Research & reports

Kathryn Colasanti, Michael W. Hamm, Charlotte M. Litjens · Urban Geography · United States (Detroit)

This research explores perceptions of expanding urban agriculture in Detroit, Michigan, through semi-structured interviews and focus groups. While revealing widespread support for urban agriculture as a strategy for food security and urban sustainability, the study highlights contested aspects regarding the extent to which it should occur, its purpose, and the people it would involve.

Cécilia Claeys, Jean-Noël Consalès, Carole Barthélémy · · France (Marseille)

This paper re-examines the question of nature in the city through emerging environmental paradigms, using Marseille, a French Mediterranean city, as a case study. An interdisciplinary analysis combining sociology and geography revealed that new modes of urban and suburban nature management (e.g., National Park, greenways, community gardens) question spatial boundaries between wild and artificial. However, the uses of these spaces are still marked by persistent social segmentations.

Monica J Kelly · Scholarship@Western (Western University) · Canada (Toronto)

An ethnographic study conducted in summer 2010 at HOPE community garden in Parkdale, Toronto, explored how collective belonging is built. The research found that differences and interpersonal conflicts within the garden were embraced as opportunities to strengthen community cohesion. Contrary to romanticized views of harmonious community gardens, the study revealed that conflicts, negotiation of differences, and institutional practices of inclusion and anti-discrimination significantly contribute to a successful and inclusive community project.

Robert Emmett · ISLE Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment · United States (Los Angeles)

The South Central Farm in Los Angeles, a 14-acre community garden cultivated by hundreds of residents for over a decade, was a significant site against environmental racism. However, urban development ultimately led to its destruction. As of this writing, satellite images show the former lush gardens replaced by a scraped, vacant field, highlighting the impermanence of such community-led green spaces in the face of dominant urban development narratives.

Miranda Martinez · · United States (Lower East Side)

This work explores the dynamics of gentrification, community gardens, and their impact on the Puerto Rican community in the Lower East Side. It examines class cultures in conflict, neighborhood transformation, and the symbolic significance of the area.

沈建华, 储健 · 江苏农村经济 · China (Nanjing)

In recent years, Nanjing, China, has promoted the development of urban agriculture amidst rapid urbanization, contributing to increased farmer income and enriched urban life. However, the urban-rural divide remains relatively obvious. A key challenge is how to narrow this urban-rural gap and accelerate integrated development during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period.

杨卫丽, 李同昇, 陈波 · 经济导刊 · China (Xi'an)

The promotion of integration in China's Xi'an-Xianyang metropolitan area, while bringing urban economic prosperity, has also created unprecedented pressure on the ecological environment and social problems. Specifically, the "urban-rural dual structure" and "three rural issues" are the biggest bottlenecks encountered during the urbanization process.

Diana Lee-Smith, L. J. A. Mougeot, Michael Levenston, Peter Mann, Katherine Brown, Jerry Kaufman · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Global

This reflection on the urban agriculture movement notes that 19th and early 20th-century urban reforms, including urban gardens, aimed to improve living conditions in industrial cities. However, these initiatives also shifted the burden of sustenance from industrialists and fair-wage policies onto urbanizing families, particularly women. Despite this, garden spaces provided nourishment and retreats in densely populated areas.

Alec Thornton · Development in Practice · Fiji

This article examines the impact of Fiji's squatter-resettlement scheme on the livelihoods of 'farming squatters' engaged in urban agriculture. Interviews with key informants and squatter residents revealed contrasting attitudes and approaches, indicating that the scheme threatens these livelihoods. The article suggests a more participatory process to address the needs of 'farming squatters'.

XU Hua-me · Technoeconomics & Management Research · China

This article evaluates the level of Urban Agriculture Modernization in China's major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process method. It finds that modern urban agriculture has developed rapidly based on urbanization and agricultural modernization, but disparate development is obvious in China. The article analyzes the reasons for this disparity and various factors for Urban Agriculture Modernization, revealing the mechanism and path for its realization.

