Research & reports

Charles Rowley · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

This paper compared the successes and failures of two urban creek restoration programs in California: Temescal Creek (initiated nearly 30 years ago) and White Oak Creek (completed about four years ago). Based on the author's success criteria, the more recent White Oak Creek program achieved significant success, while the earlier Temescal Creek restoration did not reach generally acceptable success levels. This difference is attributed to changes in management and scientific practice over 30 years, including substantial changes in the legal basis for restoration, improved monitoring requirements, and the critical role of properly engineered low flow distribution structures.

Lorie Hammond · Mind Culture and Activity · United States (California)

This article uses a narrative format to describe situations in which Mienh immigrant families from a Southeast Asian hill tribe adapt to technological and cultural change within a California elementary school sponsoring a family literacy, school-community garden, and house building project. It argues that adjustments can be creative and empowering if schools incorporate community "funds of knowledge" into their instructional plan. Projects such as gardening and house building provide rich contexts for intercultural dialogues.

Gregory Hellmann Flatt · School for International Training Digital Collections (School for International Training) · United States (Vermont)

This thesis examines the diversification of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement in Vermont, expanding beyond vegetables to include other products. The author, a CSA coordinator, documented several local businesses applying CSA concepts and practices in novel ways through participant observation, formal and informal interviews conducted at farmers' markets and agricultural conferences. The author concludes that CSA concepts and principles can be widely applied and represent a viable economic model for small- to medium-sized businesses that produce high-demand goods and services with local support.

Cynthia M. Hellman · School for International Training Digital Collections (School for International Training) · United States

A phenomenological interview study of 10 Vermont CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farmers, combined with observation of sessions involving farmers, community-based organizations and low-income community members, addressing how Vermont CSA farmers can effectively incorporate members of the low-income community. The findings show that effective incorporation requires farmers to collaborate with community-based and non-profit organizations, treat the low-income community as a resource, enlist support from the wider community, and become part of a "food justice" movement.

Lynn A. Staeheli, Don Mitchell, Kristina Gibson · GeoJournal · USA (New York City)

Analyzes the Giuliani administration's 1998–1999 policy of transferring community gardens to housing development and auctioning 100+ gardens, exposing how a city 'greening then privatizing' policy reversed itself and treated public gardens as disposable exchange-value assets.

Karen Schmelzkopf · Urban Geography · United States (New York City)

This study examined the conflict over community gardens in New York City, arguing that it was a struggle concerning the right to space. The city, operating from an entrepreneurial governance perspective, claimed that the gardens represented a loss of exchange value and potential housing. The city used market economy rhetoric to dismiss incommensurable use values, thereby restricting rights to the city within a demonstration of power and "reason."

Sigrid Stagl, Sabine O’Hara · International Journal of Agricultural Resources Governance and Ecology · United States (New York City)

This study examined whether Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) groups are a broadly accepted or limited alternative food system, based on a household survey in two distinct socio-economic neighborhoods in upstate New York. The survey found that approximately 25% of respondents expressed interest in becoming CSA members, with similar interest levels in both wealthier and low-income areas. However, several factors preventing food demand through CSAs were identified, indicating that these barriers would need to be addressed for expansion.

C. Clare Hinrichs, Kathy S. Kremer · Journal of Poverty · United States

This 1997 case study examined a Midwest community supported agriculture (CSA) project that aimed to increase low-income participation through financial subsidies, using a telephone survey of 41 member-households. The study found that while subsidized households had lower incomes, the overall CSA sample was more advantaged in income, occupation, and education compared to local populations. The project inadvertently served the "advantaged" poor, indicating that social inclusion efforts in local food systems may not effectively reach the most vulnerable.

Cindy Rosenthal · TDR/The Drama Review · United States (New York City)

In New York City, a group of NYU students and local community activists protested and performed against landlords and the city bulldozing community gardens. Their performance piece documented the transformation of garbage-strewn lots into lush, vital community havens and cried out against their destruction. This highlights a conflict over urban garden governance.

L. Hughes · Journal of Extension · United States

Rutgers Cooperative Extension developed "From Our Farms," a nutrition and agriculture education program for children aged 3-8 in the United States. This initiative promotes improved nutrition and consumption of locally grown foods through family-based activities offered via local libraries.

Jeff Sharp, Eric Imerman, Greg Peters · Journal of Extension · United States

This qualitative study of a Midwestern Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program explored how CSA builds connections between farmers and non-farmers. The findings indicate that CSA successfully met participant goals while fostering community among these groups. The study suggests that CSA can be promoted at the rural-urban interface to strengthen community and support local agriculture.

