Urban organic community gardening to promote environmental sustainability practices and increase fruit, vegetables and organic food consumption (original) (raw)
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BMC Public Health
Background: Despite growing evidence for the multiple health benefits of community gardening, longitudinal studies based on quantitative data are needed. Here we describe the protocol of JArDinS, a quasi-experimental study, aimed at assessing the impact of community garden participation (a natural experiment) in the adoption of more sustainable lifestyles. Methods: Gardeners (n = 80) starting gardening in a community garden in Montpellier (France) will be recruited. Volunteers with no experience in community gardening and matched for age range, gender, household income and household composition will be recruited in a control group (n = 80). The sustainability of lifestyles in its social/ health, environmental and economic dimensions will be assessed from a food supply diary (recording type, quantity and price of foods acquired in a 1-month period and the carbon impact of relevant food trips), a triaxial accelerometer (measuring physical activity) and online questionnaires on mental and social health, sensitivity to food waste, and connection with nature. Change of outcomes after 1 year will be compared between the natural experiment and the control groups. Discussion: This study will provide information on the impact of participation in a community garden on the different dimensions of sustainability, based on a robust quasi-experimental design allowing causality evaluation. Trial registration: The JArDinS study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03694782. Date of registration: 3rd October 2018, retrospectively registered.
BMC Public Health
Background Despite an increasing number of studies highlighting the health benefits of community gardening, the literature is limited by cross-sectional designs. The “JArDinS” quasi-experimental study aimed to assess the impact of community garden participation on the adoption of more sustainable lifestyles among French adults. Methods Individuals entering a community garden in Montpellier (France) in 2018 (n = 66) were compared with pairwise matched individuals with no experience in community gardening (n = 66). Nutritional quality, environmental impact and cost of monthly household food supplies, level of physical activity measured by accelerometers, as well as mental and social well-being, sensitivity to food waste, and connection with nature were evaluated at baseline (t0) and 12 months later (t1) to explore sustainability of lifestyles in social/health, environmental and economic dimensions. Linear mixed models were used to determine the independent effect of community gardenin...
Urban Gardening as a Multifunctional Tool to Increase Social Sustainability in the City
The concept of urban gardening varies a lot in terms of gardening forms and main purposes. Followed by changes in people life style, growing interest in healthy living and sustainable urban development, the aims of urban gardening become more complex. The product of urban garden, e. g. vegetables or ornamental plants, nowadays plays less important role, as the main focus is on societal issues, urban regeneration, education and health. Thus, this article provides evidence of multi-functionality of urban gardening to address the variety of societal issues across people of different age and cultural background. Case studies from Malmo, Birmingham and Riga show how urban gardening contributes to social integration, inhabitants' well-being and urban regeneration.
Impact of community gardens on the sustainability of lifestyles: baseline data of the JArDinS study
European journal of public health, 2019
Background: Health promotion programs (HPPs) have not yet succeeded in substantially reducing the health gap between higher and lower socioeconomic groups. It is thus a challenge to develop more effective strategies, based on an ecological perspective. To develop such strategies and activate citizens, this study explores citizens' perceptions of health and what they need to improve it. Methods: Setting Community HPP Voorstad on the Move (VoM) (July 2016-Jan 2020) in a district (+-11,000 inhabitants) in Deventer. Inhabitants' socioeconomic status (SES), perceived health status and lifestyle are low relative to other city districts. Study design: A qualitative study of 11 community groups (n = 89) participating in two focus groups. Concept mapping was used to cluster and prioritize health perceptions. Social Practice Theory (SPT) guided the analysis of needs to change health-related behavior. Results: ''We don't assume that everyone has the same idea about health, do we?'' (citizen) Participants differed in age (16-82), cultural background (17% non-Dutch origin) and type of group activity. High-ranking dimensions of health are social relations, physical activity, a positive life attitude, healthy eating and empowerment. To improve health, social support from family and friends and self-confidence were the main needs. Physical impediments, (chronic) illness and financial aspects were also mentioned as barriers. The focus groups contributed to new activities as part of the VoM program facilitated by a health broker: e.g. a swimming group, biking buddies, social meetings. Conclusions: Citizens perceive health as multidimensional, encompassing the physical and social environment, lifestyle behaviors, positive attitudes and being in control. Using SPT to unravel these needs in terms of meanings and competences helped to facilitate citizens' active involvement in health-promoting activities. Key messages: Low SES citizens perceive social relations, physical activity and a positive life attitude as important dimensions of health. Insight into citizens' meanings and competences about health behaviors facilitates the development of healthpromoting activities.
Constructing Organic Food through Urban Agriculture, Community Gardens in Seville
Sustainability, 2021
The growing presence of community or allotment gardens seeks to respond to the challenges of today’s urban societies in terms of sustainability. The food dimension of this phenomenon is one of its most important aspects, with clear repercussions on improving the quality of life of the allotment gardeners and their families. Through observation and qualitative analysis of some community urban gardens in southern Spain (Andalusia), this paper notes that the people who cultivate allotments within these community gardens attribute a wide variety of different meanings to their practices. One essential contribution of this research is the finding that this plurality of meanings moves beyond the rational-technical dimension of the act of growing, while at the same time redefining the act of consuming organic food, because of its connection with productive and social activities.
