LinRuoran GSAPPUP 2018 Thesis

Urban Agriculture in New York City Ruoran Lin
Distribution, Benefits, Challenges, and Recommendations of
Urban Agriculture in New York City
A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of
The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science in Urban Planning
by
Ruoran Lin (rl2852)
Thesis First Draft
Advisor: Professor Malo Hutson
Reader: Professor Jonathan Martin
April 2017
i
Abstract
Urban Agriculture (UA) is a widely considered food policy strategy to address local food
issues. A heated discussion is ongoing among city politicians, farmers and gardeners, community
members and other stakeholders about whether the benefits of UA outweigh its challenges, and
whether to develop or abandon a comprehensive UA plan. Employing a two-step, quantitative-
qualitative method at the macro and micro scales, this study attempts to make a meaningful
contribution to this debate through a full-range evaluation of UA distribution and sustainability
in New York City (NYC), which has the largest number of urban agriculture projects in the
nation. First, this study explored the spatial pattern of citywide UA distribution, conducted a
descriptive analysis of UA performance, and examined the statistical association between UA
sustainable development and 25 influential indicators in terms of demography, environment,
economy, and equity. Second, it investigated two case studies, the individual urban farm and
community garden, to provide in-depth insights into UA benefits and challenges.
This study concluded that UA’s distribution in NYC had specific spatial clustering
patterns in the South Bronx and northern Brooklyn. Citywide UA made contributions to society
through its mature Community-Supported Agriculture networks, its huge green-industry
educational programs, and its high eco-value circulation systems. The city was faced with UA
challenges in terms of immigrant separation, non-significant economic contributions, land
shortage, health imbalance, and crime occurrence. For future UA development and regulations,
the recommendations were to construct an accurate and complete UA database, amend the UA
zoning ordinances, promote citywide cooperation, ensure a multiple-stakeholder process, ensure
social equity, and address the land demand conflicts between UA and other land use activities.
Keywords: urban agriculture, health justice, food security, urban resilience, green education,
community supported agriculture, land use, zoning
i
Acknowledgements and Dedication
I would like to thank my advisor Professor Malo A. Hutson, whose research guidance,
project experiences, and academic enthusiasm throughout the conception, research and writing
process were invaluable. I would also like to appreciate my thesis reader Professor Jonathan D.
Martin for reading the draft and providing valuable feedback during the thesis jury. In addition,
attending his great lectures provided in-depth insights into the land use planning theory and
process, which contributed to the policy analysis of my thesis from the practical perspective.
Thank you as well to all interview participation, which include (but are not limited to) the
100 Quincy Community gardeners, the Youth Farm managers and volunteers, the fourth Annual
Farming and Food Justice Career panelists, the Urban Food Policy Forum guest speakers, and all
the UA pervious researchers. Their rich information and generous support made this paper
possible. Moreover, a big thank you is due to UP vision, who organized the urban farm volunteer
activities and initially inspired my interest in the urban agriculture. Also, I would extend my
special appreciation to Dolly R. Setton, whose suggestions and kindness greatly helped me to
write this paper academically, systematically, and rationally. Thank you to my parents, family,
and friends who continue to support me in all of my academic endeavors. Their love and help
allow me to put my heart into this thesis and pursue the highest quality education at GSAPP.
This study is dedicated to those who interact with, contribute to, and benefit from the UA
system in NYC. In face of the heated discussion about UA legislation, recognizing the relative
benefits and challenges is of great importance to prop up a better future vision for UA
sustainable development. I strive to extend the UA dialogue with its environmental, economic,
and ethical impacts on all the New Yorkers, and hope that this paper contributes to the never-
ending pursue for a more beautiful, green, equitable, and harmonious future of the Big Apple.
ii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................i
Acknowledgements and Dedication ........................................................................................... ii
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... iii
i. List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... v
ii. List of Maps ........................................................................................................................ v
iii. List of Tables ................................................................................................................. vi
iv. List of Abbreviations ...................................................................................................... vi
Chapter 1. Research background ................................................................................................. 1
1.1 The Definition of Urban Agriculture.................................................................................. 1
1.2 Urban Agriculture Development ........................................................................................ 2
1.3 Urban Agriculture in New York ........................................................................................ 3
Chapter 2. Research Statement .................................................................................................... 4
Chapter 3. Literature Review ...................................................................................................... 5
3.1 Urban Agriculture Benefits and Challenges ....................................................................... 5
3.1.1 Environmental Aspect ................................................................................................ 6
3.1.2 Economic Aspect ........................................................................................................ 6
3.1.3 Ethical Aspect ............................................................................................................ 7
3.2 Urban Agriculture Research .............................................................................................. 8
3.2.1 Historical Urban Agriculture Research ....................................................................... 8
3.2.2 Urban Agriculture Studies in New York City .............................................................. 9
3.2.3 Urban Agriculture Research Methods ....................................................................... 10
Chapter 4. Research Design ...................................................................................................... 12
4.1 Study Site ........................................................................................................................ 12
4.2 Data ................................................................................................................................ 13
4.2.1 Urban Agriculture Dataset ........................................................................................ 13
4.2.2 Secondary Data......................................................................................................... 14
4.2.3 Primary Information ................................................................................................. 15
4.3 Methods .......................................................................................................................... 15
4.3.1 Quantitative Methods................................................................................................ 16
4.3.2 Qualitative Methods ................................................................................................. 20
Chapter 5. Results ..................................................................................................................... 23
5.1 Citywide Urban Agriculture System ................................................................................ 23
iii
5.1.1 Spatial Analyses ....................................................................................................... 23

5.1.2 Descriptive Analysis ................................................................................................. 30
5.1.3 Statistical Regression ................................................................................................ 35
5.2 Urban Agriculture Case Study ......................................................................................... 38
5.2.1 Background Investigation ......................................................................................... 38
