Research & reports

Pierrette Hondagneu‐Sotelo · · United States (California)

This chapter discusses possibilities for rethinking and reinventing new models of garden making in Southern California and metropolitan regions more generally. In Southern California, diverse gardens promoting environmental and cultural sustainability, shared backyard gardening, organic vegetable gardening, wall gardens, and lawn removal efforts are observed. The chapter reviews these projects, looking at new efforts in private residential gardens, urban community gardens, and public spaces, with a focus on immigration and the Southern California region.

Nevin Cohen, Kristin Reynolds · Journal of Planning Education and Research · United States (New York City)

This article examines urban agriculture (UA) policy-making processes in New York City, focusing on aspects of UA not fully addressed by existing policies, plans, and research strategies. Interviews with UA stakeholders and an analysis of the city’s UA policy-making processes show that resource needs and race- and class-based disparities within the UA system persist.

Benjamin Drury, Renee Laliberte, Jared Watson, Connor Wilgress · Digital WPI · United States (Worcester)

The city of Worcester, MA, faces health issues due to economic instability and low access to affordable healthy food. While urban farming has the potential to address these problems, the city lacks an effective policy.

Matt Murray · Journal of Political Ecology · United States (New York City)

Efrat Eizenberg's book "From the Ground Up" explores New York City's community gardens as spaces that resist the commodification of land. The book details the history of these gardens, including their emergence during the 1970s economic crisis when primarily Black and Hispanic residents transformed vacant land into communal green spaces. As the real estate market recovered in the 1980s, land values increased, and many gardens were threatened by gentrification pressures. Eizenberg analyzes these transformations at individual, collective, and institutional levels, highlighting how gardeners create common spaces, solidify interpersonal ties, and organize to defend their gardens.

Terence O'Connell · Community Development Journal · United States

An interview with Julie Ristau, Co-director, and Alexa Bradley, Program Director, of On the Commons (OTC) — a commons movement strategy center founded in 2001 — was conducted by Tom O'Connell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 28, 2013. OTC uses workshops, presentations, and direct consultation to bring visibility to the commons movement and support the development of commons-based solutions and leadership, and in the interview both women describe how they came to the idea of the commons through prior community organizing experience.

Benjamin Shepard · Theory in Action · United States (New York City)

A case study of Time's Up!, a New York City environmental group examined over its 25-year history from 1987 to 2012. Rooted in New York's squatter movement, the group built a DIY approach to environmental activism advocating nonpolluting transportation and sustainable urban living, supporting community gardens and group bike rides, and reclaiming public space through direct action as its guiding principle, linking social networks to community-building outside institutional channels.

Caitlin M. Port, Markus Moos · Planning Practice and Research · Canada

A study used Geographic Information System analysis to measure land potential for urban agriculture in four sub-urban neighborhoods in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Findings show that 49-58% of the land measured has potential to support urban agriculture; in older post-war sub-urban neighborhoods this potential lies primarily in private yards, while newer sub-urban neighborhoods incorporating new urbanist ideals have smaller yards but more public green space, meaning challenges and opportunities for urban agriculture differ between older and newer sub-urban areas due to differences in neighborhood design.

Joann Lo · Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis · United States

A first-hand essay by the executive director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) in the United States argues that despite growing interest in sustainable food production and systems — including community gardens, urban agriculture and "slow" food — the broader food movement has not fully integrated the voices and leadership of the workers who bring food from farm to table. It states that food workers, numbering almost 20 million in the U.S. alone, face multiple injustices including low wages, lack of benefits and dangerous working conditions that intersect with the sustainable-food movement's own concerns about food insecurity and access to healthy, affordable food, and recounts the FCWA's history and work from the author's own position.

Lorelei L. Hanson, Deborah Schrader · · Canada

A participatory action case study examined the development of Edmonton, Canada's urban food policy from 2008 to 2013, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, coded and triangulated through a grounded-theory approach. Despite initial progressive changes in municipal policy and promising innovative food-system planning, the research found that Edmonton's city council was ultimately driven largely by a development agenda, following a pattern documented in other urban sustainability initiatives that foreclose political debate and reinforce the status quo.

Nikki Brown · The American Historical Review · United States

A book review discusses Jayne Morris-Crowther's The Political Activities of Detroit's Clubwomen in the 1920s: A Challenge and a Promise, which examines Detroit clubwomen's successes and failures in municipal politics. The book explores the impact of the woman suffrage amendment on key political issues including school reform, community gardens and playgrounds, women as political officeholders, penal reform, crime and public vice, and segregation in public accommodations. The review highlights the book's conclusion that despite redoubled activism, votes and organizing by middle-class clubwomen did not produce as much institutional change as they had envisioned after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, as the prevalent belief that women were unfit for political office added to widespread sexism in the legislature and women's issues were not taken seriously.

