Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
155 results(3 / 7)
Paying 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 changeCommunity“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 & justicePolicyThe 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 educationCommunityPolicyCultivating inclusive public space with urban gardens
2022Melissa Anna Murphy, Peter E. Parker, Margot Hermus · Local Environment · Global
This article aims to unpack how urban settings, organizational forms, and municipal enabling affect urban gardening (UG) practices towards inclusion in public space. It draws on urban commons theory and research on inclusion in public space to understand multi-faceted UG governance and its exclusionary aspects. A comparative analysis of UG initiatives in three Northern European municipalities explores both municipal enabling and the co-production of inclusive public space.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyHealthFood aid and neoliberalism: an alliance built on shared interests?
2022Maddy Power · Policy Press eBooks · United Kingdom
In the UK, food banks and other food aid providers expanded significantly in parallel with welfare reforms and benefit cuts initiated after 2010. This contemporary phenomenon occurred within a historical context of long-standing community-based responses to poverty and hunger in the UK.
Equity & displacementWelfareCommunityPolicyReaping the Fruits of Informal Urbanism: An Ethnography of Tactical Gardening in Limassol, Cyprus
2022Theodoros Kouros · Built Environment · Cyprus (Limassol)
This ethnographic study in Limassol, Cyprus, examines tactical gardening as a form of informal urbanism. It found that, contrary to common perceptions of guerrilla gardening as community-building, these interventions by home and business owners often serve private gain by expanding into public spaces and can exclude other community members from using those public spaces. The research highlights a negative aspect of tactical gardening, where it contributes to the privatization of public areas.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyAllotment gardens: Psychosocial benefits and conflictual community aspects
2022Arnaud Sapin, Philippe Bodénan, Thierry Lebeau, Ghozlane Fleury‐Bahi · Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology · France
A qualitative study in Nantes, France, interviewed 28 allotment garden users to examine psychosocial impacts. While highlighting benefits like psychological well-being, physical health, self-development, and social bonding, the study found these were balanced by various conflicts reported by participants. Lexicometric analysis confirmed that positive and negative social aspects are significantly associated and must be considered jointly.
Equity & displacementCommunityHealthPolicyFeminism and the Urban Practice: Three Lines of Analysis
2022Larissa Siqueira Chaves, Giovanna Simokado Magalhães, Soraya Nór · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil
This article reflected on the potential of feminism in urban development as a practice of counter-hegemonic architectures. Through a cartography of central Florianópolis, it was shown that only ten streets in the city center were named after women, revealing that patriarchal patterns are fixed in the territory. Women in urban agriculture are presented as individual and collective body-territories that construct a counter-hegemonic praxis in urban spaces and social movements, politically building alternatives that foster care, reproduction of life, reconnection with nature, protection of popular traditions, as well as gender issues and the right to the city.
Equity & displacementCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyWelfareExpelled from the garden? Understanding the dynamics of green gentrification in Vancouver, British Columbia
2022Daniel Sax, Lorien Nesbitt, Shannon Hagerman · Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · Canada (Vancouver)
A case study of an urban farm in Vancouver, Canada, facing displacement due to redevelopment, revealed that urban residents engaged in urban greening can be both implicated in and impacted by green gentrification processes. The study highlighted the power dynamics farm members navigate to preserve land access and found that the farm's identity was co-opted by development agents as a branding tool. This research contributes to understanding the limitations of development processes in accounting for green gentrification risks.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsHealthThe Pandemic Boom of Urban Agriculture: Challenging the Role of Resiliency in Transforming our Future Urban (Food) Systems
2022Angie Sassano, Christopher Mayes, Yin Paradies · Urban Policy and Research · Australia
In Australia, COVID-19 accelerated reliance on resiliency for post-pandemic urban recovery. This study examined the use of resilience in urban agriculture proposals for cities after COVID-19, drawing on critical literature. It argues that the current pandemic conditions for urban agriculture risk perpetuating urban colonial governmentality. The paper calls for a rethinking of urban agriculture for future cities by radically disrupting the foundational colonial logics of urban spatiality.
Equity & displacementPolicyCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceSchool Garden Prevalence Before and After the Implementation of the Healthy Hunger‐Free Kids Act
2022Naomi Reyes, Montserrat Ganderats‐Fuentes, Francesco Acciai, Jessica Eliason, Punam Ohri‐Vachaspati · Journal of School Health · United States (New Jersey)
This study examined school garden prevalence in 148 K-12 schools across four low-income New Jersey cities between 2010-2011 and 2017-2018, before and after the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010. Garden prevalence increased from 19% in 2010-2011 to 32% in 2013-2014, but this increase was not sustained over time. Furthermore, schools with a majority Hispanic student enrollment had approximately half the odds of having a garden compared to schools with a majority Black student enrollment.
Equity & displacementFood educationPolicyHealthCommunityEconomicsWho Eats, Where, What, and How? COVID-19, Food Security, and Canadian Foodscapes
2022Kimberly Hill-Tout, Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder, Kiera E. B. McMaster, Megan Herod · Gastronomica The Journal of Food and Culture · Canada
In April 2021, a panel discussion on food security in Canada took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article aims to make visible the vulnerabilities and structural injustices embedded within Canadian foodscapes through different perspectives on food security and justice. COVID-19 rendered many of the structural injustices of food security in Canada more visible.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justicePolicyEconomicsCommunityThe Sprouting Farms: You Are What You Grow
2021Jamie Wang · Humanities · Singapore
This article explores the rise of urban farming in Singapore, following small- to medium-scale urban farms, including rooftop gardens, community farms, and organic farms, through the politics of localism and the notion of care. It investigates how localism, in some contexts, has been reduced to a narrow sense of geographic location. The study also examines what is being cared for in urban farming and how it might transform bio-cultural and social-technological relations.