5.2.2 Urban Agriculture Modelling.................................................................................... 42
Chapter 6. Discussion ............................................................................................................... 44
6.1 Urban Agriculture Distribution ........................................................................................ 44
6.2 Urban Agriculture Benefits and Challenges ..................................................................... 45
6.2.1 Urban Agriculture Benefits ....................................................................................... 45
6.2.2 Urban Agriculture Challenges................................................................................... 50
6.3 Urban Agriculture Policy Recommendations ................................................................... 53
6.3.1 Integrating Urban Agriculture Dataset ...................................................................... 53
6.3.2 Legislating Urban Agriculture Practices.................................................................... 54
6.3.3 Promoting Citywide Cooperation.............................................................................. 55
6.3.4 Designing Multi-Stakeholder Process ....................................................................... 56
6.3.5 Ensuring Social Equity ............................................................................................. 56
6.3.6 Balancing Urban Agriculture Development and Land Shortage Crises ...................... 57
Chapter 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 58
References ................................................................................................................................ 60
Appendix A .............................................................................................................................. 64
Appendix B ............................................................................................................................... 64
iv
i. List of Figures
Figure 1: Work Flow for Methodology...................................................................................... 16
Figure 2: Urban Agriculture Modeling ...................................................................................... 22
Figure 3: Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics for UA.................................................................... 25
Figure 4: Rainwater Harvesting Efficiency Comparison ............................................................ 31
Figure 5: Compost Production Comparison ............................................................................... 31
Figure 6: Landfill Waste Diversion Comparison........................................................................ 32
Figure 7: Haverst Counts Comparison ....................................................................................... 33
Figure 8: Market Sales Comparison .......................................................................................... 33
Figure 9: Participant Mood When Enterig into Gardens ............................................................ 34
Figure 10: Participant Mood When leaving out of Gardens ....................................................... 34
Figure 11: The Yorth Farm Market Sales by Production Type ................................................... 39
Figure 12: 100 Quincy Community Garden Rainwater Harvesting ............................................ 39
Figure 13: 100 Quincy Community Garden Compost Production by Weight ............................. 40
Figure 14: Compost Production Comparison by Weight per Square Feet ................................... 41
Figure 15: 100 Quincy Community Garden Landfill Waste Diversion ....................................... 41
Figure 16: Landfill Waste Diversion Comparison...................................................................... 42
Figure 17: Community Participation Actions for 100 Quincy Community Garden Formation ... 47
Figure 18: Community Connection Network for the Youth Farm Development ........................ 48
Figure 19: Different Levels of Educational Programs at the Youth Farm ................................... 49
Figure 20: Typical Ecological Circulation System for Urban Agriculture .................................. 50
ii. List of Maps

Map 1: Urban Agriculture Location Map in NYC ..................................................................... 24
Map 2: Community Garden Jurisdiction in NYC ....................................................................... 26
Map 3: UA Cluster and Outlier Analysis in NY ........................................................................ 28
Map 4: UA Hot and Cold Spot Analysis in NYC....................................................................... 29
v
iii. List of Tables

Table 1: UA Datasets from Different NYC’s Projects and Data Processing Methods ................. 14
Table 2: Secondary Open Data Related to Urban Agriculture .................................................... 15
Table 3: Variable Selection of 25 Influential Indicators for UA ................................................. 19
Table 4: The Introductive Summary of Urban Farms and Gardens Case Study .......................... 21
Table 5: Correlation between UA and Demographic Indicators ................................................. 36
Table 6: Correlation between UA and Demographic Indicators ................................................. 36
Table 7: Correlation between UA and Economic Indicators ...................................................... 37
Table 8: Correlation between UA and Ethical Indicators ........................................................... 38
Table 9: Key Characteristics of Two Case Studies based on UA Model .................................... 43
iv. List of Abbreviations
DCP Department of City Planning

DOE Department of Education
DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
DPR Department of Parks & Recreation
GIS Geographic Information Systems
HSPS High School for Public Service
NYC New York City
NYCHA New York City Housing Authority
NYRP New York Restoration Project
MUP Multi-Stakeholder Process
OPS Mayor's Office of Operations
PHWL Public Housing Waiting List
RS Remote Sensing
SNAP Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
TPL Trust for Public Land
UA Urban agriculture
vi
Chapter 1. Research background
1.1 The Definition of Urban Agriculture
Human settlements are categorized into two parts, urban areas (such as cities and towns)
and rural areas (such as villages and hamlets). One of the differentiation between these two
gathering morphologies is their internal production systems. Agriculture and cultivation are the
primary means of living in the rural areas while non-agricultural work is the prime source of
employment for urban people, such as commerce and service industries (Pateman, 2011).
However, land uses for different industries are not mutually exclusive in urban and rural areas.
They “exist on a continuum of community types that are increasingly interconnected” (Mylott,
2009).
Urban agriculture (UA) is making this type of difference - breaking boundaries between
urban and rural areas from the perspective of self - sufficiency. UA is defined as “the growing,
processing, and distribution of food and other products through plant cultivation and seldom
raising livestock in and around cities for feeding local populations” (United Nations, 2015).
UA can be generally classified into two main categories – urban farms and urban
gardens. More specifically, it has a wide range of UA categories (Appendix B), from community
gardens to commercial farms, from ground-based farms to rooftop farms, from indoor
greenhouses to vertical farms, from balcony gardens to backyard farms, and from traditional-tech
agriculture to aquaponics or aeroponics cultivation (Chumbler et al., 2015). All these types of
UA involve local citizens or agencies to utilize urban lands and community resources, providing
different types of crops, animals and non-food products (United Nations, 2017), such as
vegetables, fruits, eggs, honey, and flowers. UA is considered as an efficient local food security
1
and justice strategy since it offers fresh, affordable and low-carbon food with the reduced food
miles, the distance between food producers and market consumers.
1.2 Urban Agriculture Development
As the population increases, food supply is an everlasting and crucial topic in the global
society. The challenges are not only to satisfy the basic survival needs for the growing
population, but also to integrate a robust food network and to improve the food industry
efficiency. According to World Urbanization Prospects (United Nations, 2014), 70 percent of the
world population will live in urban areas by 2050. Different with traditional agricultural
transportation – plantation in countries but consumption in cities, UA makes a difference to
shortening the distance between agricultural production and food market and to reconciling the
unbalanced regional consumption between urban and rural areas.
