Community gardens and food

With modern cities up taking up only three percent of the world’s land surface, their ecological footprints actually cover the entire globe. In recent decades urban solutions are moving from Sustainable Cities to Regenerative Cities. A factor in this shift seeks to reduce energy use in food transport by increasing urban agriculture, thereby cutting fossil fuel dependance and misuse while building community resilience.

General introduction to approach

Community gardens and other aspects of food production, together with their related spaces and processes, are seen as important loci that can lead to various types of urban transformation in cities. Some examples of approaches that relate to this theme include: ‘Edible City Solutions’, community-based urban farms and gardens, aquaponics, and community gardens for social reintegration. While our examples here are mostly based in Europe, some have had a global outreach with city partners based in Central America, Africa and East Asia. The systemic use of urban landscapes for food production is a major step towards more sustainable, livable and healthier cities. Many approaches are seen to empower local communities to overcome social problems by their inclusive and participatory dynamics. Others have also created dynamics for new green businesses and jobs, such as selling locally produced honey, thereby generating local economic growth and fostering social cohesion.

Shapes, sizes and applications

EdiCitNet is the Edible Cities Network Integrating Edible City Solutions for social resilient and sustainably productive cities and has just started in 2018, expected to run until 2023. EdiCitNet focuses around Edible City Solutions (ECS), including different forms of urban farming combined with closed loop systems for sustainable water, nutrient, and waste management. It examined case studies in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Andernach (Germany), Oslo (Norway), Heidelberg (Germany), and Havana (Cuba), and found that while the implementation of Nature-based solutions (NBS) (link) has increased in the last decade, they have not been able to significantly increase social cohesion as they mostly invite users to ‘stay and use’ passively but not to become actively involved on-site, in an ongoing fashion. According to findings from the EdiCitNet, around the world and across all socioeconomic groups, cultural and generational differences ECS are booming and demonstrate a high potential for a participatory development of social cohesion.

The ProGIreg (Productive Green Infrastructure for post-industrial urban regeneration) project began in 2018 and is active in post-industrial urban areas that suffer from social and economic disadvantages, inequality and related crime and security problems. Its approach is based on the use of Living labs with local communities in order to affect change using eight interconnected NBS based on food production. This Community-based urban farms and gardens approach will turn unused urban land into productive community gardens, contributing to improved mental and physical health through exposure to nature and healthy sources of food and a community feeling. Additionally an aquaponics approach will be tried in 4 cities. Aquaponics is a combination of raising fish (aquaculture) in tanks, together with soilless cultivation of plants (hydroponics) in a symbiotic environment, whereby the fish waste water provides the nutrients needed to feed the plants. This approach is easy to operate and ideal for promoting local food production in areas with contaminated or poor quality soil, and has the potential of creating green job opportunities.

Another approach implemented through the CITISPYCE project (Combating inequalities through innovative social practices of, and for, young people in cities across Europe, 2013-2015) worked with young people in Elefsina, Athens, and used a Municipal Vegetable Garden as a private initiative. Originating from an NGO called EPEKA, it aimed at the social reintegration of people facing financial difficulties through their active engagement with the vegetable garden. It successfully resulted in 3 young people (up to 30 years old) finding employment.

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

Urban gardens have come to symbolize a proximate and locally driven way of improving life in cities, not only in terms of food provision and greening but also as inclusive community hubs that promote sustainability. In all their diversity, urban gardens are not only responses from below to the socio-economic crisis and its associated precariousness, but have also increasingly become part of urban planning and policy.

Food justice activists defend urban agriculture as an important tool for urban food security and sovereignty (Anguelovski, 2014), especially so in the context of food deserts and unhealthy foodscapes. Gardening work holds individual healing and other health benefits for socially vulnerable residents and can help them recover from trauma.

Regarding sustainability issues, EdiCitNet´s ECS conceptional framework explores how urban farming combined with closed loop systems for sustainable water, nutrient, and waste management can create more resilient cities. Both ProGIreg and EdiCitNet explore many aspects of sustainability to a very deep degree, seeking to identify and improve areas in cities through NBS including: biodiversity, the carbon cycle, soil consumption and use of natural resources in urban environments, citizen involvement, education and empowerment. Citizen science and active citizen participation also include sustainable education and nature appreciation.

Narrative of change

With modern cities possessing such large ecological footprints that cause Climate Breakdown, how can the systemic use of urban landscapes for food production act as a major step towards more sustainable, liveable and healthier cities.

All approaches identify urban agriculture and related NBS as means to lowering energy dependence by increasing local food distribution and markets, thereby reducing global carbon emissions and increasingly urban resilience. Some approaches identify the Transformative potential of local food production zones as allowing for empowerment of local communities to overcome social problems by their inclusive and participatory dynamics, creating new green businesses and jobs, thereby generating local economic growth and fostering social cohesion.

Transformative potential

ProGIreg and EdiCitNet´s approaches offer the highest degree of Transformative potential, with both seeking to make urban transformation work with and for local communities, where citizens become active participants in the construction and upkeep of community projects and spaces in their communites, as opposed to being just passive ‘stay and use’ users. The growth of such community decision making processes could lead to wider aspects of future neighbourhood design being driven by community-led initiatives.

Summary of relevant approaches

The PATHWAYS project focused on key objectives of (2016) EU sustainability policy (moving towards a sustainable, resource-efficient, low-carbon and climate-resilient Europe). This was intrinsically linked to the success of two key transitions: 1) the energy transition and 2) the land-use transition. The Transition Case Study Database includes examples from the second section relating to the approach of “Community Gardens”.

• Rosa Rose – more than just a Berlin garden

The initiative “Rosa Rose" is one of the community garden projects in Berlin. The initiative started in 2004, when a group of neighbours in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain began turning a 2000m² brownfield into a garden to create their own little oasis. The idea was to grow vegetables, some fruits and herbs and create a green space and dog area that would also be open to passers-by. But unfortunately the oasis had to be abandoned a few years later, due to a planned construction. In May 2010 they could start to develop their new site, a green public area right next to their original location proposed by the district of Friedrichshain. Since then, a contract with the district office ensures a free usage of the area for at least five years, provided that the group maintains the space.

• Casale Podere Rosa

In the north-east of Rome there is an old country side building where more then 20 years ago a bunch of willing and motivated people decided to take up an abandoned area to develop an entire microcosm of activities. Over the years this has grown to include a solidarity purchasing group, an educational botanic garden, urban gardens, a farmer market twice a months, an organic restaurant, the management of a library dedicated to the ecological culture, the energy production through solar panels and more. Today the Casale Podere Rosa is a fully developed association around which revolve a community of 500 people, more than 100 families. A piece of neighbourhood benefitting from and contributing to the drive to shape the current identity and quality of the surrounding area. Its achievements, quite unique in the urban scenario where the initiative is settled, are the results of a careful management of the relationships with the local institution and of ability in taking advantage of the peculiarities of the neighbourhood, which has a history of social and environmental struggles.