Research & reports

James E. McWilliams · Southwestern historical quarterly · United States

This is a review of Robert Carriker's book "Urban Farming in the West: A New Deal Experiment in Subsistence Homesteads", which examines the Division of Subsistence Homesteads (DSH) program in the American West. The DSH, established in 1933 by the New Deal, aimed to redistribute population and support self-sufficient homesteads. Carriker's work offers a balanced perspective on the program, noting that "confusion over disparate objectives" and bureaucratic conflicts ultimately undermined its goals.

Mirella Cultrera, Maria Christina de Mello Amorozo, Fábio Cop Ferreira · SITIENTIBUS série Ciências Biológicas · Brazil (Mato Grosso)

An ethnobotanical study in five peripheral neighborhoods of Santo Antônio do Leverger, Mato Grosso, Brazil, surveyed 135 households and detailed 30 to characterize food plant cultivation. Ninety-seven species from 38 families were identified across homegardens, fields, and empty lots. While some species were common, the similarity between species/varieties across households was generally below 50%, and many had low frequency, revealing a vulnerability to species loss despite social network circulation.

Nate Millington · International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · United States

This article analyzes representations of urban nature in Detroit, Michigan, focusing on journalistic and photographic work over the past 5 years. These representations, part of a discourse on Detroit's decline, ultimately reflect dominant conceptual divisions between the city and nature. Journalists and commentators perceive nature in the city as a reflection of the city's absence rather than its materiality, suggesting an ambivalence about emergent urban ecologies.

Elizabeth S Schuering · Digital Commons-DePaul (DePaul University) · United States (Cleveland)

This paper examines urban agriculture as a strategy for managing vacant land in Cleveland, Ohio, a shrinking city facing population loss and economic decline. The study analyzed Cleveland's urban agriculture movement and municipal policies, including eighteen interviews with local policy experts. Findings indicate that the municipal government supports urban agriculture as a tool for the city's revitalization efforts.

Daniel Roehr, Isabel Kunigk · Berkeley Planning Journal · Canada (Metro Vancouver)

This article focuses on the role landscape architects and planners can take in creating urban food production landscapes, within the context of Metro Vancouver. Significant constraints to expansion exist due to geographical limitations, a steadily growing population, and large low-density residential areas. It is suggested that successful future food production strategies can be achieved by integrating urban agriculture into a wider city planning context and transcending the creation of community gardens.

Pierrette Hondagneu‐Sotelo · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · United States (Los Angeles)

This sociological study explores the diverse gardens of Los Angeles, including public parks, private residential gardens, a botanical garden, and urban community gardens. It aims to understand the meaning of engaging with these gardens, laboring in them, and being associated with them in both imagination and practice. The study posits that gardens serve as windows revealing the changing social and cultural landscape of Los Angeles.

Jack Russell Weinstein, Jay Basquiat · UND Scholarly Commons (University of North Dakota) · United States

This abstract explores philosophical questions regarding food and sustainability. It raises inquiries about why certain foods are eaten, the meaning of 'natural,' and the moral rules for food manufacturing and agricultural priorities. The text also questions the cultural and spiritual roles of food and responsibilities in providing food. Jay Basquiat is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bismarck State College who sustainably farms near Mandan, ND.

Héctor Ávila-Sánchez · Norois · Mexico

This paper discusses socio-territorial changes in peri-urban food production spaces in Central Mexico, focusing on the impacts of urbanization on old rural areas. It highlights that peri-urban poor populations often face marginalization, degradation of their agricultural activities, and conflict over space with other social groups. The development of peri-urban agriculture has led to significant transformations in land use, production structures, and social and cultural aspects.

Catherine J. LaCroix · Planning & Environmental Law · United States

This article discusses how cities in the United States, particularly those in the Rust Belt experiencing population decline, are adopting innovative green uses for vacant and surplus land. Facing a new reality of limited growth, cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Youngstown are utilizing urban agriculture, community green spaces, alternative energy, and green infrastructure to revitalize and serve residents. This approach is presented as a "New Renewal" for urban planning challenges.