Under the influence of “agricultural transformation, urbanization and industrialization”
(Warner and Durlach, 1987), UA originally derived from the European system of “allotment
gardens” (Muellenberg, 2017). It first came into being around the peri - urban areas in Europe in
the 18th century and was spontaneously and sporadically evolved to meet the food needs for
locality and to beauty the urban eyesores with greenery across the world.
UA has recently gained renewed attention for its vital role on resource utilization and
social development and has become the newly-developing industry in many countries, such as
Mexico (Losada et al., 2000), Canada (Huang and Drescher, 2015), and Australia (Guitart et al.,
2014). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (United Nations, 2014), this urban
self-supported system is producing an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food.
In the United States, many cities lead the way toward UA development and ordinances,
such as Detroit, Portland, Austin, and Boston (Popovitch, 2014). For instance, due to the long
2
history of being an industrial city, Detroit possessed a large quantity of abandoned industrial
areas (Atkinson, 2012). After converting these vacant lots into local growing projects, urban
farms have watered Detroit’s food desert with the production potential of more than 30 percent
of vegetables for Detroiters (Ngumbi, 2017).
As the growth of UA industry, several UA programs have been developed and
popularized among the U.S cities. Growing Power (1993-2017) set an example to achieve UA
extra social values beyond food production, through hands-on workshops, on-site tutorials, and
green-job training (Winne, 2010). Later, a variety of UA projects were promoted to pursue
prominent environmental and social effects.
1.3 Urban Agriculture in New York
The earliest form of UA in New York City (NYC) can be tracked back to the livestock,
gardens, and farms kept by local residents during the early 19th century. At that time, most areas
were covered by agriculture except the urbanized Lower Manhattan (Angotti, 2015). Later, under
the influence of military supply and wartime depression, UA waned because of the transition into
large-scale food production and the expansion of highly-mechanized agricultural systems
(Lawson, 2005). However, liberty gardens and relief gardens, such as “Gardens for Victory”,
came into being in the city center, expanding the UA ideology beyond the scale of food
production (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2014). Encouraged by the contemporary community
gardening movements, the postwar re-emergence of UA was the grassroots efforts as a response
to the economic recovery and social changes in NYC (Reynolds and Cohen, 2016).
Currently, NYC has the largest UA number in the United States (Cohen, 2016). Its UA
system has gradually given way from individual farming and gardening activists to institutional
projects led by multi-disciplinary teams. According to Five Borough Farm report (Altman et al.,
3
2014) and the historical documents of NYC’s parks (NYC Department of Parks and Recreation,
2018), more than 700 UA operates in NYC, including around 400 community gardens, three
commercial farms, more than ten community farms, four indoor farms, and around 350
institutional farms and gardens.
More than fifteen non-profit government agencies and institutions supports the formation,
development, and management of UA in NYC. Among these urban gardens, 592 gardens are
registered and assisted by the GreenThumb program throughout the five boroughs (Department
of Parks and Recreation, 2017). This program also offers assistance and support to more than
20,000 garden members. 545 out of 1,800 public schools have registered garden projects with the
Grow to Learn NYC program since 2011 (Ackerman, 2011). NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA)
supported around 250 community gardens, 117 public school gardens, four farms, and an 8,000
square feet rooftop greenhouse in NYC (NYCHA, 2017). This UA system has the wide public
participation of over 14,000 farmers and gardeners (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2014).
Most recently, the first urban agriculture bill (Int. No. 1661) was proposed by the Council
Member and Brooklyn Borough President to the New York City Council, aiming at drawing up a
comprehensive urban agriculture plan; however, the first attempt failed. On December 11th,
2017, the City Council passed the second attempt – Int. no. 1661-A, which sought the
cooperation between different city organizations to develop an UA website. The pass of this
first-ever UA bill might wishfully open the future attempts to amend UA regulations and
customize development agenda for the city.
Chapter 2. Research Statement
Under the current trend of promoting UA development and regulation, this study
investigated UA distribution, analyzed UA benefits and challenges, and justified the UA policy
4
recommendations, to provide in-depth insights into the future visions of UA in the city. Firstly,
this study examined the citywide UA locations, distribution, and spatial patterns, which
quantitatively tested the spatial patterns of UA in NYC for the first time. Secondly, it aimed at a
multifunctional evaluation of UA benefits and challenges with the most complete coverage of
influential indicators, based on a statistical regression from the perspectives of environment,
economy, equity, and demography. Additionally, two UA cases dug into the evaluation of the
relative UA benefits and challenges through UA modeling and interviews. It also incorporated,
for the first time, the Farming Concrete dataset to extract UA records in NYC. Based on the
multifunctional assessment of the UA system, this study presented policy recommendations for
better urban agriculture development in the future.
Chapter 3. Literature Review
3.1 Urban Agriculture Benefits and Challenges
Urban Agriculture is a widely considered food policy strategy to address local food
issues. In addition to ensuring food security, some supporters of UA see it as a solution to an
array of urban problems (Reynolds and Cohen, 2016). UA deserves recognition for its multiple
positive contributions – increasing green space, improving urban recreation, cultivating green-
job skills, fostering community relationships, providing affordable food, and enhancing
neighborhood safety.
However, debate exists about whether the challenges of UA outweigh the benefits.
Opposition to UA rests on the concerns that UA might cause soil contamination, bring virtual
zoonosis, and threaten public health (Flynn, 1999). In addition to natural resource pollution and
negative environmental impacts (Bowyer-Bower and Tengbeh, 1997), it intensifies housing
5
crises due to land shortage (Friedersdorf, 2017). These risks raised by UA will cast a shadow
over the future UA decision-making.
The previous literature debated the relative UA benefits and challenges mainly from the
perspective of sustainable development. The chapter below reviews this discussion based on the
three-legged framework of sustainability - environment, economy, and equity.
