This exploratory research focuses on identifying the roles and perspectives of community gardens in the Dallas area. Results from semi-structured interviews reveal the social and political makeup of the neighborhoods where the garden projects in this study are located. While these findings highlight the benefits of gardening in the city, they can also be contested spaces. In advocating for the proliferation of garden projects in the city, community organizations would benefit from understanding the nuances of garden initiatives and the way in which they are perceived by members of the garden, nearby residents, and policy makers.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Katherine Nesse / Many cities around the United States struggle with racially segregated neighborhoods (USA on Race 2013). The existence of isolated neighborhoods continues to reinforce racial distrust and promotes stereotypes. Some of the primary negative consequences associated with residential segregation include unequal job opportunities, greater health risk, high concentrations of poverty, educational constraints, and high building and lot vacancy rates. Residential segregation is an issue in Kansas City, Missouri along Troost Avenue. Troost Avenue is a stark racial dividing line within the city core. West of Troost Avenue, whites account for 88 percent of the population while blacks make up 93 percent of the population to the east (Troost Village Community Association 2013). The intent for this project is to create a resource to help establish and promote social interaction within the Troost Avenue neighborhoods by creating a purpose-driven community garden at the St. James Place apartment complex. The site’s unique location, positioned adjacent to other apartment complexes and subdivisions in the Citadel Neighborhood, had the potential to attract many types of users to the garden site. Through a process of literature review, surveys, interviews, and precedent study analysis, design goals were established. The design proposals for the St. James Place Community Garden focus on increasing site activity, establishing accessibility, and promoting originality.

This thesis provides an analytical case study of Huerta del Valle Community Garden as a successful model of redefining social capital through not only providing healthy, affordable, high quality produce to a community subjected to the disproportionate consequences of systemic inequality, but also in incorporating a food justice education framework to underlie all development at the garden. Located in the city of Ontario, Southern California – the heart of the Inland Empire, known for its prominence within the nation’s goods movement industry and its landscape of sprawling warehouses – local residents face high rates of poverty, obesity, and a lack of food access. This research identifies the socio-economic, historical factors that led to Ontario as we know it today. I argue that Ontario was founded upon institutionally racist principles, which set the region up for a future of economic disparity. It is through ‘bottom-up,’ grassroots community organizing that deeply engrained structural barriers are most successfully challenged.

As community gardens (CGs) become increasingly popular, it is timely to investigate whether they further sustainability goals. Underpinning my research were questions like why people get involved in CGs, what benefits they derive, what they learn from gardening, and how governance facilitates that learning. Through interviews with gardeners, my data show that key benefits of gardening included building community, environmental protection, improved health, and resisting the industrialization of food. CG membership also facilitated learning in all three domains of Transformative Learning: communicative, instrumental, and transformation. Learning outcomes included gardening skills, improved insight into self and others, and increased prevalence of pro-environmental perspectives. The primary source of learning was interaction with other gardeners. CG involvement may contribute to sustainability by providing an environment which allows people to connect with nature, learn from others (if governance, garden organization, and social capital are strong), and choose more pro-environmental behaviours. / May 2016

This thesis deals with the public greenery, its division, forms, function, protection and revitalization. Public green is displayed, in this thesis, as an integral part of our everyday life, which is necessary to protect and avoid its destruction due to any development and which is necessary to preserve, maintaine and rebuilt as much as possible. The aim of this thesis is to design a revitalisation study of public greenery in Blatná. For this purpose, were used findings from all various literature sources and also knowledge about the town and the location which is solved in this thesis. Thanks to this work it was possible to gather information about the history and present state of the territory and suggest revitalization based on this knowledge. The designed revitalization of the selected locality is designed so that the area integrates and fulfils the requirements of the local community, both in terms of necessary parking and preservation of greenery. The revitalized area reflects the modern concept of the natural creation of public greenery with its functional use in the form of edible trees and herbs.

