Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
Theme
Critical findings
11393 results(252 / 456)
Environmental justice in the shadow of the hyperobject
2019Casey Y. Myers · · United States
This chapter uses a narrative and visual retelling of a "failed" community-based environmental action project to explore how posthuman understandings might reorder how environmental justice materializes with and for children. It examines how an arts organization, a children's theater group, a community activist group, a historical preservation nonprofit, and a city council aligned around two sites — a very old house and an abandoned urban lot turned community garden. Drawing on Morton's concept of the hyperobject, the author examines unseen and unnamable more-than-human forces that continued to exert agency after human narratives "won" or "lost."
CommunityPolicyUrban agriculture in Kathmandu as a catalyst for the civic inclusion of migrants and the making of a greener city
2019Maurice Mitchell, Amara Roca Iglesias · Frontiers of Architectural Research · Global
This research explores opportunities for creating a green city on the recently secured Bagmati riverbanks in Kathmandu, Nepal, an area subject to rapid inward migration by landless rural farmers. It asks what architectural theory and practice can contribute to supporting the fit between emergent bottom-up initiatives and top-down city investments, developing loose fit theory, research methods, and reflective practice to investigate latent possibilities, assemble a narrative of embedded change, and create spatial imaginaries of topographical change on the riverbanks. It argues that architectural theory and practice can play a role in integrating migrants into civic institutions and helping generate a greener city by making explicit the relationship between setting and occupant, stimulating and representing alternative imaginaries, and framing civic discourse.
CommunityUrban–rural linkageFood sovereignty & justiceTHE URBAN FARMING DENGAN HIDROPONIK MENGGUNAKAN ZAT PENGATUR TUMBUH UNTUK PENINGKATAN PERTUMBUHAN TANAMAN KANGKUNG
2019Yasinta Ratna Esti Wulandari, Anastasia Tatik Hartanti, Bernard Atviano · Jurnal Perkotaan · Indonesia
A hydroponic experiment in Indonesia tested the effect of plant growth regulators on water spinach (kangkung, Ipomoea aquatica) yield. Treatments included a control (AB-Mix), IAA (indole acetic acid) at 0.5 ppm, BAP (benzyl adenine purine) at 0.5 and 1.0 ppm, and combined IAA/BAP at 0.5/1.0 ppm, measuring leaf number, plant height, antioxidant content and water content. Morphological growth was most optimal under 0.5 ppm IAA, while 1.0 ppm BAP produced the shortest average plant height, fewest leaves and shortest root length. Chlorophyll testing showed 0.5 ppm IAA had the highest total chlorophyll content, averaging 9.55 μg/ml, and the authors conclude 0.5 ppm IAA had the most positive effect among the treatments tested.
CommunityHealthFood sovereignty & justiceClimate changeCultivating self-reliance: participation in urban agriculture as civil leisure
2019Rudy Dunlap, Justin Harmon, Bradley H. Camp · Annals of Leisure Research · United States
An ethnographic study of volunteer participation in an urban farm in Austin, Texas, United States, in which researchers spent three years documenting participants' activities through participant observation and interviewing. Guided by the concept of "civil leisure," the study analyzed voluntary participation as a leisure practice oriented toward civic issues, finding that participation functioned as a means of (1) fostering self-reliance through peer education, (2) establishing and strengthening place-based social networks, and (3) addressing civic concerns related to infrastructure and food security. These findings are interpreted through Zygmunt Bauman's concepts of liquid modernity and liquid fear, and the study offers recommendations for how municipalities might cultivate residents' civic impulses through urban agriculture.
CommunityFood educationWelfareFood sovereignty & justice제2기 도시농업기본계획 수립을 위한 방향성 설정 연구 - 서울 강동구 도시농업을 중심으로 -
2019최지원, 오충현 · 한국환경생태학회 학술발표논문집 · South Korea
A study of urban agriculture in Gangdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea, reviewing about ten years of activity from the district's 2010 enactment of Korea's first eco-friendly urban agriculture support ordinance through its 2019 comprehensive plan, assessed across economic, environmental-ecological and social dimensions using Lee Chang-woo's (2016) functional classification and a resident satisfaction survey, to derive directions for the next urban agriculture master plan. On the economic side, following the district's first urban garden plots opened in the Gangil-dong area in 2009, by January 2019 there were 39 sites totaling 145,806 square meters across 6,873 plots, and in 2018 the Gangdong Urban Agriculture Support Center ("Ssingssing Dream") recorded produce sales of 348,218,000 KRW and donated 3,204 kg of produce to low-income households. On the environmental side, urban beekeeping begun in 2013 had grown to roughly 40 hives by 2018, alongside 25,923 box gardens and 121 rooftop gardens (totaling 1,828 square meters) established by 2018; on the social side, rooftop gardens at eight welfare facilities hosted a total of 107 horticultural therapy sessions by 2018.