3.1.1 Environmental Aspect
UA contributes to urban areas by mitigating or addressing a set of environmental issues.
UA, as a self-sufficient system in urban settings, can improve energy efficiency and conserve
environmental resources, through rainwater management (Hammer, 1989), waste compost
(Drechsel and Kunze, 2001), and air quality improvement (Agrawal et al., 2003). Deelstra and
Girardet (2000) published an overall discussion about UA and environmental sustainability.
They emphasized that vegetables in UA can adjust humidity, temperatures, dust, gases, and solar
radiation. Also, preserving urban soils, promoting waste - nutrient recycling, increasing urban
biodiversity, and improving environmental awareness were identified as UA ecological
functions. In addition, a study (Lindemann-Matthies and Brieger, 2016) showed that UA
contributed to the “attractiveness of urban areas” even though its environmental aesthetic values
were perceived unequally among different social-demographic groups.
However, other researchers, such as Mougeot (2000) and Egoz et al. (2006) believed that
UA aggregated soil erosion, increased visual unitedness, expedited resource depletion, and
indulged mosquito breeding.
3.1.2 Economic Aspect
Economic benefits or risks caused by UA activities have a tremendous impact on the
future trends of UA policy decisions. UA activates local food networks, creates more green-job
6
opportunities, and reduces food transporting costs. Zezza and Tasciotti (2010) examined the
potential of UA in addressing poverty based on a sample of developing countries. Their study
demonstrated that UA provided “a substantial share of income” and constituted “an important
source of livelihoods” for the urban poor. A review that summarized the findings from 35
academic research papers focusing on UA and food security, suggested UA made household
income contribution though those returns were low.
Moreover, research (CoDyre et al., 2015) based on 50 backyard gardeners in Guelph,
Canada, empirically evaluated the food production revenues and the costs of land, capital, and
labor. They concluded that there were increased economic benefits gained from backyard
gardens with larger cropping areas and better green skills. Voicu and Been (2008) inspected the
effects of community gardens on the neighboring property values using a hedonic regression
model. They discovered the positive impacts between high-quality community gardens and
neighborhood property values, especially for those neighborhoods with low economic levels.
3.1.3 Ethical Aspect
As discussed in Chapter 1.2, UA was originally initiated and developed to diminish the
distance between farming producers and food consumers. Thanks to its low food miles, UA has
great potential to enhance food security and health justice under policy interventions or
promotions from the government or non-profit organizations (Armar-Klemesu, 2000). For
instance, according to Hardman and Larkham (2014), UA was successful in building sustainable
local food systems in Birmingham as a key element of a “food charter” which customized a set
of principles to bring together all the participants in the food industry.
Brown and Jameton (2000) pointed out that physical exercise in gardening ensured an
improvement of personal wellness and public health. A meta-analysis among eight subgroups,
7
conducted by Soga et al. (2017), proved the positive effects of UA on health implications, such
as body mass index, reductions in depression and anxiety, and increase in life satisfaction. Also,
community farms and gardens invited members or volunteers from the neighboring communities
to maintain the gardens and farms, reducing their labor cost, and offering affordable food for
local low-income families.
However, some studies have argued that UA’s health justice and food security benefits
have been overstated. For example, Badami and Ramankutty (2015) explored the association
between UA and food security and concluded that there was only a weak potential for UA to
address food security issues in low-income countries, where agriculture should be most useful
and focal.
3.2 Urban Agriculture Research
Before developing the methodology for this study, a wide range of previous literature was
reviewed in terms of different time, space, and methods, to inspire the most suitable
methodological design.
3.2.1 Historical Urban Agriculture Research
The first UA relevant research was published about Central Africa in the 1960s, in a
French geographical account (Mougeot, 2000). Since that study, scattered studies (Egziabher et
al., 1994) have conducted research on UA systems locally and globally. In 2000, Mougeot
provided a landmark discussion about UA’s definition, potential, risks, and policy challenges,
bringing UA from the disconnected case studies to a mature conceptual framework. In addition
to the discussion of UA presence, he emphasized the roles of UA in large urban food systems
and argued UA’s importance in terms of the urban development, public health, environmental
8
impact, and social profit fronts. Mougeot’s paper was cited as a key reference for the essential
understanding of some UA-related concepts in this study.
3.2.2 Urban Agriculture Studies in New York City
UA was investigated and discussed by various researchers and intuitions. Three leading
studies by non-profit institutions or government agencies were highlighted owing to their
ambitious goals and persuasive findings. New York State Energy Research and Development
Authority (Ackerman et al., 2013) examined the urban land inventory for potential UA by
evaluating city vacant lots and offered the recommendations of urban agricultural techniques
from the engineering perspective. Five Borough Farm project, operated by the Design Trust for
Public Space in partnership with Added Value, conducted its three-phase research on UA. They
ended up with the publication of UA impact analysis reports and UA data collection toolkit
which was cooperated with Farming Concrete. Moreover, Greenthumb program published
annual reports to summarize their citywide cooperation and seasonal progress with community
gardens.
In addition to these three citywide UA research projects by academic institutions or
administrative agencies, some individual researchers investigated different aspects of the UA
system in NYC. A case study of Latino community gardens explored the relationship between
neighborhood open space and civic agriculture (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2004). Campbell
(2016) answered the question why local food policies and sustainability plans would attach
tremendous importance to UA practices when facing planning, policymaking and governance
challenges. Different from these studies with the positive conclusions, Angotti (2015) wrote an
essay to discuss the potentials and limitations of UA based on the lessons from urban farms in
Brooklyn.
9
A recent book, called Beyond the Kale (Reynolds and Cohen, 2016), discussed the
relationship between UA and social justice activism in NYC. This comprehensive investigation
drew a full picture of the UA system and underlined its significance for social justice
development. Standing on the shoulders of Reynolds and Cohen’s work, this study refined the
research scope from the large concept (social justice) to the multifunctional assessment (benefits
and challenges).
