ABSTRACT A LESSON FROM THE URBAN GARDEN Jamie Hamblin Purpose: In 2008 the world’s urban population surpassed the rural population; furthermore, the United Nations estimates by 2025 the world’s urban population will increase by about one billion people. Given recent population shifts and the interconnectedness between food and health, this research examines the role of agriculture in addressing urban food insecurity by reviewing urban interventions with a goal of food production. Methods: Using the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, an adjusted theoretical framework was developed which accounted for negative implications of these interventions as well as sustainability. Ultimately, the framework generated a food security score respective of each project. Using this score, statistical tests were conducted to confirm characteristics of more effective projects. Results: Statistical analysis indicates food security score has a strong correlation with physical, future and social capital (0.72, 0.73 and 0.80 respectively). Food security score has a moderate correlation with duration of project and a strong correlation with number of project components (0.60 and 0.83). Furthermore, mean food security score of projects which used participatory methods was statistically different than mean food security score of projects which did not use participatory methods (p=0.01). Conclusions: Participatory methods prove an important aspect of an urban agricultural intervention. Statistical results affirm urban food insecurity should be addressed through an integrated strategy which considers long-term viability of the project. Food security score, developed for this research, can help identify valuable components of interventions; however, this system is fairly subjective with some limitations.

Thesis (M.U.R.P.L.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-68). Also available via the Internet.

Master of Urban and Regional Planning

Community gardens are places where people gather to share the experience of gardening. However, users often struggle to find time in their busy schedules to care for their plots and crops. This research explores the impact of different watering systems on gardening based on plant quality, cost, labor, and time for. The study analyzed the inputs and outputs of hand watering, automated, and subsurface irrigation treatments in hopes of identifying how to design community gardens for the most efficient application of water, ultimately striving to increase crop production, crop quality, and community interest. Results indicate that subsurface irrigation systems are more likely to save time, reduce water use, and produce a higher quality crop when application and setting is adequate.

[pt] Esta é uma dissertação de design de serviços para a inovação social e a sustentabilidade que tem como objetivo compreender e fortalecer as iniciativas coletivas produzidas por seis hortas comunitárias situadas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Para tanto, utiliza como metodologia uma revisão de literatura baseada no design e na inovação social, em práticas colaborativas de design e no design de serviços e, ainda, em atividades de campo como entrevistas, a observação participante e diários de pesquisa. Foram desenvolvidos dois exercícios de design de serviços: o primeiro partindo de um processo de design especialista e o segundo de um processo de codesign em uma horta comunitária no qual se utilizou o método Dragon Dreaming. Os resultados foram favoráveis para o desenvolvimento de processos colaborativos dentro das iniciativas das hortas, que já se sustentam de forma coletiva. O processo de codesign deu origem a dois projetos que podem ser desenvolvidos futuramente e ainda contribuiu para que mais encontros e processos coletivos sejam gerados dentro das hortas. O tempo foi um dos fatores limitantes para que a prática de codesign não fosse desenvolvida nesta pesquisa. O estudo comprovou que os processos colaborativos de design são o fio condutor dentro de práticas coletivas e que o codesign é uma prática que pode sustentar os processos para as atividades das hortas comunitárias. / [en] This is a designing services research for social innovation and sustainability and aims to understand and strengthen the collective initiatives produced from six community gardens. A literature review based on social design and innovation, collaborative design practices and service design was used as a methodology, and field activities such as interviews, participant observation and research journals were used as methodology. Two service design exercises were developed: the first part of an expert design process and a second from a codesign process in a community garden using the Dragon Dreaming method. The results were favorable for the development of collaborative processes within the garden initiatives that are already being supported collectively. The codesign process gave rise to two projects that can be developed in the future and also contributed to generate more meetings and collective processes within the gardens. The time was one of the limiting factors so that the practice of codesign was not developed in this research. The study proved that collaborative design processes are the guiding thread within collective practices and that codesign is the practice that can sustain processes for community garden activities.