Marina de Fátima Brandão Carneiro, Antônio Maurílio Alencar Feitosa, Dulce Pereira dos Santos, Gabriel Alves Veloso, Igor Martins de Oliveira · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Brazil (Montes Claros)

This study investigated the role and importance of urban agriculture in Montes Claros, MG, Brazil, as a dynamic activity creating a specific rural-urban interaction space. Using bibliographic and documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews with farmers, iconographic production, and geotechnologies for mapping, the research found that urban agriculture is a reality in intra-urban spaces. It occupies vacant lots and backyards with diverse activities, generating work, employment, income, food security, and products for local commerce.

Todd H. Kuethe, Jennifer Ifft, Mitch Morehart · Choices Magazine (Agricultural & Applied Economics Association) · United States

Using USDA/NASS survey data from 1999–2010, this article examines how urban proximity affects U.S. cropland values. Cropland in urban-influenced areas commanded an average premium of $1,820 per acre over rural areas, though its annual growth rate (1.5%) lagged rural cropland (4.8%). Values in urban-influenced areas peaked at $4,400 per acre at the end of 2007.

Britta Riley · TED · United States

In this TED talk (posted November 2011), artist-technologist Britta Riley presents Windowfarms, a vertical hydroponic system for growing food in apartment windows, and the crowdsourced "R&D-I-Y" development approach behind it. Windowfarms was named one of Entrepreneur magazine's "100 Brilliant Companies to Watch" in 2010.

Catherine J. LaCroix · Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons (Case Western Reserve University) · United States (Cleveland)

This paper explores legal challenges faced by shrinking cities, using Cleveland, Ohio as an example. It specifically examines issues related to downzoning urban property for urban agriculture and other green uses, focusing on takings law, fairness, and the limitations of current legal structures for Brownfield revitalization when traditional redevelopment is improbable. The study identifies significant legal constraints and challenges in implementing such land use changes.

J. David Clark, Douglas B. Jackson‐Smith, Darla K. Munroe, Jeff S. Sharp, Shoshanah Inwood · Indian Journal of Experimental Biology · United States

This study characterized diverse trajectories of agricultural change in US peri-urban areas, where broader agri-food system changes are compounded by land use pressures. Utilizing farmer and landowner surveys from five distinct peri-urban farming regions across the United States, the research examined different theories of agricultural structural change. The results provide an empirical profile of the types and geography of US peri-urban agriculture and the most common adaptive strategies employed by farmers at the urban-rural interface.

John Ikerd · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

According to the American Farmland Trust, approximately 1.2 million acres of U.S. farmland are converted to residential and other commercial uses annually. This farmland conversion is noted to be putting the long-run sustainability of U.S. food production at risk.

Katie Oberwager · Archives of Oral Biology · Mexico (Oaxaca de Juárez)

This project examined the urban agriculture movement in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, as a potential local contribution to food sovereignty. Through interviews, observations, and participation, the research found that urban agriculture can be a form of local political expression against governmental and large agricultural company control over food production and consumption. It concluded that while urban agriculture can make a small contribution to food sovereignty, as a local movement, it cannot resolve global agricultural and food issues.

Megan Sheridan · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · United States (Minneapolis)

This project aimed to facilitate the creation of a commercial urban farm in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis. Goals included developing a business plan for an economically viable urban farm. The project found that economic viability without foundation grants is challenging, and site control is key.

Jennifer Sumner, Heather Mair, Erin Nelson · International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · Canada (Ontario)

This paper presents a case study of Fourfold Farm CSA, an urban agriculture exemplar in south-western Ontario, Canada. Analysis of in-depth interviews with CSA members and co-founders revealed that the farm serves as more than just a source of organic food. It links urban food consumers with producers through cultural activities, emphasizing civic engagement and community.

Celso Donizete Locatel, Francisco Fransualdo de Azevedo · Revistes Científiques de la University of Barcelona (University of Barcelona) · Brazil

A study of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, analyzing the practice of intra-urban agriculture and the municipal government's response to it. It states that agriculture within the urban fabric is not hard to identify, yet municipal legislation does not formally recognize the practice, despite its significant importance to hundreds of families in peripheral areas; most people involved in the activity have no voice or participation in urban planning and management. The study aims to analyze the importance of urban agriculture for farming families' income and to examine the extent to which the municipal government has factored this phenomenon into territorial decision-making in Natal.