PolicyCommunityClimate changeHealthFood educationUrban–rural linkageConclusion: Key Recommendations of this Book
2019Julian Cribb · Cambridge University Press eBooks · Global
This concluding chapter lists the book's policy recommendations without presenting new data: build a global food system based on regenerative farming, aquaculture and urban food production; redesign cities to recycle nutrients and water into local, climate-proof food production under permaculture principles; reallocate 20% of world military spending to food-based conflict prevention; rewild half the planet under leadership of small farmers and indigenous peoples; introduce a "Year of Food" in every primary school; and put women in leadership across business, politics, government, religion and society.
Food sovereignty & justiceClimate changePolicyCommunitySocio-Economic Viability of Urban Agriculture—A Comparative Analysis of Success Factors in Germany
2019Thomas Krikser, Ingo Zasada, Annette Piorr · Sustainability · Germany
An empirical study in Germany combined qualitative and quantitative survey data with multi-value qualitative comparative analysis across three urban agriculture models — self-harvesting gardens, intercultural gardens, and community gardens — to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for socio-economic success. It found that different value systems and cost-benefit considerations applied across models: a service-focused farmer-consumer relationship ensuring self-reliance mattered most for self-harvesting gardens, self-reliance combined with sharing mattered for intercultural gardens, and community gardening success depended on self-governance and individually determined factors beyond production output, with participants across models showing a post-productive orientation that goes beyond conventional trade-off thinking.
CommunityEconomicsPolicyEmpowering Communities
2019Ellis Cose · · United States (New York City)
This descriptive piece discusses U.S. community energy initiatives as expressions of local self-determination, citing the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association in New York's South Bronx and the Bronx Frontier Development Corporation, founded by a community activist grandmother, which began by converting vacant lots into community gardens; it also cites the Washington-based Center for Renewable Resources' catalogue of roughly 1,800 community energy projects, supported in part by the Community Services Administration and private foundations.
CommunityDIYPolicyBee visitation for PLOS ONE manuscript
2019Sarah Lovell · · United States
This record is a dataset description accompanying a PLOS ONE manuscript by Bennett and Lovell (2019) on landscape and local site variables and pollinators in urban agricultural sites; the data consist of the percentage of each bee pollinator group recorded in bee bowls and through direct observation.
PollinatorsBiodiversityCommunityMadrid to go
2019Inés Melón Izco · · Spain
"Madrid To Go" is an architectural design proposal for an intermodal transit station in Madrid, Spain, positioned above existing rail platforms to connect two neighborhoods historically divided by the rail yard, combining a covered, climate-controlled station with a food market and a strip of urban gardens intended primarily for cultural, educational, leisure and awareness purposes, with the roof shape referencing the profile of the Sierra de Madrid visible from Chamartín.
CommunityPolicyFood educationExternally
2019Etienne Louis Nel · · South Africa
A 2019 book chapter examines community-based Local Economic Development (LED) in South Africa through three authority-based cases: Kei Road, the Independent Development Trust project, and East London. In Kei Road, a small rural service centre near Bisho in the Eastern Cape, the organization Eyethu launched a community-gardens project to promote household self-sufficiency and small-scale farming, and also runs a women's bulk-buying co-operative to reduce household costs. In 1993, Kei Road again drew attention when refugee numbers temporarily swelled due to people fleeing a faction fight in the neighboring village of Kwarini.
CommunityEconomicsWelfarePolicyPemanfaatan Keterbatasan Lahan untuk Ruang Terbuka Hijau di Kampung Luar Batang
2019Budijanto Chandra, Titin Fatimah · Seminar Nasional Pembangunan Wilayah dan Kota Berkelanjutan · Indonesia
A 2019 study examines green open space (RTH) development under land constraints in Kampung Luar Batang, a historic settlement in Jakarta located within the Kota Tua heritage district and home to the Luar Batang Mosque and the tomb of Habib Husein. The densely settled, unplanned kampung is prone to tidal flooding; using a qualitative descriptive method with observation and interviews focused on RW 02, the study proposes hydroponic and aquaponic (combined with catfish farming) urban farming as forms of green space suited to the area's limited land and irrigation water.
CommunityPolicyUnderstanding the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations Associated with Community Gardening to Improve Environmental Public Health Prevention and Intervention
2019Mónica D. Ramírez‐Andreotta, Abigail Tapper, Diamond Clough, Jennifer S. Carrera, Shana Sandhaus · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · United States
Through semi-structured interviews with 17 community gardeners in the Boston area, this study characterized gardeners' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, their perceptions of soil quality and environmental responsibility, awareness of past land use, and gardening behavior. Gardeners reported knowledge of their garden's historical past and concerns about soil quality, theft, trash maintenance, animal waste, and produce loss to foraging animals. The findings are reported as directly informing environmental health exposure assessment by documenting gardening duration, activities that can lead to incidental soil ingestion, and consumption patterns of locally grown produce.
