Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
218 results(3 / 9)
Handmade Spaces: Creative Placemaking in a Local Neighborhood
2024Silvia Gullino, Heidi Seetzen · · United Kingdom (London)
This ethnographic research in a former Victorian square in South London examined how residents transformed derelict spaces, including creating two community gardens, over three decades. The study found that while informal, bottom-up practices shaped a vibrant urban culture, the neighborhood is now undergoing progressive gentrification. This gentrification reflects trends in other London neighborhoods, posing challenges to community initiatives.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyA review of food asset maps in Canada
2024Belinda Li, Tammara Soma, Raghava Payment, Srishti Kumar, Nicole Anderson, Flora Xu, Phonpoom Piensatienkul · Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l alimentation · Canada
This study reviewed and categorized 73 food asset maps in Canada based on their included food assets and design characteristics. Most maps included built environment assets like grocery stores and food banks, as well as agriculture-based natural food assets such as farms, community gardens, and orchards. However, representations of Indigenous-focused food assets and non-agriculture-based natural food assets like forests, water bodies, and foraging areas were generally lacking. This lack of Indigenous perspectives reinforces the values of a settler-colonial food system within food asset maps.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyEconomicsGreen Informalities as Socially Just Ecological Infrastucture: Enduring with Dignity at the Edges of Resilient Development in Dhaka
2024Huq, Efadul · Smith ScholarWorks (Smith College) · Bangladesh (Dhaka)
Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, indicates that ecological infrastructure often erases existing informal agricultural practices, leading to the displacement of marginalized urban dwellers. Based on engaged research with a collective of urban farmers facing eviction, this paper argues that green informalities are crucial for understanding grassroots practices and can be appreciated as socially just ecological infrastructure.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyWelfareMarginalised agrarian traditions as a tool for climate justice
2024Finn Bell · Critical and Radical Social Work · United States (Ypsilanti)
This qualitative study explored how marginalized agrarian traditions can aid communities in surviving climate change, conducting in-depth interviews with 23 marginalized food growers and community leaders in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The study found that while growing food builds resilience to food insecurity and climate change, it is difficult due to land injustice. Policy implications include the need for housing justice, proactive planning for climate refuges, and reparations for land rematriation.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceClimate changeOota Kathegalu: Tracing the food stories of Bengaluru, India
2024Marthe L. Derkzen, Maitreyi Koduganti, Sheetal Patil, Parama Roy · · India (Bengaluru)
Bengaluru has transitioned from a "Garden City" to a "Global Technology Hub," resulting in food production being pushed out and productive lands converted to residential and commercial uses. This urbanization has led to rising land values, sharpening inequalities, and recurrent water insecurity. In response, new forms of urban farming, such as kitchen gardens and community farms, have emerged to mitigate space constraints and meet local food aspirations. This chapter will use participatory mapping, interviews, film, and photography to explore how Bengaluru residents from diverse backgrounds perceive food as cultural connections, community feelings, and environmental resilience.
Equity & displacementCommunityDIYFood sovereignty & justiceUrban–rural linkageThe Practical Ethics of Urban Agriculture in Public Housing
2024Nevin Cohen, Michael H. Stein, Annie Hancock, Alfonso Morales · Urban agriculture · United States
This paper examined two housing authority-led urban agriculture projects in New York City and Denver, Colorado, highlighting their multidimensional benefits such as skill-building and community cohesion. While these projects improved residents' daily experiences, the study noted that social problems persist despite new interactions. The analysis emphasized the need to consider both stated and implicit goals in urban agriculture ethics, acknowledging that attempts to harmonize competing claims are at the root of urban agriculture practices.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyHealthWelfareSchool Gardens and the Urban Child
2023Angela Oulton, Susan Jagger · · North America
A discourse analysis of historical school garden texts in North America reveals that school gardens have not been welcoming or accessible to all children, despite persuasive research on the positive effects of nature-based learning. Historically, school gardens were used to serve adult agendas, including containing urban children, assimilating marginalized groups, and creating laborers, thereby reinforcing patriarchal, colonial, white supremacist, and eugenic aspirations. This study explores how these discourses culturally constructed childhoods and influenced children.
