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2017
Community gardens in the canton of Geneva (Switzerland) are predominantly organised through municipal programmes. Because of their highly regulated character, they are at odds with dominant depictions of community gardens as contestatory, grassroots spaces. They, however, do not map perfectly either onto the accounts of institutional " organised garden projects " deemed to accompany municipal entrepreneurial strategies and/or the implementation of neoliberal governmentality. Critically engaging with municipal involvement in community garden and urban agriculture development, this paper draws attention to the contradictory ways in which municipal actors frame and govern these issues. Drawing upon a case study in the municipality of Vernier, it argues that the municipality's integrated urban agriculture programme serves different and contradictory functions and is simultaneously progressive and neoliberal. Indeed, while Vernier's programme clearly attempts at reversing processes of space privatisation and nature commodification, its focus on individualised action and choice contributes to reinforcing neoliberal modes of subjectification. This analysis, I hope, will encourage urban agriculture scholars to question their reliance upon a dichotomy between benevolent civil organisations and profit-oriented public institutions, and to account more precisely for the singular processes of neoliberalisation at play within the boundaries of their case studies.
Since the intensification of the search for sustainable urban planning, the ideal of the compact and green city characterized by high density, mixed land use and attractive green infrastructure, has become a desirable urban form at global scale. Urban greening, including urban gardening, has experienced a resurgence of interest. Within the frame of the compact city, the meanings, forms and functions of urban gardening have been re-evaluated for their contribution to urban sustainability, turning those spaces into a contested subject of negotiation. This qualitative study, conducted in the Swiss cities of Basle, Berne, Geneva and Zurich, investigates how the meanings of urban gardening are discursively (re)produced in political negotiation processes and how different rationalities of space produce a hegemonic order, constructing urban gardening sites as contested spaces. The findings demonstrate that urban growth strategies within the frame of the compact city, aiming at an efficient and resource-saving (re)organization of urban space, are discursively rationalizing current transformation processes. While so-called traditional forms of urban gardening are closed down, displaced to locations with less significance for urban development plans, or transformed in spatial and functional terms, new forms of urban gardening commensurate with the current ideals of urban landscapes and are emerging in the inner-city areas.
2014, Geoforum
"During the past ten years, both public policies and scientific research have tended to pay increasing attention to what they refer to as ‘‘urban gardening’’ and ‘‘urban agriculture’’. In this paper I argue that the term ‘‘urban’’ poorly reflects the diversity of spatial references that underpin such projects. I explore the framing process of two competing agriculture and gardening projects in Geneva, Switzerland. I first show that the social and spatial frames of the projects, i.e. the central definition of a public and of a spatiality are inextricably linked. In the second part, I argue that by ranking the spatial units that ground the spatial frames of the projects according to the specific public they are aimed at, the most powerful actor makes competitive use of scale frames. This paper thus argues for more attention to the socio-spatial framing of urban agriculture and urban gardening projects. It contributes to the debate on the politics of scale by exploring how a scalar hierarchy is performed through the strategic deployment of spatial criteria by social actors. The hierarchy appears to be contingent and context specific, with prevalent notions of locality and proximity."
2009, New South Wales Public Health Bulletin
Affluent diets have negative effects on the health of the population and the environment. Moreover, the ability of industrialised agricultural ecosystems to continue to supply these diets is threatened by the anticipated consequences of climate change. By challenging the ongoing supply of the diets of affluent countries, climate change provides a population and environmental health opportunity. This paper contrasts two strategies for dealing with climate change-related food insecurity. Functional foods are being positioned as one response because they are considered a hyper-efficient mechanism for supplying essential micronutrients. An alternative response is civic and urban agriculture. Rather than emphasising increased economic or nutritional efficiencies, civic agriculture presents a holistic approach to food security that is more directly connected to the economic, environmental and social factors that affect diet and health.
In the context of urban densification and central urban areas' lack of open spaces, new forms of small-scale urban gardening practices have emerged. These gardening practices respond to urban pressures and open new modes of green space governance, presenting alternative and multifunctional ways to manage and revitalise cities. Focusing on the case of Geneva, the article unfolds two levels of discussion. On the one hand—and with reference to the theorist Haber-mas—it examines how multiple actors with different interests interplay and cooperate with each other in order to negotiate over open space, while discussing implications for local politics and planning. On the other hand, it describes how these negotiations result in new, innovative, and hybrid forms of public green space. The main findings indicate emerging forms of collaboration, partnerships, and governance patterns that involve public and private sectors and increase participation by civil society actors. Cooperation amongst several interested groups and the collective re-invention of public urban spaces increase these spaces' accessibility for multiple users and actors, as well as present possibilities for alternative and diversified uses and activities. This might underline the hypothesis that future cities will be governed in less formalised ways, and that urban forms will be created through spontaneous, temporary, mobile, and adaptive negotiation processes.