Gabrielle Lhotka · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

A study identifies and classifies localized urban agriculture trends taking place in Vancouver, Canada, by efficiency, viability and long-term potential over a 2040 time frame, based on literature reviews of theory, ideology, concepts and local trends. It finds that urban agriculture within the city of Vancouver is struggling to find a long-term foothold due to issues including overuse/misuse of technology, underfunding or poor budgeting, community attitudes, lack of knowledge about agriculture and food safety, lack of long-term sustained relevance, bureaucratic struggles, and lack of usable space in a growing city. It recommends focusing on strong community involvement through social media and programs, educational programs, movable or adaptable planting spaces, and alternative food assets such as farmers' markets.

Carl McBeath, Jill McDowell, Graham McLeod, Christine M. McMahon, Marnie Melsted, Carrine Thunggawan · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

As part of the UBC Food System Project, this student report examines challenges facing the Land and Food Systems Orchard Garden (LFSOG) at the University of British Columbia, reviewing the faculty's vision statements to develop recommendations on garden management, budgeting, funding and resources; it concludes an organized management plan is needed for the garden to successfully expand. The report is a student project under the UBC SEEDS program and is explicitly noted as not an official UBC document, possibly not reflecting the current status of activities.

Lucy Bradley, Joanna Lelekacs, Caroline Asher, Julieta Sherk · Journal of Extension · United States

An analysis of the landscape elements of 10 professionally designed community gardens in the United States, developed to guide Extension professionals working with garden designers and volunteers. With growing focus on local food, food safety, nutrition and physical health, a range of organizations are establishing community gardens and seeking help from Extension agents and specialists in horticulture, family consumer science and 4-H; the paper notes that while these professionals have expertise in nutrition, health, food safety and food production, they have little training in community garden design, which provides the framework for successful gardens.

Amanda Brown, Antonin van der Lely, Camilo Cortes, Eileen Leung, F. Lam, Liz Overton, Muneera Hussain · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · Canada

As part of the UBC Food Systems Project, this student report evaluates the effects of campus development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, on the ability to create and maintain a sustainable food system. The goal was not to promote food self-sufficiency at UBC but to build campus-community awareness and education around food security issues. Through evaluation of the plans guiding UBC's development — the Official Community Plan (OCP) and the Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) — the report identifies major barriers and opportunities affecting campus food sustainability and proposes amendments to both plans. It resulted in a proposed urban agriculture strategy, "The Edible Campus," comprising six strategic actions: a demonstration garden, designated garden areas, green space and open areas, food production on buildings, waste management systems, and management considerations. The report is explicitly disclaimed as a student project under UBC's SEEDS program, not an official UBC document.

Amandine Gatien-Tournat · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Canada

An announcement/review of a book on urban agriculture edited by Eric Duchemin, an associate professor at the Institut des sciences de l'environnement at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), bringing together a multidisciplinary group of 31 contributors — geographers, urban planners, landscape architects, planners, an agronomist, nutritionists, an anthropologist, and a historian. The book is presented as offering a new panorama of urban agriculture, three years after an earlier special issue on the same subject by Duchemin and colleagues (2010). The abstract text is cut off mid-sentence while describing the book's aim, and no further content is given.

Wei He-y · Chinese Landscape Architecture · United States

Motivated by the need for developing Chinese landscape architecture to draw on foreign experience, this paper analyzed the number, content, and trends of topics at the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) annual meetings from 2009 to 2012, with an in-depth discussion of the hotspots. The results show that the planning and design category had the highest proportion of topics, and that American landscape architecture focused on sustainable development, parks and gardening, rainwater harvesting, ecological theory, digital technology, urban plants, public open space, and urban agriculture. The pursuit of sustainable development and multidisciplinary integration emerged as a distinctive feature of American landscape architecture, and the paper uses these results to outline prospects for Chinese landscape architecture.

Melissa Iverson, Maja Kržić, A. A. Bomke · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · Canada

This study develops a framework for a locally adapted site assessment guide (SAG) for urban agricultural sites in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where demand for urban agricultural land is largely met by reclaiming brownfields and land owned by schools, religious institutions, hospitals, and private residents, but where — as in many cities — no locally adapted SAG previously existed. The framework has five phases: (1) initial selection of properties and assessment approaches, (2) stakeholder feedback and revision, (3) further feedback and finalization, (4) guide distribution, and (5) ongoing updates and support. Development identified relevant site characteristics for Vancouver (soil properties, aspect, slope, sunshine) and produced a Vancouver soil map; distribution and promotion of the guide through local organizations began in 2010, with the effort ongoing at the time of writing.