Equity & displacementFood educationCommunityHealthPolicyUnderstanding Barriers and Strategies to Accessing Healthy Food in Urban Agriculture for Community Residents in Predominantly Black Communities
2023Saria Lofton, Akilah Martin, Marjorie Kersten, Nanyombi Lubimbi, Helene Vilme, Forgive Avorgbedor, Angela Odoms‐Young · Community Health Equity Research & Policy · United States (Chicago)
This study interviewed 17 urban growers and local food advocates in predominantly Black communities in Chicago to understand barriers to accessing healthy food through urban agriculture. Key barriers identified were the lack of accessibility to traditional food retailers, the high availability of processed foods, and issues with the cultural acceptability of urban-produced foods. The research highlights significant challenges faced by these communities in accessing healthy food despite urban agriculture's potential.
Equity & displacementHealthCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceEconomicsSecondary Non-Traditional, Urban Agriculture Students of Color and Their Motivation to Stay in Agriculture: A Study of Retention
2023Callan Hand, D. Barry Croom, James C. Anderson, Ashley M. Yopp, Aaron Golson · Career and Technical Education Research · United States
This phenomenological study investigated the motivations of non-traditional urban agriculture students of color to remain in agriculture. Findings suggest that while systematic instruction in agricultural sciences and positive local youth organization experiences contribute to a favorable perception of agriculture, they do not necessarily lead to a career preference for agriculture among these students. Furthermore, urban students of color perceived that the FFA Organization above the school level is not inclusive of them.
Equity & displacementFood educationCommunityHealthRacism in paradise: Being migrants in urban agriculture in Aotearoa New Zealand
2023Marcela Palomino‐Schalscha, Maria Teresa Braga Bizarria, Isabella Sánchez‐Bolívar · New Zealand Geographer · New Zealand
This collective autoethnography project explored the experiences of Latin American migrant women of color joining urban agriculture (UA) in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. The research revealed that while UA spaces offer community-building opportunities, they can also reproduce exclusionary practices, particularly towards minority groups. The study highlights experiences of racial oppression within UA settings.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceOrganizing Tensions in Community-Supported Agriculture
2023Megan K. Schraedley · · Global
This chapter examines Sweet Water Farm, a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, through a participant's perspective, analyzing organizing practices by highlighting three tensions. These include the tension between community creation and customer management, issues of inclusion and exclusion from CSAs, and the challenge of transforming capitalist economic structures while operating within them. The study reveals that while CSAs offer potential for addressing equity in the food system, questions persist regarding their long-term adoption by diverse communities as an alternative to conventional agriculture.
Equity & displacementCSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceHow common is greening in gentrifying areas?
2023Jessica Quinton, Lorien Nesbitt, James J. Connolly, Elvin Wyly · Urban Geography · Canada
This descriptive analysis identified gentrifying areas in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto, Canada, from 1996–2006 and 2006–2016, to determine the prevalence of greening interventions. The study found that greening, including parks, cycle lanes, and community gardens, frequently occurred before, during, and after gentrification. These results indicate that greening is common in gentrifying areas throughout the gentrification process, suggesting a need for a broader understanding of the relationship between urban greening and gentrification.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsA Social-Ecological Model for Inclusion Processes in Urban Agriculture of Vienna, Austria
2023Sophie Kathrin Schaffernicht, Elisabeth Quendler · Merits · Austria
This study aimed to identify systemic barriers to inclusion in horticultural working life and potential solutions for people with disabilities within urban agriculture in Vienna, Austria. A pilot project was conducted from May to October 2019, involving a university, three social institutions, two horticultural farms, and fifteen people with disabilities. The findings suggested that urban agriculture opportunities should extend beyond simple cooperation between social institutions and horticultural farms.
