Association between Community Garden and Health

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This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su151612422

The term “community garden” generally refers to land where local community members manage and cultivate plants or flowers. A similar, but different, spatial form is the allotment, which refers to spaces within a large garden that individuals or families formally lease from organizations, such as companies and associations, for cultivation purposes. Community gardens emphasize their public nature, communal management, and sharing-oriented approaches. Community gardens exhibit a wide range of forms, reflecting the contextual characteristics of their locations. Urban community gardens often exist as alternative public spaces within cities, providing environmental, social, economic, and health benefits.

community gardens urban health well-being Satoyama Initiative social infrastructure

1. Community Gardens, Sustainability, and Health and Well-Being

Ebenezer Howard proposed the concept of the garden city, combining the health, natural, and economic factors of urban and rural living as a social reform solution. In this garden city vision, residents enjoy stable employment, and allotments for agriculture are provided at fair rents, fostering close relationships between producers and consumers, with agriculture benefiting from a “market at the doorstep” ^[1]. Lewis Mumford shared Howard’s ideas of social reform and pointed out that the small-scale model of medieval cities and the social organization based on common land for collective cultivation and grazing were the “healthiest, most delightful environments” ^[2]. Faced with the continuous expansion of the mega-city, he advocated for modern cities to enhance their self-sufficiency in food resources.

In modernist urban planning, urban green spaces and open areas have gradually replaced the role of agricultural spaces and become locations for people to connect with nature in their daily lives. However, these spaces produced by modern planning bureaucracy are often characterized by functional monotony and do not allow for active user participation. As a result, they fundamentally differ from the concept of community gardens, where people always negotiate their relationship with the environment through cultivation. Jane Jacobs’ criticism of the modern urban planning led her to diverge from Howard or Mumford’s holistic view of the city. She sought the underlying logic of urban development from an organic perspective ^[3]. She questioned the perspective that small- to medium-sized cities promote balance, or “togetherness”, as the spirit of the city. Instead, she believed in the urban dynamics generated by the heterogeneous population of large cities and the progressive changes that stable urban construction at the neighborhood scale could trigger.

In urban history, community gardens, as a form of social mobilization, often serve as an alternative intervention that responds to various urban crises. For example, in the late 1890s, the United States experienced a wave of urban crises due to mass immigration, urbanization, and environmental degradation, leading to the emergence of the community garden movement. It further expanded during World War I and the Great Depression ^[4]. In the early 1990s, as the political transformation in socialist countries caused a severe economic decline and food crisis in Cuba, nationally widespread urban gardens stabilized food supply. The process also integrated social factors, such as equitable access to food, reduced reliance on fertilizers, and minimal technical thresholds ^[5]^[6]. From 2020, the food crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic further reinforced the role of urban gardens as a lifeline for stable food sources. For example, in Malaysia, the government proposed an agricultural economic recovery plan with the Kebun Kouniti Program, a community garden initiative, demonstrating its effectiveness on ensuring food supply. Urban gardens significantly expanded, attracting a large number of participants, particularly in low-income communities ^[7].

In recent years, community gardens have developed into large-scale ecological and social experiments on a global scale ^[8]. Their purposes include emphasizing their role in climate change adaptation, improving microclimates, increasing biodiversity, and often integrating circular economy principles into garden design and production. Economically, community gardens can create employment opportunities and help empower vulnerable communities. On the social front, community-managed gardens can facilitate social cohesion and contribute to contemporary urban health issues. They can be seen as green infrastructure that helps reduce the urban heat island effect and provides various ecosystem services ^[9]. Many community gardens incorporate edible landscapes through adaptive design to promote resilient foodshed systems ^[10].