In addition, a series of food reports were useful for the analyses between UA and local
food supply network, such as annual Food Matrix reports. Urban Food Policy Institute in the
City University of New York (Freudenberga et al., 2017) reviewed and synthesized the
objectives, challenges and recommendations of the food policies during the last ten years.
3.2.3 Urban Agriculture Research Methods
The UA research methods can be mainly classified as the quantitative or qualitative
associational investigation between UA and different influential factors.
3.2.3.1 Qualitative Research
The previous studies employed mail surveys, questionnaires, field investigation, and
behavioral observation to explore different aspects of UA (Hara et al., 2013; McClintock, 2016).
For instance, a policy discussion (Vallianatos et al., 2004) offered insights of UA’s educational
benefits and healthy values, based on the comparison and summary of different “farm-to-school”
programs in the U.S. Dieleman (2016) discussed the different dimensions of UA and its balance
between ecological, economic, and social value. Dieleman’s research set a good example about
how to discover in-depth UA insights from case study. A systematic review based on UA
literature was conducted (Warren et al., 2015) to evaluate the relationship between UA and food
security, dietary diversity, and nutritional status among the 11,192 potentially relevant research.
10
Moreover, some qualitative methods were combined with quantitative analyses in order
to offer in-depth and accurate study. Field investigation and participants interviews for urban
farms in Metro Manila were adopted in parallel with Remote Sensing (RS) image analysis
techniques to calculate and visualize vegetable production and consumption balance (Hara et al.,
2013). McClintock et al. (2016) similarly combined spatial mapping and spatial regression with
mail surveys to evaluate the motivations of urban gardeners in Portland. It opened up the
application of spatial autocorrelation analysis based on local Moran’s index in the field of UA
research.
3.2.3.2 Quantitative Research
More recently, several researchers turned to quantitative research on the evaluation of the
UA system. One of the hot topics for these studies was the spatial mapping of UA. For instance,
they employed RS and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods to map spatial patterns
of different UA systems, such as private and public spaces of UA in Chicago (Taylor and Lovell
2012), ground level and rooftop UA in Boston (Saha and Eckelman, 2017), and UA in Rome
(Cavallo et al., 2016; Pulighe and Lupia, 2016).
In addition to spatial mapping, some studies concentrated on quantitative assessment of
UA. Peng el al. (2015) constructed Analytic Hierarchy Process models for Beijing’s UA through
selecting ten social, ecological, and economic assessing indexes. A brief paper proposed a
causality combination of utility, existence, and scarcity factors for the community esteem value
calculation, in order to evaluate UA’s “social appreciation expressed by the community”
(Miccoli et la., 2016).
Moreover, statistical regression models were adopted to test and assess the relationships
between UA and a set of certain indicators, such as UA and dietary diversity (Zezza and
11
Tasciotti, 2010), and UA and aesthetic quality among different socio-demographic subgroups
(Lindemann-Matthies and Brieger, 2016). These quantitative methods were a great support of
prior experience to develop the spatial analysis techniques for this research.
3.2.3.3 Influential Factor Selection
To evaluate the performance of UA, the influencing factors from diverse aspects were
determined before data collection and research analyses. Sustainability was projected into three
dimensions – environment, economy, and equity (Kaiser et al., 1995; Isaksson and Garvare,
2003). A case study of UA in Mexico City examined the balance between these three dimensions
and symbolic values (Dieleman, 2017).
Notably, among these previous research, different demographic inputs have various
influences on the association of UA and these three sustainable dimensions (Maxwell 1995;
Lindemann-Matthies and Brieger, 2016). Therefore, considering an additional demographical
dimension or re-projecting data into different demographic subgroups is necessary to achieve the
complete coverage of all influencing factors and to ensure the comprehensive investigation of
UA benefits and challenges.
Chapter 4. Research Design
This research investigated UA in NYC through the combination of quantitative and
qualitative methods. Both secondary open data obtained from NYC’s institutions and third-party
agencies at the macro scale and first-hand primary information collected during interviews and
case studies at the micro scale were employed to support this study.
4.1 Study Site
The City of New York, the study area for this research, is the most populous city and has
the largest UA system in in the U.S. Its five boroughs witnessed a recent population gain and
12
reached an estimated total population of 8,622,698 in July 2017 (DCP, 2017). In addition, NYC
has a wide range of accessible datasets with different subjects at different urban scales. The
statistical analysis of this study focused on the 55 Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) in
NYC.
4.2 Data
The data utilized in this study contained three categories of datasets. First of all, the
spatial investigation of UA distribution was in need of an integrated and completed NYC’s UA
dataset. Second, secondary open datasets, such as demographic, environmental, economic, and
ethical data, provided a basic description of the influencing factors or outcomes for UA in NYC.
Also, this numeric information allowed for a better understanding of the status quo before going
into the case studies in detail. Third, primary facts and information towards NYC’s UA benefits
or challenges were collected through the interviews with the urban farmers and community
gardens during case study.
4.2.1 Urban Agriculture Dataset
UA descriptive datasets were the foundation for all the analyses in this study; however,
there was no integrated and comprehensive dataset with complete coverage of all the urban farms
and community gardens in NYC. Therefore, extracting and combining data and information from
the datasets listed in Table 1 was an important step to gather and integrate all the UA and their
basic information, such as locations, founders, sizes, and jurisdiction, for further research.
Greenthumb program, NYCHA development, and the Five Borough Farm program
provided citywide UA data from different aspects; therefore, extensive efforts were required to
check the coverage and clean the redundancy between different datasets. The Farming Concrete
dataset allowed for a small quantity of open resources about individual UA behavioural records
13
since 2013, regarding crop, harvest, compost, landfill, participation, rainwater collection, market
sales, food donations, and health data. However, this newly-published dataset is limited in
usefulness due to the incomplete and inconstant updates. No previous studies have attempted to
utilize this dataset to evaluate UA performance.
