Research & reports

Andrew Flachs · Journal of Ecological Anthropology · Global

This paper demonstrates that ethnographers can gain a more effective qualitative understanding of community gardens by volunteering as gardeners. Volunteering helps researchers access various aspects of the garden community. It also offers an anthropological perspective on the common idea that many individuals join community gardens solely for economic benefits.

Laura Lavid · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States

This article discusses the impact of urban gardening on a city's food system, noting that while it is not the sole solution, it offers significant benefits beyond economics. It cites historical data from World War II, where 20 million victory gardeners produced 44% of fresh vegetables in the United States. Recent studies estimate community gardens can yield $500 to $2,000 worth of produce per family annually, and a Denver study found community gardeners ate significantly more fruits and vegetables than non-gardeners.

Kyle Kessler, Seth Umbenhauer, Alison R. Noble · Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science · United States (Harrisburg)

Eight soil samples were collected from an urban land plot in Harrisburg, PA, to determine concentrations of copper, nickel, zinc, and lead and assess suitability for an urban garden. While copper, nickel, and zinc concentrations were below EPA recommended limits, lead concentrations ranged from 26 ± 1 mg/kg to 402+ mg/kg, with some samples exceeding EPA standards for heavy metals in home and vegetable gardens. This indicates potential lead contamination in the soil.

Bruno Henrique Comassetto, Gabriela P. Solalinde Z., João Vicente Rosa de Souza, Marcelo Trevisan, Paulo Ricardo Zilio Abdala, Carlos Alberto Vargas Rossi · Revista de Administração de Empresas · Brazil

A qualitative study with in-depth interviews of urban agriculture specialists and practitioners in nine neighborhoods of a large Brazilian capital explored the meaning of urban agriculture as a consumption phenomenon. The findings indicate a dual motivation for practicing urban agriculture: an extrinsic motivation (example) and an intrinsic motivation (well-being). The practice is linked to concerns for the environment, health, and personal well-being, as well as nostalgic respect and pride for cultural heritage.

Rachel E. Scherr, Rachel Cox, Gail Feenstra, Sheri Zidenberg‐Cherr · California Agriculture · United States (California)

Research indicates that garden-based nutrition education increases fruit and vegetable preferences and consumption in children, and Farm to School programs promote increased consumption of fruits and vegetables and participation in the National School Lunch Program. A survey of UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) advisors and directors in California reported that all respondents implemented garden-based nutrition education and Farm to School programs, but evaluation occurred much less frequently.

LI Xiao-shuan · Anhui nongye kexue · Global

Urban agriculture development patterns at home and abroad were studied, combined with actual cases, to discuss future urban agriculture development patterns. This study aims to provide a reference for the planning of modern urban agriculture parks.

Melvin Delgado · Columbia University Press eBooks · United States

This chapter focuses on community gardening as an intervention aimed at addressing obesity, tracing its history in the United States back to the late nineteenth century as a response to social and economic crises. While community gardens can achieve various social, economic, political, educational, and health-related goals, the chapter also discusses potential pitfalls of community gardening. It emphasizes a social justice perspective for community gardens, particularly regarding community inclusion and participatory democracy.

Marcos José de Abreu, Renato Barretto Barbosa Trivella, Letícia Oliveira de Melo, gisa Garcia, Alexandre Cordeiro, Óscar José Rover · · Brazil (Santa Catarina)

The Vida Nova community garden, established in 2009 in Jardim Janaina, Biguaçu, Santa Catarina, Brazil, serves women from rural and urban areas facing food and social insecurity. This project aimed to disseminate participatory agroecological methodologies in urban agriculture. It resulted in a 36-page educational booklet and a course, leading to group strengthening, increased community gardens, and diversified cultivation in the neighborhood.

Chikwendiu Okechukwu, Femi Adekunle, Sunday Nwokolo · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · Nigeria

A three-year mixed-methods study in selected urban areas of Nigeria assessed the impact of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) among gardeners. Community members' understanding of IPM principles significantly improved, with 20% initially reporting successful pest management strategies, increasing to 75% over the three years. The findings suggest that sustained education and support are crucial for effective IPM adoption in urban gardening communities.

Chris Zimmerman · Soil Horizons · United States

A narrative article profiling the work of soil scientist Samantha Langley-Turnbaugh of the University of Southern Maine, investigating lead contamination in urban soils in Portland, Maine. It traces the concern to the Great Fire of 1866, whose lead paint ash was spread across the city and used as landfill to extend the Portland peninsula, compounded by the city's historical ties to lead-producing industries. The article states that, across US cities generally, lead paint and leaded gasoline are the primary sources of soil lead contamination, and that this contamination is becoming a concern as urban gardening expands.