I Sverige växer intresset för att odla sina egna grönsaker, men få bostadsområden erbjuder möjlighet till odling och det är högt tryck på befintliga kolonilotter. Det är därför nödvändigt att ge plats åt nya former av odling i den urbana miljön. En sådan utveckling går i linje med den omställning mot hållbar stadsutveckling som städerna står inför. Kommunen behöver ge praktiska exempel på hållbara lösningar och en väg att gå är att låta medborgarna odla i det offentliga rummet.Uppsatsen avser att ta fram en förstudie till ett projekt som ska bidra till en förbättrad hållbar stadsutveckling. Projektet som föreslås är att parkkontoret i Lunds kommun tillsammans med odlingsintresserade invånare anlägger en stadsdelsträdgård på den stora gröningen i Folkparken. En stadsdelsträdgård är en självorganiserad trädgård som brukas gemensamt av invånarna med minimal involvering av kommunen. Idealt sett initieras stadsdelsträdgården helt underifrån, men det betyder inte att en kommun som vill få igång ett engagemang inte kan hjälpa till att skapa förutsättningar och bygga en grund.Internationellt finns Stadsdelsträdgårdens motsvarighet i community gardens. Forskning på community gardens tyder på att fördelarna är många. Engagemanget leder till en ökad gemenskap mellan invånarna, stärker områdeskänslan, ökad tryggheten, förbättrad hälsa, ökad fysisk aktivitet och en ökad förståelse för naturen. Dessutom har man sett att fastighetsvärdena ökar runt en community garden.Folkparken anlades i slutet på 1800-talet av och för arbetarna. På 90-talet riskerade parken att försvinna till förmån för bostadsbebyggelse, men räddades kvar tack vare folkets protester. Parkbyggnaden står idag oanvänd och en utredning om dess framtida användning pågår. Parken behöver en ny identitet och funktion som säkrar dess fortsatta existens.En stadsdelsträdgård skapar en ny form av mötesplats i Folkparken, samtidigt som det är ett viktigt steg i riktningen mot en hållbar stadsutveckling. / In Sweden today it is there is a growing interest in cultivating your own vegetables, but few neighborhoods offer an opportunity for gardening and demand exceeds the availability of allotments. It is therefore necessary to make way for new forms of gardening in the urban environment. Such a development is in line with the shift towards sustainable urban development faced by cities today. The municipality needs to provide practical examples of sustainable solutions and one way to go is to let the citizens cultivate in the public domain. This paper intends to develop a feasibility study for a project that will contribute to improved sustainability. The suggested project is that the park office in Lund together with inhabitants, construct a Stadsdelsträdgård on the large lawn in Folkparken. A Stadsdelsträdgård is a self-organized garden held in common by the residents with minimal involvement by the municipality. Ideally, a Stadsdelsträdgård is initiated entirely from below, but that does not mean that a municipality that wants to launch a commitment cannot help to create conditions and build a foundation. The international correspondence to a Stadsdelsträdgård is a community garden. Research on community gardens suggests that the benefits are many. Community gardening leads to improved relationships among people, increased community pride, security, physical activity and health plus it gives a better understanding of nature and its cycles. Finally, it has been found that property values are enhanced around community gardens. Folkparken was established in the late 1800s by the working class. In the 90s the park was threatened to disappear in favor of housing developments, but was saved thanks to the public outcry. The park building is currently unused, and an investigation as to its future use is in progress. The park needs a new identity and function that will ensure its continued existence. A Stadsdelsträdgård would create a new form of meeting place in Folkparken and at the same time as it is an important step in the direction to a sustainable urban development.