Growing Health and Quality of Life: Benefits of Urban Organic Community Gardens
2018
Objectives: To characterize the horticulturists of an urban garden in terms of their current state of health and health behaviors (at gardening beginning) and to evaluate the effect of horticulture practice on health behaviors and quality of life (after a six month gardening stretch). Introduction: The way in which cities have grown, with heavy air and noise pollution, reduced green spaces, a long distance and out of season food based system and limited sunshine access has led to multiple public health challenges. This in turn has prompted the emergence of various local and state policies aimed at improving the health and quality of life of urbanites.
Sustainability
Urban gardening has the potential to turn the growing number of consumers into conscious producers by raising awareness of natural resource cycles, contributing to environmental conservation and climate change mitigation. This study investigated the motivations for urban gardening in Germany, based on an extensive review of 657 urban gardening project websites. The subsequent online survey of 380 project participants provides a characterization of the gardeners, giving insight into both cultivation methods and technologies used and the participants’ consumer behavior. It was shown that urban gardening has an influence on consumer behavior and can induce a change towards a more sustainable lifestyle. The gardens provide a space for the exchange of social values, knowledge and ideas on different ways of life among the diverse participants. Hence, urban gardening creates far more than just food; it influences society on multiple levels. Urban gardening can support the bottom-up societa...
Dynamics of Community Gardening: A Catalyst for Health
The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived benefits of community gardening. A garden colony is a collection of adjacent plots of land primarily for the purpose of gardening. The methodology of this research consists of observations, interviews, questionnaires, and focus group. As a result of this research we found that gardening is a natural and safe way to meet the lifelong demands for a healthy life. We found specific mental and physical benefits as a result of this community gardening. We encourage communities to allow people to buy plots of land away from their homes to promote this healthy activity. The garden colony provides a place for individual renewal and restoration; this urban oasis offers a way to maintain and promote lifelong healthy living, and they are an important contribution to one’s life by adding a sense of meaning and purpose.
Community gardens as learning spaces for sustainable food practices
Urban agriculture is an emerging topic and it is widely argued that it has considerable potential for sustainable consumption and production. Community gardening is a promising type of urban agriculture and questions have been raised like whether it has additional benefits for sustainable lifestyles and behavior, and we can understand community gardens from a social practices perspective. This paper aims to provide first insights to these questions by looking at community gardens in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, when aiming at more sustainable urban food provisioning practices. Two cases are analyzed using Shove's image-, skills-stuff model, while also looking at learning processes, expectations and enrolment of involved actors. Data have been collected, through participatory observation and semi-structured interviews. There are both similarities as well as major differences between these two gardens that influence the food provisioning practice of participants as a whole. This study also shows that there are not only innovative developments pointing towards sustainability as well shared elements with less sustainable mainstream food provisioning practices. The former can be seen as opportunities that are not yet taken, whereas the latter are barriers that withhold the practice from changing. These insights improve our understanding how urban agriculture can play a role in a transition to more sustainable food provisioning practices.In addition, the role of the participants has found to be essential in the evolution, reproduction, changing and sustaining of urban food provisioning practices.
British Journal of Environment & Climate …, 2011
The study examines residents' concerns in greening their communities though self-help initiatives (SHI) carried out by individuals who utilise road set-backs to plant street horticultural gardens (SHG) in Eti-osa Local Government Area, Lagos, Nigeria. It purposefully administered questionnaire to managers of all SHG in the study area to establish their socio-economic characteristics, contributions to community greening and motivating factors behind their SHI. The study found that the horticulturists were nearly males (93.7%), young adults (54.0%), earning about three dollars per day (63.6%), have been in practice for more than four years (79.3%) and altogether using about 1.5% of land in the study area for SHG. A good number of them have contributed to voluntary greening of their communities through planting of trees (76.2%), hedges and shrubs (47.6%) and flowering plants (65.1%). The horticulturists' Motivating Index (HMI) employed to know why they went into the practice revealed that they (51%) were moved by the depreciating state of urban green (HMI=2.55) and feared (46.4%) the impending ecological doom on the built environment due to lack of sufficient green space, causing global warming (HMI=2.32). This could be why the linear regression test of the preference of social to economic value of the practice of SHG in the study area has its R 2 to be 0.219. This means that SHG in the area did not necessarily bring positive economic value to the horticulturists as the social value embedded in it. This study is a prove that literature and publicities on environmental effects of global reduction in green space seem to be yielding positive results in Africa as some individuals in the study area are taking into self-help initiatives in community greening, even where land seemed very scarce for such development. It concludes that literature on the subject should be more encouraged.