Filling the Void with Food: Urban Gardens as Safe Spaces and Alternatives to Vacant Land

Urban Farm DB summary

A paper on community gardens and urban farms in underserved and gentrifying areas of redevelopment in the United States combines case studies, interviews, quantitative analysis of land values, comparative analysis of vacant land policies, urban archival news documents and photographs, and empirical models of urban land use and food distribution. It states that urban agricultural programs rarely alleviate the pressures of food insecurity on a large scale, while showing that community food gardens function as an oasis from the food insecurity, violence and sexual harassment that urban areas often pose. The qualitative data support existing literature indicating that, if maintained, community agricultural projects produce social, economic, environmental and physical health benefits, and the paper argues that with government support, these small grassroots programs can have larger societal impacts.