Table 1: UA Datasets from Different NYC’s Projects and Data Processing Methods
Data Data Processing Usage Usage Update Publication
Dataset source
unit format methods purposes limitations year agency
Mapping and
NYC
gaining deep
Greenthumb Incomplete DPR
Point CSV files Geocode insights into 2017
Community coverage
community
Gardens
gardens
Mapping Missing
NYCHA NYCHA detailed
Developments Point Shapefiles Filter garden garden or 2017 NYCHA
development farm
projects information
Mapping and
Lack of
gaining deep Design trust
Five Borough Paper Digitalize; metadata for
Point insights into 2017 for Public
Farm Report reports Geocode urban
urban farms space
agriculture
and gardens
Providing
detailed
Farming information Unstable Farming
Point CSV files Aggregate 2018
Concrete regarding data updates Concrete
individual
garden or farm
* Sources: See Appendix B
4.2.2 Secondary Data
In addition to the integration of UA dataset, a variety of appropriate data or informative
indexes offered an overview of demography, environment, economy, and equity facts related to
UA. Table 2 as below listed all the potential datasets employed in this research at the scale of
PUMAs.
14
Table 2: Secondary Open Data Related to Urban Agriculture

Data Update Publication
Dataset source Data unit Processing methods
format year agency
Demographic, Social,
PUMA
Economic, and Housing CSV files Data clean 2018 DCP
Profiles by PUMA
Convert from CD
Social Indicators Report Community
CSV files levels to PUMA 2017 OPS
Data Districts
levels
DOE
School Point Locations Point Shapefiles Geocode 2017
Convert from CD
American Community Community
CSV files levels to PUMA 2016 DCP
Survey (ACS) Districts
levels
Convert from CD
Community Health Community
Shapefiles levels to PUMA 2015 DOHMH
Profiles Districts
levels
Web scrape; Convert
Community District Community
Websites from CD levels to 2017 DCP
Profiles Districts
PUMA levels
Primary Land Use Tax Lot Aggregate land lots
Lot Shapefiles 2017 DCP
Output into PUMAs
* Sources: See Appendix B
4.2.3 Primary Information
Though these secondary datasets listed and discussed above have great potentials of
delineating the basic information of UA and other UA-related factors, more data and facts in this
study were collected by the in-depth interviews during case study. The emphasis of interviews
was the collection of UA information toward organizational mechanism, community
engagement, and policy impacts.
4.3 Methods
This study will conduct research on the performance of UA using quantitative and
qualitative methods, respectively at the macro and micro scales (Figure 1). This two-step
research first investigated the spatial pattern, overall performance and influential factors of UA
based on the citywide urban farm and garden datasets. After these quantitative evaluation of UA,
15
two case studies through UA modeling and interviews were adopted to seek deeper insights into
an individual urban farm and an individual community garden. In this chapter, the combination
of these quantitative and qualitative methods will be introduced in detail.
Figure 1: Work Flow for Methodology

4.3.1 Quantitative Methods
Although the majority of the UA previous studies tended to conduct research through
qualitative methods (Smit, Nasr, and Ratta, 1996), this study gave the best efforts to perform
quantitative evaluation with the limited UA datasets. Location mapping and spatial research
based on cluster and hotspot analysis were employed in this study, as an attempt to explore the
more quantitative methodological possibilities. Additionally, the Faming Concrete dataset was
first extracted to provide descriptive of UA performance. Regression models were adopted to
discuss the benefits and challenges of the citywide UA system.
4.3.1.1 Spatial Analyses
Mapping the locations of UA was the first step to quantify the spatial distribution of
urban farms and gardens in NYC. It allowed for spatial pattern recognition and spatial
16
relationship exploration of the UA system for the next step. Since there is no universal and
complete UA dataset for NYC, this step should clean up all the datasets from different agencies
in Table 1 and integrate them into a unified UA data shapefile for mapping. In addition, the UA
jurisdiction map was generated to present the current cooperation among different UA
organization.
After acquiring UA location map, this study first examined the spatial autocorrelation of
the UA system using the Moran’s index (Lindemann-Matthies and Brieger, 2016), and
investigated the spatial pattern of UA distribution using the cluster and outlier analysis and the
optimized hot spot analysis. If there was a specific spatial pattern of UA under the observation of
these primary spatial analyses, further statistical exploration provided deeper insights into the
existence of UA mechanism.
4.3.1.2 Descriptive Analyses
Pulling UA records from the Farming Concrete dataset allowed for a basic understanding
of the typical individual UA cases, before jumping deeper into statistical analysis and case
studies. These UA records were manually evaluated, selected, and summarized based on their
integrity, authenticity, and rationality. Only those UA records that were verified by the certain
farm or garden names and locations were included in the descriptive analyses. After extracting
the data records for specific UA cases, classification and summation were applied to calculate
the UA performance from different aspects.
Furthermore, an overview of the gardening or farming activities in the farms or gardens
with available records in the Farming Concrete database was generated to delineate and evaluate
the current development and activities in the case study sites. Some of these farms and gardens
17
did not claim themselves by entering their names or locations; therefore, the only way to identify
them was to track the unique garden or farm IDs.
4.3.1.3 Statistical Regression
To investigate the multiple functions of UA, a series of simple linear regression models
were used to test the significance of the relationship between UA and all the potential
influencing UA factors in NYC. Before constructing and testing the regression models, the
pivotal step in this process is to ensure the complete coverage of external UA factors. As
discussed in Chapter 3.2.3.3, community sustainable development can be evaluated in terms of
the three-dimension matrix of environment, economy, and equity (Isaksson and Garvare, 2003).
In addition, examining the UA- demography association might disclose the demographic
influences and social drivers of UA. Therefore, in this study, a variable set with 25 influencing
indicators (Table 3) was selected on the basic of the combination of demographic,
environmental, economic, and ethical dimensions.
From the perspective of demography, overall population, age, education, culture, and
housing were taken into consideration when exploring the social environment of UA. Air quality
and park access were chosen as the important indicators to examine the environmental impacts of
UA. UA will also alter or be altered by its economic settings; therefore, the economic association
was investigated based on agriculture labor, median household income, unemployment rate,
poverty population, supermarket footage, and assessed land value. Last but not least, promoting
UA development plays a vital role on the pursue for food security and health justice. It is
reasonable to include the indexes of food demand (fruit and vegetable consumption) and health
status (obesity rate, diabetes rate, Nutrition Assistance program participation, and physical
exercise) of New Yorkers in the linear regression models.