This study to establish the effectiveness donor-funded nutritional community gardens in the city of Masvingo in light of the fact that most of them have stopped working. The objectives of the study were to identify the reasons for establishing nutritional gardens in the city of Masvingo; to establish the causes of abandonment of the nutritional gardens by the beneficiaries; and to establish how the dilapidated gardens can be improved. The study focused on 7 of the 10 wards in the city of Masvingo. Of the 210 members only 70 (10 from each of the 7 gardens) were sampled for the study. The data collection instruments used in this research were structured questionnaires. Overall respondents felt that nutrition gardens were not economically viable as they failed to meet their basic needs like payment of school fees for their children, paying for accommodation rent, and so on. Donor-funded nutritional community gardens in the city of Masvingo were found not to be as effective as anticipated when they were introduced. The study recommends that there should be engines to pump water because the boreholes are too heavy; a programme should be in place to train garden beneficiaries in basic productive skills including those for marketing; agricultural extension workers should avail themselves to supervise the operation of community gardens to boost the confidence and productivity of the gardeners; awareness campaigns should be rolled out which sensitise the gardeners about the nutritional value of certain varieties of vegetables; water canals should be constructed for easy watering; and the gardeners should device means to assign night watchers to prevent thievery.
New forms of urban gardening are gaining a momentum in cities transforming the conventional use and functions of open green and public space. They often take place through informal and temporal (re)use of vacant land "that is considered to have little market value" (Chmelzkopf 1996: 364) consisting part of greening strategies or social policy. Increased adoption of such forms within urban areas underlies discussions of changing contemporary social and productive urban landscapes by raising important issues regarding new modes of land use management, green space governance and collaborative structures. This paper mainly focuses on the shifted meanings of the notion of open public space by referring to its openness to a diversity of uses and users that claim it and relates to the questions of access rights, power relations among actors, negotiations and the so called right to use and re-appropriate land (Hackenbroch 2013). By using examples drawn from the Greek and Swiss case, this paper advances comparative research under a European perspective underlining differences and similarities in urban gardening practices, social and institutional contexts, collaborative governance patterns, motivations, levels of institutionalisation, openness and inclusiveness of space between Northern and Southern Europe. More specifically the research calls attention to the critical role of the temporary nature of these initiatives in relation to their multifunctional, spatial and socio-political aspects that affects new configurations of urban green areas and public space as well as related planning practices. Therefore it investigates: a) What are the driving factors in each context and what forms of space and governing structures do they generate? b) How do these growing spaces influence the usability and accessibility of open/public space? c) What are the potentials, constraints, future prospects and urban policy implications of such urban gardening projects for sustainable development incentives?
2012, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening
2014, Local Environment
2017, ACME: An International Journal of Critical Geographies
2013, Obesity
This paper asks to what extent urban agriculture projects based on principles of Solidarity Economics are in a position to develop new economic forms based on solidarity—rather than competition—thereby posing an alternative model to neo-liberal capitalism. It seeks to understand how solidarity economies function concretely, what motivations, interests and goals move people to establish and participate in such initiatives, and what utopias they associate with such projects. It focuses on the Swiss gardening cooperative ortoloco, which can be defined as a peri-urban organic farm organised on principles that go beyond the supply of food to embrace explicit political aims and to realise an alternative economic model. For two years of existence, ortoloco has successfully applied these principles on its economic practice, but also constantly questioned them and developed them further. Extending the diversity of products and activities, and intensifying practical and theoretical cooperation with similar projects, the activists hope to apply the tested models on an ever-broader range of economic activities and spheres of living together in general. Whilst neo-liberal policies are presented almost worldwide as natural and without alternative, these projects are living proof that other ways of thinking and acting are possible.