Equity & displacementWelfareCommunityReview: The $16 Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification, by Pascale Joassart-Marcelli
2023Sean M. Crotty · California History · United States (California)
Pascale Joassart-Marcelli's book "The $16 Taco" examines how food and power intersect to create landscapes of hunger and plenty in U.S. cities, using San Diego as a case study. It argues for the centrality of food in broader structural issues of social, political, and cultural inequalities, which manifest as material inequality. The book explores the impacts of food apartheid, a system of segregation that prevents certain groups from accessing nourishment, and explains the role of racist real estate practices in devaluing neighborhoods of immigrants and people of color.
Equity & displacementEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceCommunityGuerrilla Gardening: At the Intersection of Birnam Wood and Minneapolis
2023Sarah Dimick · Critique Studies in Contemporary Fiction · United States (Minneapolis)
This study reflects on guerrilla gardening and its narratives by intersecting Eleanor Catton’s novel Birnam Wood with descriptions of gardens at police killing sites in the greater Minneapolis metro area. It argues that guerrilla garden infrastructures sprout in the soil of highly unequal power, often in the wake of the fatal exercise of state power, and in the shadow of a foreshortened environmental future. These are DIY infrastructures constructed by people weathering entwined environmental, political, and economic crises in the 21st century.
Equity & displacementDIYCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceClimate changePaying for nature‐based solutions: A review of funding and financing mechanisms for ecosystem services and their impacts on social equity
2023Austin Thompson‐Spain, Kyle S. Bunds, Lincoln R. Larson, Bethany B. Cutts, J. Aaron Hipp · Sustainable Development · United States
This scoping review examines funding and financing mechanisms for nature-based solutions and their impact on social equity in the United States. It finds that market-driven nature-based solutions can contribute to an inequitable distribution of urban ecosystem services. The distribution of benefits is influenced by local contexts, decision-making inclusion, and payment mechanisms, suggesting disparities in access for diverse and marginalized populations.
Equity & displacementPolicyEconomicsClimate changeCommunityCultivating thirdspace: Community, conflict and place in small-city urban gardens
2023Emelie Larsson, Katarina Giritli Nygren · Landscape and Urban Planning · Sweden
This study explored urban gardens as "thirdspaces" by interviewing allotment gardeners and community gardeners in small Swedish cities. Allotments were examined as "lived places" where experiences, meanings, and a sense of place develop. The results illuminated how allotment gardens function as a nature-human crossing point and a practice connecting city residents with countryside life and non-landowners with the land.
Equity & displacementCommunityUrban–rural linkageCaring in unequal worlds
2023Miriam Williams, Lillian Tait · · Australia (Sydney)
This chapter reflects on how attention to care helps understand the hopes and troubles shaping Community Food Initiatives (CFIs) in unequal worlds. Drawing on data from a 2019 research project documenting CFIs across metropolitan Sydney, Australia, the chapter analyzes two initiatives: the Addison Road Community Centre Organisation (ARCCO) Food Pantry and Five Serves Produce Community Support Agriculture Scheme (CSA). The analysis reveals expansive communities involving human and non-human others that are cared for, cared about, and cared with CFIs, highlighting the complexities of care in unequal contexts.
Equity & displacementCommunityCSA & TeikeiWelfareUrban Agriculture in Great Bandung Region in the Midst of Commercialization, Food Insecurity, and Nutrition Inadequacy
2023Oekan S. Abdoellah, Indri Wulandari, Kinanti Indah Safitri, Nafa Destri Fianti, Rahma Maulia Fadli Basagevan, Mega Nurul Aini, Rosalina Ilmi Amalia, Mahardhika Puspa Arum Suraloka, Gemilang Lara Utama · Sustainability · Indonesia (Bandung)
Commercialization of urban agriculture (UA) in the Great Bandung region has led to the displacement of small-scale farmers and reduced access to local food, exacerbating food insecurity among low-income residents. Subsistence farmers (48.91%) earned only 7.14% to 14.64% of the 2023 minimum wages, and food insecurity prevalence was predominantly observed after UA practices. The study also found a surplus of vitamin A among urban farmers, while inadequacies in other nutritional aspects were prevalent.
