Valuing Physical and Social Output: A Rapid Assessment of a London Community Garden

Victoria Schoen,Silvio Caputo,Chris Blythe

doi:10.3390/su12135452

Abstract

The value of urban farms and gardens in terms of their potential for supplying a healthy diet to local residents is well known. However, the prime objective of these spaces often differs from one of food production with this being the means by which other outputs are achieved. Valuing these spaces that provide diverse benefits is therefore a complex exercise as any measure needs to incorporate their physical as well as their social outputs. Only through such an integrated approach is the true value of these gardens revealed and the scale of their potential for contributing to health agendas made apparent. Social return on investment studies can be heavily resource dependent and the rapid cost benefit approach advanced here suggests that with limited expertise and minimal invasion of volunteer and beneficiary time and space, a public value return on investment ratio can be estimated relatively rapidly using an ‘off the shelf’ tool. For the food growing area of a London community garden, a return on investment of £3 for every £1 invested is calculated. This demonstrates the contribution that community gardens can make to social wellbeing within cities and justifies a call for further recognition of these spaces in urban planning policy.

Highlights

The diverse benefits of community gardens have been widely reported in the literature [1,2,3,4,5] and are evident on numerous fronts including economic gain, environmental benefits, contributions to society, and improvements to a population’s health and wellbeing
It calculates the public value return on investment (ROI) achieved by the garden and subjects this to various proposed changes in garden organisation to assess what the impacts are on this indicator
If retention is held at 60% and impact is increased to 50%, an improvement in the ROI to £4.92 is observed

Summary

Introduction

The diverse benefits of community gardens have been widely reported in the literature [1,2,3,4,5] and are evident on numerous fronts including economic gain, environmental benefits, contributions to society, and improvements to a population’s health and wellbeing. Whilst many previous studies have described and quantified the benefits from one dimension, research that has simultaneously quantified more than one element is lacking This dearth of quantitative evidence regarding the contribution of community gardens risks failing to give the sector the objective, and potentially financial, recognition that it deserves. As a contribution to the debate on the monetised benefits of community gardens, this paper uses a rapid cost benefit methodology to put a value to the social benefits emanating from one garden in central London and combines this with the economic value of fruit and vegetables produced It calculates the public value return on investment (ROI) achieved by the garden and subjects this to various proposed changes in garden organisation to assess what the impacts are on this indicator. The approach has been developed and applied partly in response to calls from the community garden sector in the UK for a rapid assessment tool that has peer-review status and that can demonstrate the financial value of the garden’s intangible outputs alongside their more conventional produce

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Conclusion