Equity & displacementPolicyFood sovereignty & justiceCommunityDigital agricultureThree Histories of Greening and Whiteness in American Cities
2021James J. Connolly, Isabelle Anguelovski · Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution · United States
This study used state sequence analysis to examine the historical trend of greening (including parks and community gardens) from 1975 to 2014 in nine U.S. cities, in relation to concentrations of white and non-white residents. Findings revealed that the relationship between greening and race/ethnicity varied by city-level growth trajectory. Cities with continuous high growth showed the strongest link between increased greening and whiter populations, while non-white areas in cities with contraction or punctuated growth exhibited uniformly low levels of greening, mostly in recent years.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyHealthUrban farmers land injustice: Assessing the impact of land development projects on agriculture in Dar es Salaam City
2021Mkwela Hawa · Journal of Geography and Regional Planning · Tanzania
This study used a qualitative approach to examine land injustices faced by urban farmers in Mbweni-Mpiji, a sub-urban area of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. Findings indicated that farmers experience constant pressure from land insecurity, inferior land rights, informal land access, stiff competition from other land users, degrading land quality, and a continuous decrease in agricultural land size. These factors negatively impact the daily livelihoods, including food security, social status, and income, of those entirely dependent on urban farming.
Equity & displacementPolicyEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceCommunity„da draußen weiter horrorvideo“
2021Friederike Reents · Publication Server of the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) · Germany
This paper analyzes Thomas Kling’s poem „geschrebertes idyll, für mike feser“ as an "allotment garden idyll" within 'new nature poetry'. While Kling skillfully engages with the idyll genre and offers ecological, social, medial, and historical critique, the study finds that he presents a decidedly patriarchal self-image, which contemporary readers would likely find less acceptable.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyClimate changeMilan's private Vertical Forests vs. horizontal urban greening
2021Lucia Di Paola · · Italy
This paper examines Milan's Porta Nuova re-urbanization project (2004-2015), which features Vertical Forest skyscrapers as symbols of urban greening. Activists and resident groups strongly opposed the project, criticizing the privatization of a public park and high rents, arguing it represents a top-down privatization leading to exclusion and gentrification. In response, these groups developed a public community garden in the same neighborhood as an alternative model for democratic horizontal urban greening.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsNo Place to Grow
2021Kristan Majors · Educational Media Reviews Online · United States
"No Place to Grow" is a 2019 documentary film (27 mins) that captures the story of a longstanding LatinX community garden, its farmers, neighborhood protests, and negotiations with government officials in the United States. The film depicts the challenges faced by the community garden, leaving viewers disheartened. It is recommended for libraries collecting on community gardens and urban agriculture.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyEconomicsThe cultural economy of human waste reuse: perspectives from peri-urban Karnataka, India
2021Zachary Burt, C. Shambu Prasad, Pay Drechsel, Isha Ray · Journal of Water Sanitation and Hygiene for Development · India (Karnataka)
A preference-ranking model was developed to understand the acceptance of fecal sludge-derived fertilizer (FSF) in Karnataka, India, by modeling farmowners and farmworkers separately. The study found that farmers willing to use FSF prefer to conceal its origins from workers and their caste group, especially caste-adhering, vegetarian farmowners. Workers were open to FSF if it resembled cow manure, revealing that the waste economy in rural India is shaped by unacknowledged caste hierarchies and practices.
Equity & displacementOrganic cyclePeri-urban agriculturePolicyEconomicsHealthCommunityAgricultura e produção do espaço urbano: reflexões para uma agenda de pesquisa
2021Ricardo Theóphilo Folhes, Harley Silva, Raul da Silva Ventura Neto, Kevin Gabriel Leite Da Silva, Círia Cristiane Da Rosa, Aelton Dias Costa · Novos Cadernos NAEA · Brazil (Pará)
This article presents initial results from a bibliographic review on Urban Agriculture (UA) to support a research agenda in the metropolitan regions of Pará State, Brazilian Amazon. The review analyzed concepts, approaches, and challenges in national and international literature. It concludes that UA needs to be problematized within the phenomena of urban-regional space production, which cause socioeconomic and spatial inequalities, representing the greatest structural difficulties for urban agriculture.
Equity & displacementUrban–rural linkagePolicyEconomicsAgroecología situada: contexto, proceso y masificación del Programa de Formación en Agroecología en Venezuela
2021Olga Domené-Painenao, Francisco Herrera · Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente · Venezuela
In Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution since 1999 has seen the unfolding of harsh class and food system contradictions. While the Program Degree in Agroecology (PDA) at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela has trained over a thousand graduates who contribute to agroecological scaling and urban agriculture, the abstract highlights the persistent "harsh class and food system contradictions" within the country. This indicates ongoing equity challenges despite agroecological efforts.
Equity & displacementFood sovereignty & justicePolicyCommunityFood educationNature-based solutions as discursive tools and contested practices in urban nature’s neoliberalisation processes
2020Panagiota Kotsila, Isabelle Anguelovski, Francesc Baró, Johannes Langemeyer, Filka Sekulova, James J. Connolly · Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · Spain (Barcelona)
This paper analyzes nature-based solutions (NBS) as discursive tools that create an inviting space for nature's neoliberalization processes, examining two city-initiated projects in Barcelona, Spain: the Passeig de Sant Joan green corridor and the Espai Germanetes community garden. The study found that urban nature can serve elite economic players at the expense of widespread socio-ecological benefits. It also noted that outcomes regarding neoliberalism and its contestation were very distinct between the two projects due to different forms of governance.
Equity & displacementCommunityPolicyFood sovereignty & justiceUrban–rural linkage