Nathan McClintock · · United States (California)

This paper uses urban political ecology to explore the rise of urban agriculture (UA) in Oakland, California, where the city aims to source 30% of its food locally, partly from UA in "food deserts." The analysis argues that 20th-century industrial capital flows and racialized urban planning concentrated capital devaluation in the flatlands, leading to the creation of food deserts. Food justice activists are mobilizing through UA to counter these uneven transformations.

Nathan McClintock · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

This paper explores the rise of urban agriculture (UA) in Oakland, California, using an urban political ecology framework. A macro-level structural analysis of Oakland's history reveals how 20th-century industrial capital flows and racialized urban planning concentrated capital devaluation in the flatlands, ultimately giving rise to food deserts. The study suggests that food justice activists are mobilizing through UA to counter these uneven transformations, despite critiques that some urban garden programs are neoliberal, emphasizing self-betterment while filling state-left gaps.

Clare Rishbeth · Journal of Urban Design · United Kingdom (London)

This paper investigates how urban greenspace can be designed and managed to reflect ethnic diversity and how this is perceived by users, using two case studies of community gardens in London. It found some differences in the response to the gardens by people from different ethnic backgrounds. The use of obvious symbolism was not necessarily a primary means of encouraging users from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, though appreciated for educational and design strengths. Concern is expressed about aspects of the physical and psychological containment of ethnic groups in fixed places and identities leading to the perpetuation of stereotypes.

Hilda E. Kurtz · Urban Geography · United States (Minneapolis)

This paper examines the variations among community gardens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, suggesting they reflect differing interpretations of "community" and "garden" in urban settings. While community gardens are seen as responses to urban decay, the study highlights that issues of enclosure, inclusion, and exclusion are central to their function. Decisions regarding garden enclosure shape their role in urban neighborhoods, indicating potential limitations related to equity.

Huei-Hsuan Lin · Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) · United States

This three-year qualitative study of an urban community garden in a mid-size city in upstate New York, United States, examined how women community gardeners perceive their participation. It found that the community garden, intended as a space for social change, paradoxically became a site of internal struggles among participants. Emancipatory efforts to build a less unequal society did not automatically result in an egalitarian space, as the process of community building by individuals with various social positions required arduous efforts and involved negotiation and confrontations, rather than simple unity.

David Billings · · United States

A study of Portland, Oregon, examines claims that the well-documented benefits of community gardens are inequitably distributed across society. Portland is recognized as a sustainability leader with an abundance of community gardens and urban agriculture, yet it is also one of the whitest urban cities in the United States, where people of color — and the black community in particular — have faced a legacy of oppression and marginalization. Based on 17 in-depth interviews and extensive observation of community gardens, the research finds that the whiteness of these garden spaces functions to marginalize black individuals and contributes to the ongoing oppression of the black community. It also documents how Portland's black community engages in community gardening as a means of resisting these and broader effects of structural racism.

Daniel Maxwell, Wordsworth Odame Larbi, Grace Mary Lamptey, Sawudatu Zakariah, Margaret Armar‐Klemesu · Third World Planning Review · Ghana (Accra)

This paper compares four cases within peri-urban Greater Accra, Ghana, to assess the impact of rapid urban sprawl on the surrounding area. The study examines cases including land loss to housing, protection of agricultural land from urban sprawl, environmental degradation due to urbanization, and commercialization of peri-urban agricultural production from changing market demand. The paper also reviews the perspective that rapid peri-urban growth leads to the destruction of agricultural livelihoods without necessarily replacing them with alternative economic activity.

John A. G. Briggs, Davis Mwamfupe · Scottish Geographical Journal · Tanzania (Dar-es-Salaam)

Drawing on recent evidence from Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, this paper suggests that a combination of structural adjustment measures and the eased economic crisis in the 1990s changed conditions, resulting in the increasing commodification of land in the peri-urban zone. This shift transformed the peri-urban zone into an area of investment and economic opportunity, rather than survival, leading to the increasing exclusion of poorer urban groups. Furthermore, confusion arising from current Tanzanian land law, particularly tensions between customary and statutory law, complicates the situation.