2020, Food Security and Land Use Change under Conditions of Climatic Variability
Synopsis This chapter reports on efforts to explore possibilities and opportunities of adapting ZFarming as a vehicle for combating hunger, malnutrition and climate change impacts. The focus of the study is Kano city which is Nigeria' second largest urban agglomeration. The research questions that drive this study are as follows: can ZFarming support urban resilience in rapidly urbanising countries? Which plants can households grow to eradicate hunger and malnutrition? The work reported in this chapter employed mixed methods-Delphi technique, field observations and interviews to explore possibilities and opportunities of adapting Zero-acreage Farming (ZFarming) to support actualisation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2). The study has identified 27 different nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables that are cultivated mainly within planned parts of Kano's urban agglomeration. Thus, the potentials of ZFarming are high in the sense that it creates opportunities for eradicating malnutrition and reducing transport and other costs associated with long distance haulage. The main recommendations of the study emphasize the need for mainstreaming ZFarming among the poor, women and in informal parts of the city.
2014, Ibrahim Y. B.
ABSTRACT Decreasing numbers of backyard gardens (BGs) and the poor attention paid to them in the Tamale Metropolis made the study, BGs and urban livelihood necessary. The objectives were to determine the contribution of BGs to food security, improvement of households’ income and the constraints affecting the establishment and development of BGs. The study was conducted in ten communities purposively selected to represent Tamale Metropolis in the Northern Region of Ghana. Simple random sampling method was used to select 136 backyard gardeners from a sampling frame drawn in each of the communities, using a statistical formula for finding sample sizes. Secondary data were collected from documents, articles, books and internet. Questionnaires were used to take primary data from the gardeners and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for the analysis. The study revealed that backyard gardening was practiced for both household and commercial purposes and contributes to improvement of food security and household income. The main constraints affecting the establishment and development of BGs included: destruction of gardens and produce by animals, high cost of quality garden input (fencing materials), pests and diseases attack on plants, inadequate water in dry season, stealing of garden produce, and low yield as a result of low soil fertility. Government should strengthen public institutions, such as MoFA, Town and Country Planning Departments, Universities and Metropolitans’/Municipals’/Districts’ assemblies to support the establishment and development of BGs in urban areas. More women and youth should be trained on best management of BGs and supported with finance and quality garden inputs. Water reservoirs should be developed in homes to harvest water during rainy season and used later during dry season or drought. For urban households to maintain food security and improve income, BGs should be considered the main activity in order to improve livelihood.
Studies have repeatedly affirmed the positive links between human and environmental health but few have sufficiently addressed the complexity brought about by the range of urbanity, population and both green space and domestic gardens cover associated human settlements. With the global population increasingly residing in cities, the relevance of urbanisation, local population and discrete types of green space provision on measures of health, remains a research imperative. To explore this complexity, a series of regression models were employed to quantify the mitigation of local health deprivation by green space and domestic gardens, across a four-stage rural-urban gradient, controlling for household income and local population. The population-standardised quantification of green space provision offered greater interpretive power than did a simple measure of land cover density. Domestic gardens, of the two green land-cover types, provided the most convincing mitigating effect on health deprivation. The findings call for increased acknowledgement of urban gardens in local health promotion, and a closer consideration of local population in planning green space provision and management.
2020, Sibbaldia
Set in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, Inverewe is one of the most spectacular garden locations in the UK. Situated beside the A382 on the North Coast 500 tourist route, the property receives over 100,000 visitors each year, drawn to see a diversity of plants and to enjoy the breathtaking backdrop of mountains and seascape it affords. Since its first plantings in 1864, the property has been a centre for experimental approaches to establishing and growing tender woody and herbaceous perennials, while a diaspora of alumni have gone on to fulfil prominent roles in the horticultural industry over the years. The garden today covers approximately 22 ha of mainly woodland gardens, renowned for the diversity of their designed elements and whose conservation management is based on a thorough understanding, appreciation and analysis of the garden's historical development and its significance in local, regional and national contexts. In recent years, Inverewe has faced a number of challenges related to the growing impact of global change, with increased occurrences of extreme weather events, and emergent pest and disease incidents associated with climate change and the movement of plants and their vectors, which include human-aided transport of problems between sites. In this context, this article provides a lens on the drivers of change that the plant collection is facing in the early decades of the 21st century. After an introduction to the garden, its evolved collections and management approach, three case studies are highlighted as examples of emerging threats to Inverewe as a garden and work of art. Inverewe is presented as a landscape that endures through adaptation to social, economic and, increasingly, environmental challenges that shape the direction it takes as a garden and plant collection growing on the edge.
2004
Go to AGRIS search. Revisiting garden-based learning in basic education. ...