Po Anita Puckett, Nancy Lopez-Romero · Practicing Anthropology · United States

The opening section of this issue of Practicing Anthropology introduces new perspectives in community-based research. One contribution, Eisenberg's article "Social Science, Public Policy, and Amnesty for Chickens," discusses the leading role Pima County, Arizona played in developing urban agriculture in Tucson. Eisenberg led a Policy Team that provided other teams with policy information, educated them on processes, and helped negotiate environmental policy. Through initiatives including fact sheets, policy-information trainings, and workshops, the Policy Team helped develop a tentative plan for the Tucson zoning committee that included a distinct urban agriculture element, with the main focus on proper animal husbandry in urban settings. A Facebook page called "Tucson CLUCKS" was successfully created to keep residents informed and engaged in zoning policy discussions. Eisenberg concludes that a consistent, historically grounded understanding of local issues is an important requirement for effective action.

Yuanchi Zhao · TigerPrints (Clemson University) · United States

A study proposing a new framework for designing privately owned public spaces (POPS) in mid-sized U.S. cities, noting that while POPS are established in large cities such as New York, San Francisco and Seattle, they remain uncommon in mid-sized ones. Drawing on case studies of 15 POPS in New York City, it identifies factors important to POPS development and produces design guidelines, which it then applies to a design example in downtown Greenville, South Carolina. The authors report that the results indicate the framework is feasible for mid-sized-city application.

Matthew J. Hoffmann · Loyola eCommons (Loyola University of Chicago) · United States

A study of Chicago, United States, examines the experiences and perspectives of low-wage earners, job trainees, and Black youth participating in various urban sustainable development initiatives — including those tied to local food and urban agriculture. It notes that popular accounts of sustainability efforts have largely reflected the perspective of white, middle-class, college-educated volunteers and social entrepreneurs, and argues that such initiatives have historically benefited white middle-class people while sustainable development has in fact reproduced and worsened existing inequality for poor people of color. The study aims to inform debates in urban and environmental sociology about achieving more equitable distributions of power.

Lauren Bugdalski, Lawrence D. Lemke, Shawn P. McElmurry · Risk Analysis · United States (Detroit, MI)

This study examined small-scale spatial variability of soil lead within a 15 × 30 m urban community garden plot on two adjacent residential lots in Detroit, Michigan, analyzing 80 samples for total, fine-fraction, and bioaccessible lead. Concentrations varied at 1–10 m scales with a hot spot exceeding 400 ppm, and Monte Carlo simulations showed that increasing sample numbers reduces the chance of missing hot spots while compositing reduces overestimation of the mean. The authors suggest US EPA sampling objectives and guidelines should be reconsidered for reclaimed city lots where soil lead is nonuniform.

Hoover B. · Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development · USA

Argues that urban agriculture, largely championed by a middle-class white populace, creates 'white spaces' within Black and Latino places, overlooking the practice's historical roots in those communities and producing exclusion.

In Kwon Park, Patricia Ciorici · International Journal of Urban Sciences · United States (Philadelphia)

This study in Philadelphia, United States, identified determinants of vacant lot conversion into community gardens using a logit model. Data on lot attributes were collected from the Philadelphia Neighbourhood Information System and a city-wide survey. The results indicate that neighborhood characteristics like poverty level, educational attainment, zoning, and owner occupancy, along with parcel characteristics such as ownership and topography, significantly impact the conversion.

A. Bryan Endres, Rachel Armstrong · · United States

This article discusses Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and 'community labor,' where customers participate in food production on farms. It highlights a paradox: traditional employment law, envisioning autonomous competition, makes little room for these novel relationships, potentially undermining CSA values and limiting its viability and growth. The authors suggest that employment law should develop a more nuanced view of relationships in the CSA context, supporting mutual gain and shared values over competition-based rules.

Kyle Clark, Kimberly A. Nicholas · Landscape Ecology · United States (Burlington, Vermont)

This study proposes "urban food forestry" (UFF), combining urban agriculture, urban forestry, and agroforestry, to enhance urban sustainability and food security. It analyzed 37 urban food tree initiatives, finding 73% performed only one activity (planting, mapping, or harvesting) and 8% performed all three. An analysis of 30 urban forestry master plans showed only 13% included human food security objectives. A case study in Burlington, Vermont, estimated that planting Malus domestica in public spaces could meet 108% of the city's daily fruit intake under the most ambitious scenario. The study identified 70 potential food tree species for temperate urban environments, with 30 deemed highly suitable.