Abstract
In recent years, community gardens are becoming more and more popular in China. However, the role of these community gardens varies significantly: some community gardens serve as an effective means of promoting social capital, while others cause social contradictions and public doubts due to the lack of professional design and management. Therefore, this paper aims to learn and better understand what factors affect the formation of social capital in Chinese community gardens. It screened eleven design factors and seven social factors and made social capital scale through literature review and expert workshop. On this basis, this study selected 35 community gardens in China as sample spaces, and collected 1257 questionnaires about the perception for social capital of gardeners through survey. In the statistical analysis phase, factor analysis and regression analysis were applied to analyze the role and the relative importance of different factors and social capital. Results show that the integration with green infrastructure, accessibility, size, visual openness, planting form, proportion of unproductive landscape, agricultural infrastructure, and smart infrastructure have significant impacts on social capital level. Meanwhile, the types of stakeholders, management rules, supervision system, self-management team, and operational activities have similar impacts on social capital level. This study recommends that planners and designers should adjust the above related factors in community garden design, and local government is urged to integrate community gardens into urban plans and public policies.
Highlights
As one of the strategies to respond to the food, social, and environmental problems caused by rapid urbanization, community garden has attracted the attention of more and more scholars and practitioners
The common factor F1 has a large load in the establishment of trust and the establishment of social networks, which reflects the direct social benefits that people obtain through participating in community gardens
As the results have shown, the integration between community gardens and green infrastructure has a negative correlation with social capital
Summary
As one of the strategies to respond to the food, social, and environmental problems caused by rapid urbanization, community garden has attracted the attention of more and more scholars and practitioners. According to the definition of American Community Garden Association (ACGA), community garden is any piece of land that is cultivated and managed by a group of people. Community gardens consist of both allotment-style and collectively managed gardens following above broad definition. The prototype of community garden can be traced back to the urban garden in Europe during the industrial revolution [3]. In response to the lack of fresh food during the urban industrialism period, charities and politicians in Europe allotted a parcel piece of land to the urban poor to grow vegetables and fruits. Representatives from associations and unions (e.g., from NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations)s in community development, real estate, gardening enterprises). Representatives from different policy and administration departments (e.g., from landscaping and urban planning, sustainable development, ecology and environment)
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