2018, Sudan J. Des. Res. Vol. 10 (1) :111-134, 2018
In this article, we examine the structure and meaning of community gardens in Florida's most cohesive and oldest African American community of Frenchtown in Tal-lahassee. Here, residents reclaim and transform empty spaces into places of engagement and empow-erment, effectively resisting systemic racism. Using a mixed methods approach during a 5-week NSF-funded ethnographic field school with the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee, we counter the prevailing stigma of Frenchtown that perpetuates its continued marginal-ization. We argue that community gardens are expressions of social resistance. Through garden activities , residents transcend race, culture , income, and neighborhoods, while also promoting health, heritage , place-making, and economic opportunities. Place is constituted by spatial politics in a cultural milieu , evident in the community's ability to intersect diverse institutional boundaries via gardens. This research contextualizes how a community-based participatory research project successfully resists violent environments through spatial transformation.
2011, Public Health Nutrition
To examine the relationship between homestead food production and night blindness among pre-school children in rural Bangladesh in the presence of a national vitamin A supplementation programme. A cross-sectional study. A population-based sample of six rural divisions of Bangladesh assessed in the Bangladesh Nutrition Surveillance Project 2001-2005. A total of 158 898 children aged 12-59 months. The prevalence rates of night blindness in children among those who did and did not receive vitamin A capsules in the last 6 months were 0·07 % and 0·13 %, respectively. Given the known effect of vitamin A supplementation on night blindness, the analysis was stratified by children's receipt of vitamin A capsules in the last 6 months. Among children who did not receive vitamin A capsules in the last 6 months, the lack of a home garden was associated with increased odds of night blindness (OR = 3·16, 95 % CI 1·76, 5·68; P = 0·0001). Among children who received vitamin A capsules in the last 6 months, the lack of a home garden was not associated with night blindness (OR = 1·28, 95 % CI 0·71, 2·31; P = 0·4). Homestead food production confers a protective effect against night blindness among pre-school children who missed vitamin A supplementation in rural Bangladesh.
Urban agriculture is receiving increasing attention throughout the developing world, but debate rages as to whether it is a blessing or a curse. Some see it as savior for the poor, providing food, and livelihoods, yet to others it is responsible for harboring and vectoring pathogenic diseases and is an archaic practice that has no place along the path toward development. Consequently, the activity receives a mixed reception, and despite much support in many instances, it certainly does not enjoy universal unimpeded progress. Here, we undertake a global tour of urban agriculture throughout the developing world in an attempt to elucidate the various benefits, costs, and hindrances associated with the practice. Through this analysis we identify the need for better understanding of the following six aspects if urban agriculture is to make a meaningful contribution to food security and sustenance of livelihoods in the future: (1) the global and regional extent of urban agriculture; (2) the contribution of urban agriculture to communicable diseases, especially malaria but also diarrheal disease; (3) the role that urban agriculture does and/or could play in abating both malnutrition and obesity; (4) the impacts of urban agriculture on women; (5) appropriate methods of achieving governance and institutional support; and (6) the risks posed by chemical pollutants, particularly as Africa becomes increasingly industrialized. Overlaying these, we suggest that the time is ripe to extend the debate about urban agriculture's positive and negative environmental impacts—especially in relation to carbon emissions—from primarily a developed world concern to the developing world, particularly since it is the developing world where population growth and consequent resource use is increasing most rapidly.
2012, Biological Agriculture & Horticulture
2010, Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source
2010, Environmental Education …
2013
This study is a critical review of the most representative, published scientific literature which connects the triptych of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), environmental education and Special Needs’ Education. In other words, it examines the uses of ICTs and EE that can be applied to the special needs’ students educational learning. The latter are separated into the following categories: a) Generic disabilities, b) Special learning disabilities and c) Sensory and Motor disabilities. Additionally, this study examines how environmental education and various ICT methodologies can assist special needs in participating children by facilitating their external perception. In order to propose supportive and pleasant educational settings robotics, multimedia, virtual and Augmented Reality are presented. Finally, suggestions for further use of a combined approach between ICT and EE are strongly recommended in the service of those with special needs’ profile
2007, Landscape Research
In the early 20th century, the Hebrew women in Palestine found the fulfillment of their economic, social, and emotional needs in gardening. Their gardens were women's means of shaping their surroundings, mainly in the family sphere but also in the community sphere (school and kindergarten gardens, kibbutz gardens). The project was an outcome of the shared interests of pioneer women, city dwellers, and Jewish women's organizations, which differed in their social status and life goals, yet shared a common fertile ground. Through the investigation of primary and secondary sources that deal with women, gardens and the history of the Zionist settlement in Palestine, this paper argues that planting gardens was the Hebrew women's modest way of creating a ‘space of their own’, where they nurtured and fostered beauty, productivity, self-esteem, mutual help and friendship, while overcoming class distinction. Meanwhile, in planting gardens, women gained a share in the Zionist nation-building project, which was primarily male dominated.
