I think community gardens increase a sense of community ownership and stewardship, foster the development of a community identity and spirit, bring people together from a wide variety of backgrounds (age, race, culture, social class), build community leaders, offer a focal point for community organizing, and can lead to community and efforts to deal with other social concerns.

It can also provide opportunities to meet neighbors, build block clubs (neighborhood associations), increase eyes on the street and recognized by the many police departments as an effective community crime prevention strategy.

These gardens offer unique opportunities for new immigrants (who tend to be concentrated in low-income urban communities) to: Produce traditional crops otherwise unavailable locally, Take advantage of the experience of elders to produce a significant amount of food for   the household, Provide inter-generational exposure to cultural traditions, Offer a cultural exchange with other gardeners, Learn about block clubs, neighborhood groups, and other community information, Offer neighborhoods an access point to non-English speaking communities and allow people from diverse backgrounds to work side-by-side on common goals without speaking the same language.

Shoaib

Community workers, public health officials and urban planners are increasingly concerned about declining levels of physical and psychological health of city dwellers. The reasons behind this alarming trend are complex. Much of the blame is being leveled at factors such as car dependency, long commuter distances, polluted and unsafe environments – all of which make it difficult to undertake the physical exercise needed to combat many serious diseases. Poor nutrition – particularly over consumption of high density foods – is another significant factor in the equation, especially in disadvantaged communities where fresh produce is often hard to find and expensive. Built environment and health professionals are gradually realising that they need to work together to better understand these issues if workable solutions are to be found. This is the background for our paper which discusses the role of community gardens in building healthy and sustainable communities. Focusing on a large high-rise public housing estate in Sydney’s inner west, the community garden scheme studied was part of an urban renewal program designed to ameliorate ongoing social problems on the estate. Our research found that this project resulted in a broad range of positive physical and psychological well-being outcomes for the public housing tenants. These included providing opportunities for individuals to relax, undertake physical activity, socialise and mix with neighbors, sharing across culturally different backgrounds and religions. The gardens also afforded opportunities to learn about horticulture and sustainable environmental practices, such as composting and recycling, as well as being an important source of low-cost fresh produce for a healthy diet.

I recommend that you see: Building Commons and Community (2008)

by Karl Linn. The book documents Linn's life work in building communities and gardens. See also: Agyeman, Julian and Briony Angus. 2003. "The Role of Civic Environmentalism in the Pursuit of Sustainable Communities." Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 46 (3):345-363. And, Thorpe, Ann. 2012. "Architecture and Design versus Consumerism: How Design Activism Confronts Growth " In. London and New York: Earth Scan; Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition. .

Thanks for this question and these resources. In September I have a group communication class that will be planning a community garden project and this is a great start for them to think about the larger implications of their project.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

Sheila, The City as an Ecological Space is very helpful - much appreciated.

And Steven, I'll definitely follow up your recommendations - cheers.

Many thanks

Dan

Hi Manuel

Your paper sounds very interesting - I wish I could understand Portuguese!

All the best.

Dan

On a practical note have a look at Growing Health Sustain and Garden Organic's compilation of case studies and evidence about the impact of food growing and gardening to health. www.sustainweb.org/growinghealth   www.findingspaces.nl/aesop6

Also AESOP Sustainable Food conference proceedings included some of this.  

www.cityfarmer.org/sandwell.html for links to work in this field in Sandwell UK.

all the best Veronica

Fantastico!

Thanks very much Veronica.

Our university has a community garden where people learn and teach each other about edible plants. We hold events in the garden and are working towards a teaching space for classes. We are learning a lot from community members who know much more about tropical gardening than we do. (http://www.cdu.edu.au/ldcg/). The garden projects fit into 'community engagement' and 'sustainability' missions of the university which has provided support with some elements such as land and insurance. A great model includes the CERES project (http://www.ceres.org.au/)  in Melbourne which has become a centre for social events, teaching and gardening. Health and social benefits are documented in journals mentioned by others. In Australia, the Australian Journal for Environmental Education has some research in this field included.

Hi Dan, You raised an interesting issue.  I'm leading a community gardening project in Bordesley Green, one of the most deprived areas of Birmingham (UK).  The area is reasonably ethnically diverse, a large number of population are from South Asia origin, there are also new communities living in the area who are from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Romania.  The project initially started from door knocking from cold and from listening in the communities about their hopes and aspiration of improving their area. Some pointed out that there is a lack of communication between the communities in the area and suggested a community gardening project in a local allotments may improve community cohesion, and build social solidarity. From participant observation, I examined that building social capital through community gardening activities is not an easy process.  Developing trust, respect and relationships among gardening communities require time to grow, and flourish.  Building a network is an intensive process that may initially happen within the homogeneous gardening groups.  Language, tradition, culture, ethno-botanical knowledge, religious belief practices, individual faith etc. work strongly behind building a network, that eventually strengthen social capital.  Despite gardening take place in a convivial environment, it is important to consider that there are factors such as underlying racism, sexism, ageism that often are hindrances to building social captial and in cases, building social capital may not take place and individual or group may work on their own in a community garden.  In my project, for example, a group of muslim women gardeners experienced such challenges and they are still struggling to overcome the barriers. There is certainly a need for indepth anthropological studies.

Thank you Birut - much appreciated. 

And thank you Kaneez - interesting points and observations.

Hi Dan. Just bringing in couple of comments and observations. My food garden project at the Allotments is still alive and kicking. However, whether this garden has created any solidarity or community cohesion - still remains a question ! Diversity in this garden is very prominent but I've observed there is no interaction, or communication between the various "community groups" growing food in the garden. For example, Asian gardeners are still accused of using too much water for their herb gardens by the non-Asian gardeners in the allotments, everybody accusing each other for messing up plots, stealing vegetables - cctv cameras are now installed in the allotments. This is outrageous that there's no trust, respect and not to mention any relationship in this garden. There's no conversation between gardeners from diverse background, no conviviality ! How we can restore peace in this food garden :)

Just in case anyone is still interested in further information on this topic... This is something I have been researching for a while, so I have more articles available.

Thank Danielle. Great resources and you have helped me restart my paper on this topic.