18
Table 3: Variable Selection of 25 Influential Indicators for UA

Normative Evaluation Yea
Selected indicator Dataset
framework aspect r
Life expectancy 2015 Community Health Profiles
age Population with age below 17 2015 Community Health Profiles
Population with age 65 + 2015 Community Health Profiles
Population Overall population 2016 American Community Survey
School location counts 2017 School location points
Education
Percentage of population with education of college or higher 2015 Community Health Profiles
Percent of individuals 5 years and older who report that they speak English
Demography 2015 Community Health Profiles
“less than very well”
Culture
Percent born outside the U.S. or U.S. territories 2015 Community Health Profiles
Percentage of population that are white 2015 Community Health Profiles
Total Number of Families on the Public Housing Waiting List 2015 Social Indicators Report Data
Housing Demographic, Social, Economic, and
Percentage of households spend 35% or more of their income on rent 2015
Housing Profiles by PUMA
Crime Number major felonies were reported in 2016 2016 Community District Profiles
Annual average of micrograms of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) per cubic
Air quality meter 2015 Community Health Profiles
Environment
Park access Percentage of residents live within walking distance of a park or open space 2016 Community District Profiles
Agricultural Number of labor in the industry of agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting,
2016 American Community Survey
jobs and mining
Supermarket
Supermarket square footage per 100 population 2015 Community Health Profiles
areas
Household
Economy Median household income (dollars) 2016 American Community Survey
income
Unemploy-
Percent of the civilian population 16 years and older that is unemployed 2016 American Community Survey
ment
Poverty Percent of individuals living below the federal poverty threshold 2016 American Community Survey
Land Value The average tentative assessed land value 2017 Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output
Age-adjusted percent of adults that is obese (BMI of 30 or greater) based on
2015 Community Health Profiles
self-reported height and weight
Health
Age-adjusted percent of adults that had ever been told by a healthcare
Justice 2015 Community Health Profiles
professional that they have diabetes
Equity
Age-adjusted percent of adults reported getting any exercise in last 30 days 2015 Community Health Profiles
Age-adjusted percent of adults that reported eating at least one serving of
2015 Community Health Profiles
Food justice fruits or vegetables in the last day
Total Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients 2015 Social Indicators Report Data
19
In this case, all the variables were re-projected, re-calculated, and re-aggregated
consistently at the level of Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMA). The total number of UA in
each PUMA was employed as the dependent variable. Its relationship with every assumptive
independent variable was tested by a simple regression model separately. Notably, instead of
applying these regression models into the future prediction of UA occurrence, these models were
more importantly used to testify the significance of the relationships between UA occurrence
counts and its influential indicators. Therefore, the focus behind these regression tests was the
outputted p-values and positive-or-negative coefficients, rather than the coefficient values
themselves.
4.3.2 Qualitative Methods
Due to lack of constant and complete information directly relevant to individual UA
economic-social factors in the open datasets, more information collection was conducted via
qualitative methods. Constrained by the time, location, and financial support of this research,
case study was employed as the primary qualitative method. It examined the in-depth "purposive
samples" to describe the current situation of UA in NYC. Two case studies through background
investigation, UA modeling, and interviews were taken into account as an important component
in this research.
4.3.2.1 Background Investigation
One urban farm (the Youth Farm) and one community garden (100 Quincy Community
Garden) were selected as the typical cases to discuss the UA management, community
engagement, and policy outreach. Before entering into interviews, background investigation
offered the basic understandings of these two UA, as listed in Table 4.
20
Table 4: The Introductive Summary of Urban Farms and Gardens Case Study
Year Organization Community
Name Detail Neighbors Website
Found involvement District
The Ground-based BK Farmyards; http://www
Wingate, Community
Youth educational urban 2010 HSPS; Farm .theyouthfa
Brooklyn District 9
Farm farm School NYC rm.org/
100
https://100
Quincy Ground-based
Greenthumb quincy.wor
Communi self-sufficient Bedford, Community
2012 programs dpress.com
ty community Brooklyn District 3
/about/
Garden garden
The Youth Farm was selected due to its education-oriented pursues beyond food
production. Its educational programs included not only the ground-based farming activities for
high school students but also the hands-on skill training programs for citywide green-job hunters.
It began with an initiative educational project between the High School for Public Service and
NYC Department of Education in 2010 and later was developed into an education-focused
production farm accessible by its community and the society.
100 Quincy Community Garden represented a different picture of UA in NYC. It was a
typical Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which was strongly supplied by the
community, and returned the harvests to the community. Its founding process was triggered and
supported by its neighboring community people. Currently, it is managed and maintained by a
group of garden members and volunteers from the community. This community garden was
chosen as a case study spot due to its active garden status, including the constant data updates
into the Farming Concrete database.
Reading and summarizing the reports and studies relevant to these two farms and gardens
in terms of historic development and current conditions facilitated further and deeper discussion
about the role, functions, and mechanism of UA when entering into in-depth interviews.
21
4.3.2.2 Urban Agriculture Model
Through background reviewing and site investigation, an UA model came into being to
generalize the internal interactions and external effects of the UA system. In Figure 2, this model
highlighted the four key elements of the UA system and simplified the interactions among these
four elements, which supported the internal cycling and promoted the external outputs of UA. It
was applied to summarize the whole pictures of these two UA case study sites.
Figure 2: Urban Agriculture Modeling

4.3.2.3 Interviews
Meeting with anyone who has been involved in NYC’s urban farms or community
gardens assisted the setup of a direct and effective communication channel with UA’s
stakeholders. They were farmers, gardens, community people participated in UA, funders for
22
UA, staff in any UA supporting organizations, officials from the government agencies, and
academic researchers in UA or other related fields. By attending a series of food justice panels,
garden kick-off meetings, and farming volunteer days, four interviewees were selected based on
a snowball sampling method where the previous interviewees recommend names of their
partners who can be interviewed. The interviews were semi-structured and conducted in person.