2006, Social & Cultural Geography
2018, Antipode
Collective gardening spaces have existed across Lisbon, Portugal, for decades. This article attends to the makeshift natures made by black migrants from Portugal’s former colonies, and the racial urban geography thrown into relief by the differing fortunes of white Portuguese community gardening spaces. Conceptualizing urban gardens as commons-in-the-making, we explore subaltern urbanism and the emergence of autonomous gardening commons on the one hand, and the state erasure, overwriting or construction of top-down commons on the other. While showing that urban gardening forges commons of varying persistence, we also demonstrate the ways through which the commons are always closely entwined with processes of enclosure. We further argue that urban gardening commons are divergent and cannot be judged against any abstract ideal of the commons. In conclusion, we suggest that urban gardening commons do not have a ‘common’ in common.
The purpose of this dissertation was to document, analyze, understand, and describe how the environmental virtue ethics of undergraduate students were impacted after participating in a service-learning project designed to establish a new university garden. This service-learning project occurred during the fall semester of 2011, on the campus of Lighthouse University, a mid-size Catholic college campus that is located in an urban area of Southern California. The service-learning component was embedded within one environmental ethics course. Over the course of one sixteen-week academic semester, thirty undergraduates, between the ages of 18-23, each volunteered ten hours in this new on-campus garden. In addition to the student volunteer work, one of the complimentary course components required students to attend a speaking engagement hosted by Dr. Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmentalist. The action researcher, served as the catalyst, recorder, and facilitator of this service-learning project. In these roles, the action researcher mobilized members of the university, volunteers from the broader community, and local master gardeners to work side by side with the undergraduate students in the garden. After a qualitative analysis was conducted through the procedures of action research, local recommendations were generated in order to assist future garden-based curricular and co-curricular activities.
2017, Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability
This paper sheds critical light on the motivations and practices of community gardeners in relatively affluent neighbourhoods. The paper engages with community garden, alternative food and domestic garden literatures, to understand how people fit food production into their everyday lives, how they develop relationships to plants and how these in turn shape relations between people in a community group. The paper draws on participant observation and semi-structured walking interviews conducted at three community gardens in Sydney, Australia. The paper concludes that to fit community gardening into busy lives, people strategically choose plants with biophysical qualities that suit personal as well as communal circumstances and objectives. The paper shows how community is relationally constituted through the practices of growing and sharing food. Tensions might arise through the practices of growing food on communal and private plots and the taking and giving of food, but it can also encourage people to reflect on community food production and on their roles as individuals in a community group.
The link between spatial planning and public health is recognized as an opportunity to support the development of healthier urban environments and well-managed green space. Within this context, there is a growing body of evidence for the contribution that urban agriculture (UA), gardening, and food growing can bring to influencing health and its wider determinants. Through regeneration of land, UA can bring benefits to health at a community and individual level, while contributing to wider health policy development.
Always a part of city life, urban agriculture has recently attracted increased attention from diverse groups in the United States, which promote it as a strategy for stimulating economic development, increasing food security and access, and combatting obesity and diabetes, among other goals. Developing effective policies and programs at the city or neighborhood level demands as a first step the accurate mapping of existing urban agriculture sites. Mapping efforts in major U.S. cities have been limited in their focus and methodology. Focusing on public sites of food production, such as community gardens, they have overlooked the actual and potential contribution of private spaces, including home food gardens, to local food systems. This paper describes a case study of urban agriculture in Chicago which used the manual analysis of high-resolution aerial images in Google Earth in conjunction with ArcGIS to identify and map public and private spaces of food production. The resulting spatial dataset demonstrates that urban agriculture is an extensive land use type with wide variations in the distribution of sites across the city. Only 13% of sites reported to be community gardening projects by nongovernment organizations and government agencies were determined, through image analysis, to be sites of food production. The production area of home gardens identified by the study is almost threefold that of community gardens. Study results suggest opportunities may exist for scaling up existing production networks—including home food gardens—and enhancing community food sovereignty by leveraging local knowledges of urban agriculture.
