Abstract
Urban agriculture is an increasingly popular approach to addressing negative social and health effects of cities. Social benefits of urban agriculture include improved health and wellbeing, economic opportunities, social cohesion, and education. However, the extent to which urban agriculture participants are motivated by or experience these impacts has rarely been measured quantitatively, especially across the many different types of urban agriculture. We analyzed survey data from 74 urban agriculture sites in France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States to quantitatively assess the relationships between urban agriculture types, farmers and gardeners’ motivations, and the social impacts of urban agriculture. Through factor analysis, we established valid and reliable measurements of participants’ motivations and impacts. We identified four scales: general wellbeing impacts, nutritional health impacts, economic interests, and socialization motivations. Through multivariate analysis of variance, we document significant differences in motivations and reported impacts across types of urban agriculture. Finally, we conducted a multilevel multivariate analysis to explore the predictors of general wellbeing impacts. Participants with stronger economic interests, stronger socialization motivations, and who are owners or primary operators of their plots would be predicted to report greater general wellbeing impacts of urban agriculture. These results provide data about the impacts of urban agriculture projects that enable urban planners and policymakers to maximize the desired social benefits of urban agriculture.
Highlights
Cities are responsible for significant negative environmental, eco nomic, and health effects, in Europe and the United States
To contribute to quantitative research on the relationships between motivations, urban agriculture types, and reported social benefits, this paper reports the results of a multi-national study of urban farms and gardens
The scale, design, and operational characteristics of the urban agriculture cases in the Food Energy and Water (FEW)-meter project vary within and between countries, and range from allotment gardens composed of individual spaces gardened by one individual to large urban farms managed by external organiza tions and farmed in common
Summary
Cities are responsible for significant negative environmental, eco nomic, and health effects, in Europe and the United States. Urban green spaces produce multifunctional benefits that can miti gate these urban ills (e.g., Arnberger & Eder, 2012; Dennis & James, 2017; McVey, Nash, & Stansbie., 2018; Saint-Ges, 2018). They provide environmental ecosystem services such as stormwater retention, urban heat island effect mitigation, food provision, cleaner air, and biodiver sity (e.g., Ciftcioglu, 2017; Czembrowski, Łaszkiewicz, Kronenberg, Engstrom, & Andersson, 2019; Landreth & Saito, 2014; Petit-Boix & Apul, 2018). Urban green spaces that actively engage people produce physical and mental health benefits, alleviate social and economic problems, and foster community resilience (Camps-Calvet, Langemeyer, Calvet-Mir, & Gomez-Baggethun, 2016; Langemeyer, Latkowska, & Gomez-Baggethun, 2016; Shimpo, Wesener, & McWilliam, 2019; Sioen, Sekiyama, Terada, & Yokohari, 2017)
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