André Ganzarolli Martins, Ana Paula Tridapalli de Almeira · Cadernos de Agroecologia · Brazil

A report on nearly two years of small-scale agroecological seed production through a community garden project on the central campus of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil. Seeds were cultivated within small agroecological and agroforestry systems, producing carrots, lettuce, sunflower, beans, green manure crops and others; harvest and storage details are described as crucial steps requiring special attention. The report states that seed production was fundamental to sustaining the plantings and, through donations, supported other urban agriculture and agroecology initiatives.

Nicholas A. Read · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · United States

A field-trial study conducted in the United States, where small-scale urban agriculture has become more prevalent due to the availability of abandoned property and demand for locally grown produce. Weed suppression is described as a major concern for urban growers, with mulch valued as an inexpensive, readily available control method. Black plastic mulch, the industry standard, is impermeable and difficult to remove and dispose of; newspaper end-rolls (unprinted remains from newspaper printing) are proposed as an alternative that is permeable and biodegradable but have a high C:N ratio that can reduce soil fertility and crop growth. Because plant residue alone requires large quantities for adequate weed suppression, combining newspaper with plant residues is proposed as a way to achieve adequate suppression with less material and a lower C:N ratio. The study's objective was to compare two continuous sheet mulches — newspaper and black plastic — with and without an underlying particulate mulch of killed cover crop, in field trials conducted in 2011 and 2012 measuring soil moisture, soil temperature, weed growth, weed removal cost, and collard (Brassica oleracea) performance in a low-input production system. The abstract does not report specific results.

Stefano Pascucci, Alessia Lombardi, Luigi Cembalo, Domenico Dentoni · Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) · Global

This paper discusses the concept of the food community network (FCN) — an organizational model in which consumers and farmers use membership-based contracts to pool resources and assign decision and property rights for credence food transactions, combining democratic and communitarian elements with few market or bureaucratic elements — and applies new institutional economics and organizational science arguments to case studies of community-supported agriculture reported elsewhere, finding a wide variety of FCN organizational forms.

Fran Tonkiss · City · 欧州

Engages austerity urbanism through temporary designs and provisional uses of vacant urban space in European cities, questioning orthodox development timescales, planned uses and value capture. Provides a theoretical frame for interim vacant-lot gardening such as Sakanoen’s for-sale-site allotments.

Hyunjin An, 박현영 · 국토계획 · South Korea

Overseas cases of "temporary uses" and "tactical urbanism" — including community gardens, Site Pre-Vitalization, Pop-up Town Hall and Temporary Urbanism Initiatives in Washington, D.C. — are reviewed to draw implications for treating vacant real estate as productive rather than useless in Korean urban regeneration. Amid stalled regeneration projects during Korea's economic recession, such small-scale, bottom-up, trial-and-error temporary uses are argued to serve as a first step toward lasting change.

Joshua Birky, Elizabeth Strom · Urban Geography · United States

A review of historical and contemporary literature on the U.S. community garden movement, combined with surveys of participants in three distinctive community gardens, compares today's movement with its predecessors. It concludes that a greater diversity of gardeners and gardening motivations, combined with changing views on urban land use, will make community gardens a more lasting feature of city neighborhoods.

Paz Sastre Domínguez · Revista de Estudios de Juventud · Spain

A Spanish essay reconsidering the industrial revolutions through the growth of advertising and design, examining social practices that apply New Institutional Economics organizational models—originating from the free-software movement—to material goods such as food, DIY 3D printers, open wear, open design, urban gardens, DIY biology, DIY drones, open-source hardware, non-GMO seeds, waste, bartering, social currencies and Bitcoin. It frames these projects as new forms of social contract, moral machines floating outside the state and market, but draws a parallel with current generic-drug monopolies to argue the post-patent world may not turn out as imagined.

Gina M. Bacigalupi · San José State University ScholarWorks (San Jose State University) · United States (California)

An online survey of more than 400 members of the California State University East Bay Concord Campus community (California, United States), conducted in 2013, measured stakeholder interest and willingness to contribute money, time and labor to a proposed educational farm at this non-land-grant public urban university. Support was high across all stakeholder groups, but students and those holding multiple campus roles reported greater interest than faculty and staff, while administrators reported the lowest likelihood of participating. Younger respondents and women anticipated greater interaction than older or male respondents; by income, middle-income respondents anticipated the largest financial contributions, while both the highest- and lowest-income groups anticipated the smallest contributions.