CommunityHealthPolicy커뮤니티 주도 미세먼지 저감 방안 - 영국 런던 미세먼지 저감형 커뮤니티 가든을 사례로 -
2019남진보, 김근호 · · United Kingdom
This 2019 study examined community-led gardens for particulate matter (PM) abatement in London, UK, as case studies for addressing PM problems, using place-keeping theory as its analytical framework and analyzing the gardens' management structures. It found that strong governance backed by local policy support is key to addressing PM issues, alongside stakeholder partnerships, community-generated supplementary funding, regular evaluation through community monitoring, and long-term maintenance. The study concludes that community garden management should take a self-sustaining structure built on strong governance, and recommends policies that encourage community involvement in decision-making, expand external funding including from private and business sectors, provide PM-monitoring tools and education (for example via universities), and plant low-maintenance vegetation to sustain gardens against funding and labor shortages.
CommunityPolicyBiodiversityCommunity financing in the German organic food sector
2019Gerlinde Behrendt, Sarah Peter, Simone Sterly, Anna Maria Häring · Working paper/Working paper CIRIEC ... · Germany
Empirical evidence on community financing in the German organic food sector shows that a still-niche but growing number of firms use citizen-sourced funding to substitute or complement bank credit. The models are classified into four types — pure financing instruments (crowdfunding, profit participation rights, direct loans), legal-form-based models (cooperatives, corporations), intermediary-pooled financing (citizen shareholder corporations, land purchase cooperatives), and others such as community supported agriculture, leasing and sponsorship — and their role is discussed in easing access to capital for farms facing rising land prices and limited access to traditional bank credit.
CSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomicsUrban plant diversity in Los Angeles, California: Species and functional type turnover in cultivated landscapes
2019Meghan L. Avolio, Diane E. Pataki, G. Darrel Jenerette, Stéphanie Pincetl, Lorraine Weller Clarke, Jeannine Cavender‐Bares, Thomas W. Gillespie, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Heather R. McCarthy, Tara L. E. Trammell · Plants People Planet · United States (California)
Several datasets on urban biodiversity in Los Angeles, California, were synthesized covering urban trees, residential yards, community gardens, nursery plant availability and resident attitudes toward plant attributes. Cultivated plant diversity was found to differ drastically from remnant natural areas, with more than double the number of plant species, a higher share of exotic ornamental species, and turnover in functional trait distributions; most sampled tree species were available for sale in local nurseries, and resident plant-trait preferences correlated with the composition of the plant community.
CommunityBiodiversityOpportunities for Growth: Evaluating the Feasibility of a Community Gardening Intervention Pairing Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors with Experienced Gardeners
2019Renate M. Winkels, Rick Artrip, Maegan Tupinio, Susan Veldheer, Smita Dandekar, Daniel R. George · Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology · United States
The feasibility of a mentored gardening intervention for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors in a hospital-based community garden was evaluated as a way to improve diet and physical activity. Over the 2018 growing season, AYA cancer survivors tended a garden plot under the mentorship of an experienced (master) gardener and were successful in planting and harvesting vegetables in partnership with their mentors, with qualitative data used to assess challenges, facilitators, and areas for future programmatic improvement and replication.
CommunityHealthFood educationComparing Properties in Ubran and No-Till Soils
2019Hannah Furniss, Amos Darnell, Timothy A. Brown · Murray State's Digital Commons (Murray State University) · United States
A study on urban soils in Calloway County, Kentucky, aimed at determining the differences between urban soils and traditional agricultural fields to assess the viability of urban agriculture as a food source and whether urban agriculture systems could be modeled for broader application. Using a no-till soybean field as a conventional-agriculture control, the researchers compared a developed urban garden (growing food and other plants) and a managed residential turf lawn, taking 36 disturbed and undisturbed soil samples in triplicate from depths of 0-7.5 cm and 7.5-15 cm, measuring organic matter, water holding capacity, field capacity, bulk density, porosity, and pH. As of the abstract, results were stated to be presented on a poster and no specific figures were given.
Urban–rural linkageConnecting People with Places Biodiversity Design and Build
2019Mariana Berlanga, Christine G. Bowden, Tylar Campbell, Eva Wang, Zou, Joe · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada
A report on a biodiversity installation created by the University Neighbourhoods Association (UNA) and the Land and Food Systems 450 class at Hawthorn Community Garden along Main Mall Greenway at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, aimed at engaging the community with biodiversity and food. Four data collection methods were used: a focus group, an online survey, interviews, and secondary sources. Community members wanted the installation to prioritize enhancing biodiversity and educating children, and showed equal preference between two concept designs—one emphasizing visual appeal, the other information. Expert interviews and secondary sources indicated a successful mason-bee installation should be east-facing with access to food, water and clay, and requires active community engagement.