Sarah Rabkin · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

A profile of Pie Ranch, a farm on a coastal hillside in southern San Mateo County, California, between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Jered Lawson and Nancy Vail, together with San Francisco-based Karen Heisler, established this non-profit working farm in 2002 as a place for city youth to learn about food. It produces nearly everything needed to make pie — pumpkins, berries, tree fruits, eggs, milk, butter, honey, and wheat. Students and teachers from urban high schools make monthly farm visits throughout the school year, experiencing hands-on learning about soil, compost, weather, the cycle of planting, tending and harvesting crops, the challenges and rewards of group work, and cooking and eating from-scratch meals. Pie Ranch also offers year-long apprenticeships, summer internships, monthly work parties and barn dances, and various educational and cultural events, sells produce at a roadside stand on coastal Route 1, and works with the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) to protect the historic Steele dairy lands. Lawson is described as a UC Santa Cruz community studies graduate and former apprentice at the university's Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), who spent a summer during college at Live Power Community Farm in Covelo, Mendocino County. The text is cut off mid-sentence during this biographical description.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency · U.S. EPA Local Climate and Energy Program Webcast · United States

In a June 8, 2010 EPA Local Climate and Energy Program webcast, Michael Berkshire of the City of Chicago's planning department described the city's green roof policy. He stated that on a 90°F day, the green-roofed side of City Hall stayed around 90°F while the non-vegetated County Building side reached about 170°F, and credited a sustainable development policy (started 2004, expanded 2008) and a 2008 stormwater ordinance requiring sites to retain 0.5 inch of rain or increase perviousness by 15% as key drivers of green roof adoption.

Mirane dos Santos Costa, Marivaine da Silva Brasil, Alberto Feiden, Adalgiza Inês Campolim · · Brazil/Bolivia

An exploratory study was conducted in the border cities of Corumbá, Brazil, and Puerto Quijarro/Puerto Suarez, Bolivia, to investigate the socioeconomic profile of Brazilian and Bolivian sellers of leafy vegetables at street fairs and their relations with urban farmers. The study aimed to identify the origin, production system of leafy vegetables, and the socioeconomic characteristics of these fair sellers and farmers, with preliminary results presented.

David M Ahronian, Kelly R Ashton, Erin G Bassett, Maxwell A Cohen, Victor J Czulak, Gregory S Dunbar, Brendan T Farragher, Jonathan L Gorman, Peter L Guy, Timothy J Iles, Piyawut Inthasorn, Travis A Johnson, Jonathan B. Koch, Justin J Kronewitter, Zachary B Livingston, Matthew Morano, Brian Mulvehill, Kevin Murphy, Sean P O'Connell, Peter W. Stephens, Christopher Tourigny, Bryce P White, Timothy E Young · ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · United States (Springfield)

This work explores a service learning strategy within an Urban Design Studio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, focused on envisioning Springfield's North End. The project aimed to stimulate conversation, develop green design strategies, improve services, and foster cultural engagement to enhance the community's vibrancy and quality of life. It proposes that improved physical, cultural, and social connectivity is key to achieving these goals, and identified six sustainable learning and planning principles, including urban agriculture and education for healthy living.

June Komisar, Joe Nasr, Mark Gorgolewski · Open House International · Canada

This paper describes how Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, has explored agricultural and food issues as design challenges in various student projects. These projects, ranging from community investigations to thesis projects, integrated food-related strategies like community gardens and edible landscapes, demonstrating their utility in addressing broader design challenges such as social inclusion and sustainable building practices.

Bernard Kratky · Acta Horticulturae (University of Hawaii) · United States

Developed by Bernard Kratky at the University of Hawaii and first published in Acta Horticulturae in 2009, the Kratky method is a passive, non-circulating hydroponic technique requiring no electricity or pumps. Plants sit in net pots floating over a nutrient reservoir; as the water level drops, an air gap forms between roots and liquid, letting "oxygen roots" develop. Considered the simplest hydroponic system, it suits leafy greens but not water-hungry crops.