Ramón Isidro Cieza, Claudia Cecilia Flores, Lía Nora Tamagno, María Margarita Bonicatto, Natalia Agustina Gargoloff, María Luz Blandi, María J. Lermanó · Americanae (AECID Library) · Argentina (Buenos Aires)

The potential of urban and peri-urban agriculture (AUP) is increasingly recognized in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, according to this 2013 piece on Argentina, because large quantities of food are produced in urban peripheries.

David DyckFehderau, Nicholas L. Holt, Geoff D.C. Ball, Noreen D. Willows · PubMed · Canada

A study in Alexander First Nation, central Alberta, Canada, used asset mapping with children to understand how community factors shape the lifestyle behaviors of First Nations children living on reserve, who are estimated to be 4.5 times more likely to be obese than Canadian children generally. Participants were a convenience sample of two high school students working at the local health centre and seven grade six children, who used maps, photographs and a town tour to identify 25 activity- or food-related places and spaces. Breakfast, lunch and snack foods (such as chocolate bars and potato crisps) were obtained at school, food and snacks at cultural gatherings, and snacks at the local store, with healthy food choices found to be limited; only two locations beyond the town site were identified for physical activity, and youth recommended building a leisure centre, selling healthier food at the local store, and developing a community garden and berry farm.

Cao We · Economic Geography · China

This study first divided Pukou District, Nanjing City, China into four land-use functional zones — an optimized/integrated zone, a key development zone, an urban agricultural zone, and an ecological tourism zone — based on each town's resource and environmental endowments and development intensity and potential. Using survey data from 201 households in the study area and a BP artificial neural network model, it then analyzed how farmers' willingness influenced urban-rural harmony development across zone types. Satisfaction with relocation and with social insurance were the main influencing factors in the optimized/integrated zone; willingness toward large-scale land operation, worry about retirement life, and satisfaction with relocation were the main factors in the key development zone; and worry about retirement life, willingness toward large-scale land operation, and satisfaction with relocation were the main factors in both the urban agricultural zone and the ecological tourism zone. The study concludes that urban-rural harmony development should be pursued through differentiated approaches tailored to regional characteristics and to differences in farmers' willingness.

Melvin Delgado · · Global

Only the table of contents is available for this book, which is structured in two parts: the first covering a social justice framework, the extent of the national obesity crisis, health, lack of access to healthy foods, limited places and spaces for physical exercise, food industry practices, and challenges in measuring overweight and obesity; the second covering community-led health promotion approaches, including health promotion, youth-focused interventions, community garden interventions, community-based food initiatives, and implications for social work practice and research.

권용덕 · 경남정책 Brief · South Korea

A policy brief proposing a regional strategy for Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea, to foster agricultural cooperatives ("nongdan" cooperatives). It classifies these cooperative groups into rural types (production, processing, forestry, etc.), urban types — including urban agriculture groups such as weekend farms, veranda gardens, rooftop gardens and school gardens — and common types (daily necessities), arguing that such cooperatives contribute to the economic sustainability and self-reliant development capacity of rural communities. It lists tasks including expanded education, strict adherence to cooperative management principles, strengthened regional alliances, legal and institutional groundwork, promotion systems, business area development, and phased cultivation.

Daniel Zetterberg · · Sweden

A design proposal for a mixed residential and office building situated above a subway station at the northern end of a park in Stockholm, Sweden. It is composed mainly of apartments of 70-120 square meters, with a central stairwell shared by residents and offices leading to shared functions such as a laundry room, gym, and party/meeting room. The roof functions as the building's garden, with the rooftop garden intended to let the building occupy a smaller footprint within the park; the ground floor holds space for small businesses and a garage.

Liangtao Li, Weller Lorraine, Yuanyuan Tao, Zhenrong Yu, Li, Liangtao, Weller, Lorraine, Tao, Yuanyuan, Yu, Zhenrong · · United States (California)

A field survey of 14 community gardens in Los Angeles, United States, examined how the diversity and distribution pattern of urban vegetation varieties relates to gardeners' ethnic background and construction mode. A total of 439 plant varieties were identified, showing that community gardens function as an important species pool for the urban ecosystem and maintain rich native taxa resources, that the plants grown are mainly edible and play a significant role in protecting ethnic and regional native culture, and that the landscape structure and function of the vegetation are shaped by ethnic background and construction mode. The findings are discussed for their implications for urban green space planning and leisure agriculture in China.