CommunityBiodiversityLe insidie dell'orto urbano. Processi partecipativi e derive neoliberiste a Palermo
2019Marco Picone, Filippo Schilleci · Nova Science Publishers (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.) · Italy
A critical essay examining an urban-garden participatory process underway as part of Palermo, Italy's "Laboratorio Palermo città educativa," launched by the municipality in 2015 to convert abandoned or degraded public green areas into urban gardens for educational activities across all ages, in the name of neighborhood community reappropriation. The paper argues that in a context of austerity urbanism, it is easy for the municipality to exploit the absence of public investment to mobilize active citizens as protagonists of urban change, and that the idea of creating urban community gardens—like other recent slogans such as smart cities and creative cities—tends to become a universally praised, virtuous development model without scrutiny. It further notes that the lack of an effective regulation governing the use of public green spaces in the city continues to create obstacles to the solutions proposed by the thematic working table. The author concludes that field-based qualitative research is still needed to determine whether these reappropriation processes conceal neoliberal dynamics that delegate a false decision-making power to citizens while using them to fill current political vacuums.
Governance failureCommunityFood educationPolicyO xardín de juanita
2019M. Mar Santiago Arca · Revista galega de educación · Spain
A report on a garden created by pupils of the 4th B class of Infant Education at CEIP Emilia Pardo Bazán school in A Coruña, Spain, during the 2016-17 school year, in their plot of the school garden. Although aesthetic aspects were part of the project, Philosophy for Children and the development of thinking skills served as the basis underpinning the entire process.
CommunityFood educationCommunity supported agriculture membership: The benefits of spousal involvement
2019Ilona Liliána Birtalan, Ágnes Neulinger, József Rácz, György Bárdos · International Journal of Consumer Studies · Global
Using an explorative design, this study examines how spousal involvement affects membership in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a type of alternative food network centered on fresh produce. It identified three patterns of spousal influence: coherent, integrative, and neutral/antagonistic. CSA membership was found to significantly affect lifestyles and often require substantial adaptation, at times leading to a crisis point over whether to remain in or leave the CSA. Spousal support was found to be crucial over the long term, and the study suggests that inconveniences associated with CSA membership could be reduced by providing more information about the importance of that support.
CSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomicsCharacterisation of Liquid Fertiliser from Different Types of Bio-Waste Compost and its Correlation with the Compost Nutrients
2019Nur Farzana Ahmad Sanadi, Chew Tin Lee, Mohammad Roji Sarmidi, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, Zhenjia Zhang · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Global
This study characterized the physical and nutrient properties of liquid fertiliser (compost leachate and compost tea) derived from different bio-waste composts and sought to establish a correlation between their nutrient composition and that of the resulting solid compost. It found that the liquid fertiliser contains nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus essential for plant growth but requires dilution or pre-treatment before use due to high organic content, and developed a formula, using graphical analysis and simple linear regression, that predicts solid compost nutrient composition from analysis of the liquid fertiliser.
CommunityCompostOrganic cycleEngaging Residents in Planning a Community Garden: A Strategy for Enhancing Participation Through Relevant Messaging
2019Athena K. Ramos, Natalia Trinidad, Sonja Bickford, Nate Bickford, Julia Torquati, Maria Mushi · Collaborations A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice · United States
A study conducted a bilingual online survey to gauge public support for a planned community garden in South Omaha, Nebraska, and to prioritize messaging strategies about its potential benefits. Assessing interest, perceived benefits, purposes, and desired co-located functions, the study identified the value of developing local data, the importance of an asset-based framework, the need to understand community perceptions of potential benefits, the challenge of balancing community research efforts, and the need for partnerships to expand a project's reach.
CommunityHealthFood educationWelfareLOCAL PRODUCT WITHIN SHORT FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS IN HUNGARY
2019Károly Kacz · Annals of the Polish Association of Agricultural and Agribusiness Economists · Europe
A study analyzed the distribution of local products through short food supply chains (SFSCs) in Hungary, focusing on farmer markets and Community Supported Agriculture systems, using data from multiple databases. Both traditional and neo-traditional SFSC forms were found to be viable in Hungary, but as in other Central and Eastern European countries, traditional SFSC types—particularly local farmer markets—remain dominant in numbers; the study concludes that forming and supporting neo-traditional organizations is useful for exploiting the potential of short supply chains.
CSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomicsFood miles & supply chain