Community gardens can also be integrated with different ecological and cultural concepts in various regions, giving rise to unique local orientations. For example, in Japan, the Satoyama (or community mountains) movement emerged in the 1980s, advocating for the protection of mountainous and peri-urban environments. This movement led to the establishment of the United Nations Satoyama Initiative in 2010 ^[11]. Satoyama refers to regions characterized by diverse agricultural and forestry activities, such as livestock gardening and irrigation, as well as landscapes including secondary forests, ponds, and rice fields ^[12]. These areas exhibit close interaction between human economic activities and nature. Satoyama landscapes are seen as representations of harmonious relationships between humans and nature, with the core concept being the sustainable utilization of biological resources and diversified land use ^[13].

Satoyama is a biodiversity hotspot and it serves as a place for community resource utilization and the preservation of cultural heritage, showcasing the interaction between its natural and cultural characteristics ^[14]. In recent years, the application of the Satoyama Initiative has expanded from rural to urban areas, and the types of activities have become more diverse. In Kyoto, it was employed among a university and community partnership in forest restoration and gardening to facilitate knowledge sharing and enhances community’s social capital ^[15]. In the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area, government and citizen groups promoted urban Satoyama concepts for climate change awareness and enhancing health consciousness ^[16]. Urban Satoyama enables a lifestyle that combines leisure and work in “emerging productive green spaces” ^[17]. It advocates a new concept that empha sizes accessibility, provides ecosystem services, involves resident participation in manage ment, and promotes ecological restoration of green spaces, which significantly differs from the conventional approach to green space provision in urban planning ^[18]. Due to knowledge dissemination, the concept of Satoyama has also been referenced by some of the community colleges in Taipei City as a framework for environmental education. But among them, only the Nan Gang Community College (NGCC) employs it for community garden practices.

Based on the aforementioned aspects, community gardens have significant potential in the urban built environment as a foundation for reconstructing human–environment relationships. However, their development continues to face challenges. In 2014, the Taipei City government launched the Garden City Initiative (GCI) in collaboration with community garden initiatives, repurposing numerous vacant spaces as community gardening sites. Emphasizing a temporary utilization approach, this initiative rapidly increased the number of community gardens, but also introduced instability into the program ^[19].

2. Physical Activity, Cultural Expression, and Social Engagement

While the primary activity in community gardens is growing plants, the motivation for people to engage in horticultural activities is not solely driven by the harvest of agricultural products nor their economic value. Research indicates that gardens provide emotional, psychological, and therapeutic support to individuals. Creating gardens also offers individuals opportunities for creativity and self-expression ^[20]. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented opportunities that have accelerated the progress of urban gardening, transforming it into a location that promotes urban adaptation and resilience ^[21]. Compared to other forms of green infrastructure in urban areas such as parks, community gardens provide greater opportunities for physical and mental healing, with individuals experiencing more positive emotions and increased happiness. Due to the quarantine measures, many workplaces and public facilities were closed. People have increasingly turned to community gardens. In many places, these have even become the only options for parents to find outdoor spaces for their children ^[22]^[23].

The activities surrounding community gardens can also be linked to various types of visionary initiatives, playing a crucial role in advancing people’s understanding of publicness and urban justice. For example, in the “Black Community Food Security Network” in Detroit, many women participants identify themselves as activists. Their practices aim not only for food justice but also include resistance actions related to feminism, digital justice, environmental rights, and more ^[24]. In Chicago, African–American residents perceive community gardens as culturally sacred spaces that serve as mediums for community memory and the preservation and reconstruction of gardening culture ^[25]. In Ghent, Belgium, the experience of community gardens reflects an alternative counter-planning culture within the city, consciously challenging the ideology supported by neoliberalism and international organizational hegemony ^[26].

Community gardens, therefore, can be perceived as a form of everyday activism. In this context, Klinenberg’s perspective on “social infrastructure” contributes to a deeper analysis of the characteristics of community gardens, including their ability to connect everyday life and crisis response ^[27]. According to Klinenberg, social infrastructure is not social capital but rather “the physical conditions that support the generation of social capital”. In daily life, these spaces can support individuals in forming bonding and companionship relationships, countering social isolation and alienation. During crises, these spaces facilitate cooperation and resilience, thereby mitigating the impact of disasters. According to Klinenberg, successful social infrastructure can respond to its context, mobilize, and integrate social network resources in a flexible manner, and develop unique strategies.