<div>Biosolids-based fertilizers are sold to the public to provide beneficial nutrients and organic matter for plant production. They are commonly applied to community gardens, municipal lands, reclamation projects, and golf courses. These fertilizers, however, may also contain a variety of trace organic contaminants, which can be persistent in the environment. Our work sought to quantify the persistence of biosolids contaminants in community garden soils. The commercial biosolids-based fertilizer, OCEANGRO®, was amended to two community garden soils to determine the first-order half-lives of four model contaminants: carbamazepine, miconazole, triclocarban, and triclosan. The criteria for their selection included biosolids occurrence, ecotoxicity, antimicrobial function, and knowledge gaps. Aerobic biosolids-amended soil microcosms were incubated at 22 ± 1 °C and approximately 80% field capacity. Sacrificial sampling occurred seven times over 180 days through multi-step solvent extractions. Detection and quantification were done on a high-performance liquid chromatograph tandem triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer. Results indicated that biosolids contaminants persist in soils with some having modeled half-lives in the hundreds of days. Additional analyses of solvent-spiked contaminant degradation and porewater desorption were performed to provide greater insight into possible limitations on resident biosolids contaminant degradation and to form a better comparative basis to previous literature. Solvent-spiked contaminants degraded more quickly than those resident within biosolids, which indicate that data using the former may underestimate persistence in real-world environments. The porewater analysis allowed for the desorption coefficient to be calculated for all four model resident contaminants. Disparities in the trends of these desorption coefficients and solvent-spiked degradation rates showed that desorption from the biosolids matrix may have been a limiting factor to resident degradation for only some of our four model contaminants. Nonetheless, the demonstrated persistence of these contaminants necessitates long-term thinking in relation to biosolids application. More work is needed on the potential hazards associated with biosolids use in public lands regarding ecotoxicity and antimicrobial resistance.</div>

This thesis explores the social dynamics of community gardens and their participation within them in the contemporary food justice movement in Seattle, Washington. Community gardens are seen as solutions to myriad urban and environmental problems, such as food deserts, community empowerment, urban greening, environmental education and sustainability of the food system. Three case studies of Seattle organizations, the P-Patch Program, Lettuce Link and Alleycat Acres, provide a basis for analysis of the purported benefit of community empowerment as a function of organizational structure, history and policies. City government support, flexibility, and a critical outlook towards the processes of inclusion and methods of fostering community-based leadership are found to be essential to a garden project. However, the definition of who is the ‘community’ in a community garden is called into question as more potential stakeholders and beneficiaries emerge in a changing and increasingly interconnected city. These networks of organizations and activists, complicated as they may be are a boon to the community gardening scene as they increase avenues for access for more Seattleites to healthy, local food. Community gardens are another representation of the current global movements against social inequalities, and therefore, to take full advantage of this opportunity for social change, community garden organizers must remain critically conscious of who is included and how this participation occurs.

This study examines models of community gardens and urban farms and determined a successful hybrid model for future implementation at the Huerta del Valle Community Garden. This was accomplished through analyzing the unique benefits and drawbacks of community gardens and urban farms as defined by the author, and then determining the components of each model that would maximize Huerta del Valle’s social and economic potential. Community gardens are defined in this thesis as places where community members can grow their own food in individual plots, and these spaces often contribute to community building, hands-on gardening education, and improved food access. Urban farms are defined as business models that produce food to sell to the community both to support the business and to improve community food access. Through research of existing community garden, urban farm, and hybrid models, the author determined that the most effective hybrid model includes intensive crop production, crop sales onsite as well as in farmers’ markets and delivery methods, a large community garden, and education programs for the community. The author then offered Huerta del Valle a potential model that includes these components as well as a store front, cooking lessons, value-added products, a Community Supported Agriculture program, and specific themed gardening classes. This complete model will potentially increase Huerta del Valle’s scope so it is able to improve healthy food access throughout Ontario while creating an enduring economic model.

Social movements do not only protest and demand political change - they produce new spaces too. Why and how? If we understand this, we can appreciate better the specificity and potential of the last cycle of mobilizations involving the encampment of cities' squares. This paper shows how the Indignados movement in Barcelona evolved from symbolizing an alternative future in the square to constructing alternatives in the city after. We find that people in alternative projects re-appropriate and transform urban space because they want to live differently and produce a radically different city, now. We conceptualize these new spaces as "prefigurative territories", integrating the seemingly divergent anarchist theory of prefiguration with Lefebvre's Marxist theory of space production. Prefigurative projects have strategic horizons and struggle with conflicts when opening up. Against those charging the Indignados with a fetishization of the occupied square and a failure to achieve political goals, we argue for the continuing relevance of the movement as it moved from the production of differential, to the production of counter-spaces. Further research should investigate how these counter-spaces feed into processes of political change. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers