Research & reports

Walker R. E., Keane C. R., Burke J. G. · Health & Place 16(5):876-884 · United States

Systematic review of 31 US food access and food desert studies using nine distinct measures, documenting disparities in access to healthy food across low-income and minority neighborhoods.

Dubbeling M.C.E., Merzthal G., Soto N. · Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development · Peru (Lima)

Analyzes the multistakeholder policy formulation process for urban agriculture in Lima's Villa María del Triunfo district, demonstrating that inclusive stakeholder engagement produces more effective municipal policies addressing food security, land use, and economic development simultaneously.

Sarah Taylor Lovell · Sustainability · United States

This paper reviews literature on urban agriculture for land use planning in the United States, where interest in urban food production is growing due to economic and food security concerns. It discusses urban agriculture's potential for integrating multiple functions in densely populated areas, from community farms to rooftop gardens. The paper also addresses barriers and constraints, and identifies research opportunities for urban planners and landscape designers to integrate food-systems thinking into city plans.

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.

Katharine Antonia Travaline, Christian Hunold · Local Environment · United States (Philadelphia)

This study explored urban agriculture's contribution to ecological citizenship in Philadelphia, United States. The analysis was based on participant-observation and open-ended interviews with leaders and community participants from seven urban agricultural organizations. The findings indicate that urban agriculture promotes public participation and social learning about environmental decisions.

Miranda Martinez · · United States (Lower East Side)

This work explores the dynamics of gentrification, community gardens, and their impact on the Puerto Rican community in the Lower East Side. It examines class cultures in conflict, neighborhood transformation, and the symbolic significance of the area.

Molly Alexandra Croog · School for International Training Digital Collections (School for International Training) · Mexico

This paper explores the urban agriculture movement in Mexico City, investigating who practices it, how, and why. It examines the benefits of urban agriculture and its role in a future food system, discussing food security and sovereignty. Three projects—a traditional farm, a government-funded community project, and a household-level organization—are explored, with conclusions on their impact on economics, community, and environment.

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.

Francisco Javier Morales Martín · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Peru (Lima)

This doctoral thesis proposes a new local development planning model based on social capital, applied to urban agriculture projects in the suburbs of developing countries. The model aims to identify critical initial social capital, generate new social capital, and maintain it over time through conversion into quantifiable physical capital. This approach ensures the model's sustainability, viewing urban agriculture as a means for local progress rather than an end in itself.

Pablo Torres Lima, Alfonso Chávez-Muñoz, Gerardo Ávila-Jiménez, Sergio Contreras-Prado · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Mexico (Mexico City)

This article analyzes the principal components of a planning process that promotes the development of agricultural production zones in Xochimilco-Tlahuac, Mexico City. The experience was conceptualized in 2008 with the integration of data obtained through fieldwork, interviews, ethnographic techniques, and geomatics. The study highlights the critical need for district or metropolitan authorities to support urban agriculture to address various city development issues and concludes that re-assessing socio-territorial organization in the study region is also necessary to achieve an integrated, habitable, and sustainable city.

Michelle P. Corrigan · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · United States (Baltimore, Athens)

Food insecurity and food-related health concerns are growing in the United States, leading to increased engagement with food systems through community food security approaches like community gardening. In-depth interviews and field observations in Baltimore, Maryland, and Athens, Ohio, examined the challenges of community gardening and the extent of people's involvement in the food system. While community gardens contribute to engagement, additional assistance such as education, policy, and funding is needed to enhance food security.

Lee‐Anne Milburn, B. A. Vail · Landscape Journal · United States

This research, conducted through a literature review and interviews with community garden leaders across the United States, investigated factors for the long-term sustainability of community gardens. The study found that successful community gardens are often based on four key elements: secured land tenure, sustained interest, community development, and appropriate design. Recommended considerations for their development and administration include design, development, and administration factors.

Amy Oprean · Human Biology · United States

This abstract introduces Kami Pothukuchi, Ph.D., director of SEED Wayne, a volunteer-based organization at Wayne State University. SEED Wayne focuses on building sustainable food systems on campus and in Detroit communities. The organization conducts research projects to explore Detroit's potential for sustainability in urban agriculture and local food systems.

Eric L. Hazzard, Elizabeth Moreno, Deborah Lane Beall, Sheri Zidenberg‐Cherr · The FASEB Journal · United States (California)

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the California Instructional School Garden Program (CISGP) grants by surveying 749 grantee schools. It found that the development, sustained use, or expansion of gardens was less than expected (p=.01), and fewer schools than expected reported using gardens for instruction (p<.001) or to teach academic subjects (p<.003). Less than 40% of schools reported accomplishing all their garden goals with the funds.

Michelle M Althaus Ottman, Juliana Maantay, Kristen Grady, Nério Cardoso, Nilce Nazareno da Fonte · PubMed · United States (New York City)

This project explores urban agriculture and productive landscaping in the Bronx, New York City, focusing on community gardens as an alternative to address urban problems. The study aims to describe the multiple roles of these gardens, including health-promoting, economic, environmental, and cultural benefits, and to reveal gardeners' perceptions of quality-of-life improvements. The Bronx currently hosts approximately 175 community gardens administered by Operation Green Thumb, alongside others managed by non-profits and on private property.

Emma Schroeder, Krishna Ramanujan · · United States

In his 2010 interview with Emma Schroeder, Krishna Ramanujan shared his memories of the Eagle Heights Community Garden. Mr. Ramanujan discussed the ethnic diversity of the gardeners, the tensions between the Gardens and the University, and balancing graduate school while raising a young family in the Eagle Heights community. This interview was conducted for inclusion in a Master's thesis on the Eagle Heights Community Gardens.

Los Angeles and Seattle · · United States

This study examines two case studies of urban farms in the United States: the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, California, and Marra Farm in Seattle, Washington. These sites and their embedded political and social processes reveal much about current food systems and struggles for justice. The research focuses on the conscious strategies immigrant communities utilize to reinvent space in these urban sites, forming place-based resistance and project identities.

Kathryn Colasanti · Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development · United States (Detroit)

Using Detroit, Michigan as a case, this study developed a methodology based on secondary data to estimate the acreage needed to supply, as far as seasonally possible, the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by city residents, and compared these requirements against a catalog of publicly owned vacant parcels in the city. Using high-yield, biointensive growing methods, 31% of seasonally available vegetables and 17% of fruit currently consumed by 900,000 people could be supplied on less than 300 acres, without extraordinary postharvest management or season-extension technology.

Michael Raleigh · eCommons (Cornell University) · United States

This essay argues that the U.S. food system, being heavily industrialized, consumes large amounts of fossil-fuel energy — citing an estimate that it takes 10 calories of energy to produce one calorie of food — through fossil-fuel-powered planting, spraying, fertilizing, irrigation, tilling, harvesting, processing and transport, all of which generate greenhouse gases and make the food system a major contributor to climate change. It positions the development of urban farms in Buffalo as a necessary strategy to "de-carbon" the food system, on the grounds that urban farms use human labor in place of oil-powered machines and, being smaller than industrial-scale farms, can be managed with fewer machines, with home gardens and small urban farms claimed to be more productive per unit of land and energy than large-scale farms despite their low-tech approach.

Nathan McClintock, Jenny Cooper · PDXScholar (Portland State University) · United States (California)

Between summer 2008 and spring 2009, an inventory identified open space owned by public agencies within the city limits of Oakland, California, that could support urban agriculture. The project mapped Oakland's public commons land to inform food, health and environmental policy decisions and to help nonprofits and city officials identify candidate sites for urban agriculture programs.

Leonardo da Fonseca Barbosa, José Pedro da Silva, Gabriela Vieira Junges, Weverton de Goes Duarte, Cícero Luiz Calazans de Lima, Jakes Halan Queiroz Costa · REVISTA ELETRÔNICA EXTENSÃO EM DEBATE · Brazil

A preliminary diagnostic study of agricultural and environmental conservation activities in the Tabacaria quilombola community, located in the rural zone of Palmeira dos Índios, Alagoas, Brazil, the only such community officially recognized by the state, used monthly participatory meetings, a questionnaire, and site visits to assess potential locations for a community garden. The diagnosis found an absence of technical assistance or guidance from any public agency and a lack of information reaching the community. Agriculture remained subsistence-based, centered on cassava, corn, beans and fava beans, with ecological soil and water management practices practically nonexistent. The study calls for awareness-raising and information activities to address these gaps and for the development of sustainable agricultural practices.

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.

Danielle Nipper · D-Scholarship@Pitt (University of Pittsburgh) · United States

A methods paper (D-Scholarship@Pitt, University of Pittsburgh, 2010) proposes applying the Sustainability Assessment Modeling (SAM) framework—which quantifies stakeholder values, perceptions, and economic and environmental costs—to develop an assessment tool for community garden longevity and sustainability, motivated by evidence that community gardens often struggle with discontinuation. The paper reviews SAM-related literature and its methods, strengths and limitations, and proposes a participatory assessment process using indicators of organizational strengths, weaknesses, and success such as longevity, without presenting empirical test results of the tool itself.

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.