Klinenberg considers community gardens to be an important form of social infrastructure. He cites the experience of the Growing Home initiative in Chicago as an example that offers a new perspective on urban health. Starting in the early 1990s with a training program for the homeless to engage in agriculture, Growing Home has stimulated the involvement of the city and other civil organizations. This has resulted in more than 800 community gardens and urban gardens by the late 2010s, contributing to neighborhood-based urban regeneration. Klinenberg points out that these spaces have various functions, such as cooling the environment, promoting learning, fostering neighborhood cohesion, and uplifting the community’s image. He advocates for the American Public Health Association to incorporate spatial planning with social infrastructure characteristics in promoting urban health. He further advocates for the inclusion of community gardens in land-use planning, rather than viewing them as mere neighborhood remedies ^[27].

Lawson stated that “urban gardens are both a place and an action, and their signifi cance goes beyond cultivation” ^[28], the above-mentioned cases illustrated the contributions of urban gardens to diverse urban well-being. Jeff Hou et al. defined community gardens as “hybrid public spaces” that transcend many social, institutional, and disciplinary boundaries ^[29]. Nevertheless, the progress of community gardens often faces difficulties because they challenge some fundamental concepts of urban planning. Their success relies on broad social support, and opportunistic actions are needed to advance their development. The creation and maintenance of gardens are embedded in complex network relationships underlying the urban agenda ^[20].

3. Linking Place and Health

The United Nations SDG 3 primarily focuses on targets related to disease incidence, mortality rates, and accidents. Only target 4 addresses prevention and mental health. In general, the SDG 3 indicators have some limitations as they fail to consider the connection between physical and mental health and the contextual factors of social and environmental influences.

On the other hand, SDG 11 encompasses various objectives such as urban green space provision, preservation of natural and cultural heritage, and community participation in governance. It emphasizes the sustainability, accessibility, and inclusivity of urban services and infrastructure, with spatial planning playing a proactive role. From an empirical perspective, these aspects are closely related to urban health and well-being.

Defining urban health today entails addressing the complexities of urban environments. Emerging trends include social, environmental, and cultural transformations: population aging and social isolation are redefining human health, while natural environments often pose crises that have an impact on well-being. Consequently, fostering healthy lifestyles and leveraging community support to enhance individual resilience are critical issues for urban health. The linkage of SDG 3 with SDG 11 can facilitate an examin ation of the interplay among health and well-being, human behavior, and environmental ecology, thus expanding the conceptual framework for urban health.

Community gardens have the potential to develop a place-based health model. Concepts such as Satoyama and social infrastructure demonstrate the circular relationship between human social interactions and ecological changes. In this regard, place and space are not merely carriers of activities; they are also important factors in fostering health awareness and organizing related practices, thus facilitating the co-action of human and ecological function ^[30].

In recent years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed a conceptualization of urban green spaces and health that goes beyond conventional land-use regulations and seeks further nuanced and context-specific definitions. WHO argues that the mechanisms linking green spaces and urban health are often complex and interacting, and some pathways may exhibit synergistic effects, instead of being straightforward exposure-outcome relationships ^[31].

However, the mainstream research on the relationship between green spaces and human health and well-being still employs linear pathways rather than a systemic perspective ^[30]. Lawrence et al. proposes core conceptual and methodological principles of human ecology to explain the complex interactions between green spaces and urban health ^[32]. The dimensions within this system include (1) macro-level factors related to policies, (2) conditions of the spaces themselves, (3) human agency, (4) the impact of human habitats/ecosystems, and (5) the state of health and well-being (comprising physical, psychological, and social dimensions).

References

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1. Community Gardens, Sustainability, and Health and Well-Being

2. Physical Activity, Cultural Expression, and Social Engagement

3. Linking Place and Health

References