Equity & displacementEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceHealthCommunity“I am not by any stretch a gardener, just curious”: Feminist Gentrifier Memoirs and an Ethics of Urban Gardening
2023Maria Sulimma · Ecozon European Journal of Literature Culture and Environment · Global
This article examines "feminist gentrifier memoirs," specifically Anne Elizabeth Moore’s Gentrifier (2021) and Vikki Warner’s Tenemental (2018), focusing on gardening practices. It explores the writers’ conflicted positions in gentrifying neighborhoods and their complicity in processes of displacement and real estate speculation, despite benefiting from urban sustainability measures like urban farms and gardens. The texts engage with complex emotions arising from their white privilege and homeownership.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsA infraestrutura verde como expressão da desigualdade socioespacial: o caso dos loteamentos de acesso controlado e das favelas em Bauru/SP
2023R Verissimo, Silvana Aparecida Alves, Adalberto da Silva, Ana Maria Lombardi Daibem · Risco Revista de Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo (Online) · Brazil (Bauru)
This research investigates green and gray infrastructure in Bauru/SP, Brazil, comparing controlled access allotments (Pq. Residencial Paineiras and Jardim Shangri-Lá) with favelas (Ferradura Mirim and Jardim Nicéia). It aims to study green infrastructure as an expression of sociospatial inequalities perpetuated by urban planning. Through analyses and cartographies, the study evaluates the current urban panorama and challenges for mitigating social, environmental, and urbanistic inequalities.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyUrban–rural linkageUrban gardening as a risk-reduction strategy – an intersectional analysis of top-down gardening initiatives
2023Emelie Larsson, Katarina Giritli Nygren · Journal of Risk Research · Global
This study analyzed strategy documents and municipal website information to examine how municipalities frame urban gardening as a risk-reduction strategy, using critical discourse analysis. It identified two discourses: an eco(no)logical risk discourse addressing ecological risks within a capitalist market logic, and a social risk discourse focusing on gardening for work training. The findings reveal that top-down urban garden initiatives highlight contemporary inequalities in urban spaces.
Equity & displacementPolicyCommunityEconomicsWelfarePracticing ecological citizenship through community supported agriculture: Opportunities, challenges, and social justice concerns
2023Manoj Misra · Culture Agriculture Food and Environment · Canada
A qualitative study of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) participants in the greater Edmonton region of Canada examined how this local food initiative promotes ecological citizenship. The study concluded that discursive and structural limitations prevent the Edmonton CSA community from achieving meaningful diversity and addressing social justice concerns within its realm.
Equity & displacementCSA & TeikeiCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyThree gardens as places of performative resistance and resilience
2023Pekka Ilmari Niskanen · Ruukku Studies in Artistic Research · Global
This paper examines three gardens—a Sahrawi sandoponic garden in Algerian refugee camps, a Helsinki Sandoponic Garden, and the Jardin Truillot in Paris—as sites for community gathering and addressing trauma. The Helsinki garden, a project by PHOSfate, highlights injustices faced by the Sahrawi population and the Baltic Sea, linking refugee status to phosphate mining and eutrophication. The study argues that recognizing injustice is central to the activism in these gardens and related practices.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceClimate changeThe Specter of Enclosure in School Gardens
2022Graham Slater, Robert G. Unzueta, Clayton Pierce · · Global
This chapter argues that much scholarly literature on school gardens is based on problematic assumptions or ignores histories of violence and dispossession. Without an ecocritical approach, school gardens risk replicating systems of domination, extraction, exploitation, and human supremacy. The authors propose integrating theoretical reflection into emancipatory action within a historical materialist framework to address colonization, land dispossession, labor exploitation, and anthropocentrism.
Equity & displacementFood educationCommunityPolicy