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Treating food as a commodity is a dominant mode of valuing food in the United States, and around the world, in which people exchange money for food. But in a world that can feed over 10-billion people why is poverty still a primary barrier to food security? This dissertation adds to the food justice and political economy literature by arguing that food insecurity will linger far into the future, despite technological advancements, because of the current food system which values food as a commodity instead of valuing food as a human right. Through an analysis of 23 semi-structured interviews with volunteers and workers in Oregon, and field research at a community garden, this dissertation highlights how even in the minds of people who advocate for food as a human right, the human right to food may only a right to people with enough money. This research illuminates how thinking of food as a money-exchange commodity builds a socially constructed wall between hungry people and abundant food.

Community gardens have been the focus of social science research in the United States for several decades and the benefits associated with these alternative food spaces has been well documented. More recently, scholars have begun to argue that these benefits are inequitably distributed across society. Largely as a result of the whiteness of these spaces, people of color are less represented in community and benefit less from their presence. Portland, Oregon is recognized as a leader in sustainability, with its abundance of community gardens and urban agriculture. It is also one of the whitest urban cities in the United States. People of color have faced a legacy of oppression and marginalization in Portland, and this is especially true for the black community. Through conducting 17 in-depth interviews and spending an extensive amount of time observing community gardens in Portland, this research aims to explore how the whiteness of these spaces functions to marginalize black individuals and contributes to the ongoing oppression of the black community. This research also demonstrates how the black community in Portland engages community gardening in an effort to resist these and broader effects of structural racism.

In the global industrial agricultural system many people lack access to high-quality nutritious foods and food production techniques are often inefficient and reliant on harsh chemical inputs. While numerous strategies exist to address the disparities present in the global food system, increasingly researchers and practitioners are looking to local food systems for solutions to strengthen community food security (CFS). CFS emphasizes small-scale production strategies such as farmer's markets, community gardens, and consumer supported agriculture. As these efforts evolve, research is needed to understand how these strategies affect communities. To explore a local CFS initiative, qualitative data were collected from community garden participants in Fellsmere, Florida, contextualized by participant observation. Interviews (N=9) focused on household and community nutritional concerns and the impacts of community gardening on diet quality and food security. Further, quantitative data were collected on the Fellsmere food environment using the USDA Thrifty Food Plan in six local food stores. Individual and household food security, the ability to obtain enough food to live a healthy life, was assessed using a food access and security survey (N=30). Results suggest that the Fellsmere food environment is lacking in the high-quality foods that participants' desire. Additionally, interview data suggests that participants want more control over their food production systems. This thesis provides a case study for better understanding what factors affect community members' perceptions of community food security.

The high prevalence of food insecurity experienced by remote First Nation (FN) communities partially results from dependence on an expensive import-based food system that typically lacks nutritional quality and further displaces traditional food systems. In the present study, the feasibility of import substitution by Agroforestry Community Gardens (AFCGs) as socio-ecologically and culturally sustainable means of enhancing food security was explored through a case study of Fort Albany First Nation (FAFN) in subarctic Ontario. Agroforestry is a diverse tree-crop or tree-livestock agricultural system that has enhanced food security in the developing world, as low input systems with high yields of diverse food and material products, and various ecological services. Four study sites were selected for biophysical analysis: two Salix spp. (willow)-dominated AFCG test plots in an area proposed by the community; one “no tree” garden control test plot; and one undisturbed forest control test plot. Baseline data and a repeatable sampling design were established to initiate long-term studies on the productive capacity of willow AFCGs as a means to enhance food security in subarctic FN communities. Initial soil and vegetative analysis revealed a high capacity for all sites to support mixed produce with noted modifications, as well as potential competitive and beneficial willow-crop interactions. Identification of barriers to food security and local food production in FAFN revealed a need for a locally-run Food Security Program (FSP) in partnership with the AFCGs to provide the personnel, knowledge and leadership necessary to increase local food autonomy and local food education and to manage the AFCG as a reliable food supply. Continued research on AFCGs and the FSP may allow wide-scale adoption of this strategy as an approach to enhance community food security and food sovereignty in remote FNs across Canada. An integration of conventional crops and native species in the AFCGs is recommended as a bicultural approach to enhance social, cultural and ecological resiliency of FN food systems. As an adaptable and dynamic system, AFCGs have potential to act as a more reliable local food system and a refuge for culturally significant plants in high-latitude FN socio-ecological systems, which are particularly vulnerable to rapid cultural and ecological change.