Manon Boulianne · Anthropologica · Mexico

A study on community organizations and urban agriculture in Mexico City and Cuernavaca suggests that the very meaning of participation becomes an issue for community organizations engaged in popular entrepreneurship development programs. It illustrates how the structuring effects of market production activities lead to a renegotiation of the meaning attributed to participation among the individuals and groups concerned.

Feng We · · United States

This article details the landscape philosophy of Karl Linn, a landscape architect, through his project practices. It discusses the inevitability and importance of establishing a citywide system for environmental self-help, which is common in US community gardens.

CAST · · United States

A twelve-member task force report examines the changing role of agriculture in urban settings within American society. The report frames urban agriculture historically and contemporaneously, detailing geographic, demographic, and economic changes. Policy issues such as land preservation, alternative market opportunities, sprawl, taxation, and food security are discussed, alongside research and educational challenges for institutions of higher education.

Regina Day Langhout, Julian Rappaport, Doretha Simmons · Urban Education · United States

This article addresses tensions in facilitating the relationship between teachers and community members while working on a community garden project. The authors adopt an ecological model for effective classroom-community collaboration and discuss how this process unfolded in their setting, presenting two classroom projects as examples of culturally relevant classroom-community collaboration. The garden project is evaluated using classroom-community collaboration models, including a discussion of teachers' and community members' shared and differing goals and how those differences were navigated in practice.

Maki Kawasi · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · United States

A report conducted on behalf of the Phillips Neighborhood Network and Phillips ETC (Environment-Transportation-Community), supported by the Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization program at the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs. The available abstract states only this administrative context, with no described method or findings.

Mark Francis · Landscape Journal · United States (California)

Village Homes in California, United States, designed and developed by Michael and Judy Corbett in the 1970s, is a widely cited example of sustainable community design and landscape architecture, consisting of 242 single- and multi-family residences on sixty acres. Homes are planned as energy-conserving buildings arranged around common open space with play areas and shared gardens, and a sizable portion of the development is devoted to community open space, including orchards and vineyards, managed largely as edible landscape by residents themselves. Initially viewed by local planners and bankers as high-risk, the development is today one of the most desirable and economically successful in California. Following the Landscape Architecture Foundation's case-study format, the paper offers a critical review of the project's successes and limitations.

Elena G. Irwin · Land Economics 78(4): 465-480 · United States (central Maryland)

Applies a hedonic pricing model to home sales in central Maryland and finds a price premium for permanently preserved open space relative to developable agricultural and forested land. Uses instrumental-variables estimation to address endogenous land-use spillovers and spatial correlation, and supports the hypothesis that open space is valued mainly for guaranteeing the absence of future development rather than for a specific bundle of amenities.

John Ferris, Carol Norman, Joe Sempik · Social Policy and Administration · USA

This article reports on research and experience from the USA regarding community gardens and their role in the social dimension of sustainable development. It explores how the use of urban green spaces for gardens links to health, education, community development, and food security. The article concludes that using urban open spaces for parks and gardens is closely associated with environmental justice and equity.

Sarah Edwards · The English Journal · United States

This article describes how the author's eighth-grade language arts inquiry-based instruction evolved into student-based community learning. Students brought the community to school with an art exhibit on tolerance, volunteered at a nearby elementary school, created community gardens to fulfill a neighborhood need, and established a new desert habitat community park, connecting the school and neighborhood.

Shira Brynjegard · Dominican Scholar (Dominican University of California) · United States

This study explored the reasons for gardens and natural spaces on school campuses and their effects on students. Blending case studies, observational data, and personal experience, it discussed the impacts of a garden on participating students, using the balance of administrative, teacher, parent, and student involvement to determine lasting effects on student attitudes toward environmental concerns. Evidence of increased environmental awareness in students was discussed.

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.

Elizabeth Lynn Waddell · CSUSB ScholarWorks (California State University, San Bernardino) · United States (California)

This project was developed to encourage educators to establish school site gardens. These gardens offer opportunities to introduce environmental topics and function as hands-on learning centers for various subjects.

CAST · · United States

This comprehensive report, written by a twelve-member task force, considers the changing role of agriculture in urban settings. The report frames "urban agriculture" within historical and contemporary American society, depicting geographic, demographic, and economic changes in rural and metropolitan life. Policy issues such as land preservation, alternative market opportunities, sprawl, taxation, and food security are examined.