Objective: To examine the impacts on food and nutrition-related outcomes resulting from participation in urban gardens, especially on healthy food practices, healthy food access, and healthy food beliefs, knowledge and attitudes. Design: The systematic review identified studies by searching the PubMed, ERIC, LILACS, Web of Science and Embase databases. An assessment of quality and bias risk of the studies was carried out and a narrative summary was produced. Setting: Studies published as original articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals in English, Spanish or Portuguese between 2005 and 2015 were included. Subjects: The studies included were based on data from adult participants in urban gardens. Results: Twenty-four studies were initially selected based on the eligibility criteria, twelve of which were included. There was important heterogeneity of settings, population and assessment methods. Assessment of quality and bias risk of the studies revealed the need for greater methodological rigour. Most studies investigated community gardens and employed a qualitative approach. The following were reported: greater fruit and vegetable consumption, better access to healthy foods, greater valuing of cooking, harvest sharing with family and friends, enhanced importance of organic production, and valuing of adequate and healthy food. Conclusions: Thematic patterns related to adequate and healthy food associated with participation in urban gardens were identified, revealing a positive impact on practices of adequate and healthy food and mainly on food perceptions.
2012, MS Thesis, Ball State University
While the globalized restructuring of manufacturing economies has marked many cities in the Midwest as places in decline, urban residents continue to mold the changing landscape to meet their needs and desires. Gardening is one socio-spatial practice that has expanded within the spaces left behind by a shrinking population and vacated industrial, commercial and residential properties. But not enough researchers have grappled with the social and political aspects of gardening. Gardens in general, and vegetable gardens in particular, sit at the nexus of a range of human constructs: urban land use, aesthetics, property law, social and class structure, economy and food. More specifically, little has been written on the distinguished history of urban gardening in Muncie, especially within the context of the “Middletown Studies” sociological tradition. Qualitative GIS represents an emerging mixed methods approach to geographic inquiry and a promising venue for an embedded exploration of gardening. Engaging with several “channels” of data collection, including participant observation, I use such an approach to combine fieldwork, spatial analysis, ethnographic inquiry, and an archival survey into an examination of how urban gardening in Muncie relates to broader economic forces. I ask what roles does gardening play in the physical landscape and social sphere of the south side of Muncie.
The garden is where nature-human interfaces occur through the practice of gardening, a pursuit that provides both challenges and opportunities for sustainable practices by householders in residential spaces. The study is framed within sustainability debates with a specific focus on green urbanism. Based on a mixed-methods approach this research explores the influence of suburban gardening practices on natural sustainability in Cape Town, by investigating homeowner gardening practices regarding the use of water, specifically during a period of water restrictions. It is noteworthy that respondents have heeded the call not to use potable water for gardening purposes. Instead, it was found that although the use of borehole water reduced dependency on potable water, the unregulated use of the underground resource could lead to its depletion. In addition, it was established that homeowners exclusively relied on borehole water as a substitute for potable water and very few used other alternative water sources to further reduce water consumption. In addition, the overwhelming majority of respondents did not use rainwater tanks for water storage citing cost, aesthetics and the presence of boreholes as reason not to acquire these tanks. The outcome of this study provides recommendations for sustainable gardening practices in established residential suburbs.
2019, Case Studies in the Environment
For the most part, research and policymaking on urban gardening have focused on community gardens, whether in parks, vacant lots, or other public land. This emphasis, while important for many Midwestern cities, can obscure the significance of privately owned land such as front yard and back yard and their crucial connections with gardening on public land. In this case study, we examine how policies and practices related to gardening and the management of green space in two Midwestern cities exceed narrow visions of urban agriculture. The article explores the cultivation of vacant lot gardens and private yards as two modes of property in similar Midwestern contexts and argues that the management of green space is about more than urban agriculture. Instead, we show how urban gardening occurs across public/private property distinctions and involves a broader set of actors than those typically included in sustainability policies. Gardening also provides a key set of connections through which neighbors understand and practice sustainability in Midwestern cities.
2001, American journal of preventive medicine
In this study I explore the social organization of community gardening in Toronto. I have done this by: exploring (a) the experiences of community garden coordinators hired by non-profit organizations do to improve poor Torontonians’ access to food, and how this work occurs within and is affected by the larger framework of (b) the City of Toronto’s Community Gardens Program. This inquiry was carried out using institutional ethnography, with data collection occurring through open-ended interviews with garden coordinators and the analysis of non-profit and municipal documents. The results of the study are that garden coordinator’s work to improve access to food for poor Torontonians is at odds with the municipal understanding of community gardens and park space existing to attract economic investment to Toronto via “creative professionals.”