a generic and substantial prototype applicable in contexts is something that exists in the mind. Working with the physical and social appearance and experience of typologies can also/will change people’s minds. Socially, and economically driven, the community-building power of community gardening is well-proven and documented, and a noticeably large part of contemporary landscape architecture. The designs of this thesis will focus on community gardening specifically to form typologies of resilience preparation and response to disaster. The foundation will remain at the small scale of the local community. The specific question this thesis poses: Can we design local typologies in landscape architecture to integrate community gardens, with public space by preparing for and acting as recovery from a disaster?</p>

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