The majority of interviewees had a tight connection with the selected case study sites – the
Youth Farm and 100 Quincy Community Garden.
Chapter 5. Results
Based on the methods proposed in Chapter 4, the study results were discussed from two
angles, the citywide urban agriculture system and individual urban agriculture case study.
5.1 Citywide Urban Agriculture System
5.1.1 Spatial Analyses
Map 1 presents UA locations within the five boroughs in NYC. Community gardens are
spread widely across the city and tend to aggregate in the two areas highlighted in the map –
Harlem and the South Bronx, and the northern part of Brooklyn. The majority of urban farms are
ground-based farms, mainly distributed across Manhattan, Bronx, and Brooklyn. Also, there are
several indoor greenhouse farms and rooftop farms operating in the city. Queens and Staten
Island have a relatively low amount of UA, compared to other boroughs. This uneven UA
distribution implies the existence of a spatial pattern, which suggested the next step of deeper
spatial analyses.
23
Map 1: Urban Agriculture Location Map in NYC

24
In Map 2, the jurisdictions of community gardens registered in Greenthumb program in
NYC have a wide range of governmental institutions and agencies. DPR has the largest number
of jurisdictions – 278 community gardens while DOE administered more than 100 community
gardens. Less than these two organizations, the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and New York
Restoration Project (NYRP) have jurisdiction over 71 and 47 community gardens, respectively.
Notably, some community gardens are under the jurisdiction of multiple governmental agencies.
Examining the spatial autocorrelation of UA distribution in NYC, Moran’s index (Figure
3) shows a z-score of 4.136. It indicates that there is a less than 1% likelihood that this clustered
pattern could be the result of random chance.
Figure 3: Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics for UA
25
Map 2: Community Garden Jurisdiction in NYC
26
Based on this conclusion that UA has a certain, non-random, spatial distribution pattern,
cluster and outlier analysis becomes meaningful and useful to explore the spatial clusters and
outliers. Map 3 indicates that the PUMAs located in the South Bronx (including Concourse
Village, Melrose, and Highbridge) and northern Brooklyn (including Brooklyn Heights, Bedford,
Crown Heights, Bushwick, and Brownsville) have clustered trends. They are the PUMAs with
rich UA spots, and also surrounded by other PUMAs with large UA spot numbers.
This result is consistent with the findings from the hot spot analysis shown in Map 4. A
cluster of UA at a 99% significance level is found in the north area of Brooklyn (including
Brooklyn Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Bushwick, and Brownsville). At the
same time, the PUMAs located in central Harlem and the South Bronx (including Concourse
Village, Melrose, and Highbridge) share a UA hotspot at a 90%-95% confidence level.
Differently, the wide-area UA cold spots are located in Queens, including Long Island City,
Sunnyside, Woodside, Rego Park, Richmond Hill, and Jamaica.
27
Map 3: UA Cluster and Outlier Analysis in NY
28
Map 4: UA Hot and Cold Spot Analysis in NYC
29
5.1.2 Descriptive Analysis
This study employed the Farming Concrete dataset to perform a descriptive analysis
relevant to UA activities for the first time. Due to the coverage restrictions of this dataset, only
those reliable and integral records of the urban farms and community gardens were extracted and
summarized to sketch the current UA practices. Environmental contribution was reflected by the
rainwater harvesting, compost production, and landfill waste diversion by UA. Harvest counts
and market sales were the useful indicators to estimate the economic activities of UA production.
This dataset also provided potentials on discussing the participant mood change when entering
into and leaving out of UA spots.
5.1.2.1 Environmental Aspect
The urban farms and community gardens adopt the rainwater collecting using barrels,
tanks, or cisterns as a routine activity. The purposes behind rainwater harvesting are not only to
reuse rainwater for irrigation but also access the small storm water management grants from the
city agencies. Due to the restricted access to water during the dry season in 2001, the Water
Resources Group was founded by GrowNYC and GreenThumb to encourage water preservation
in the citywide UA system.
At present, among over 140 community garden rainwater collection systems, more 1.5
million gallons of rainwater was harvested annually in NYC (Grow NYC, 2018). Extracting the
rainwater collection records from the Farming Concrete dataset, Figure 4 presents the efficiency
of rainwater collection among the urban farms and community gardens, some of which are
encoded by numbers due to missing name information. The annual rainwater harvesting
efficiency from all these urban farms and community gardens shares an average value of 5.73
gallons per roof square feet.
30
Rainwater Harvesting Efficiency by Roof Areas

(Gallons/Square Feet)
20 17.80
18
16
14
12
10
8 6.86
6 3.85
4
2 0.06 0.06
0
100 Quincy (8*11 Unknown Garden Garden of Life Melrose New Unknown Garden
sq ft) 1 (20*40 sq ft) and Health Generation (5*7 2 (10*20 sq ft)
(12*12 sq ft) sq ft)
Figure 4: Rainwater Harvesting Efficiency Comparison

The urban farms and community gardens contribute to the communities by accepting
compost materials and providing compost production. They collect and accumulate their own
composting materials, such as dry leaves, dead sticks, and nongrowing plantings and invite local
residents, community neighbors, and cooperative restaurants to drop off kitchen scraps, yard
clippings, and other organic material for composting on-site.
Compost Production by Weight (Pounds)

2000
1,783.50
1800 1,600.00
1600
1400
1200
1000
800 660.52
600
400
200 100.00
0
100 Quincy Chenchita's Melrose New Prospect Farm
Community Garden Community Garden Generation
Figure 5: Compost Production Comparison
31
However, there is no composting amount aggregation of the UA system at the city level.
Figure 5 offers the preliminary statistical pictures for those urban farms and community gardens
recorded by the Farming Concrete dataset. It indicates that the compost production from the farm
and garden sample has a wide range, with an average value of 1, 036 pounds.
These compost drop-off programs in the urban farms and community gardens help to
reduce the amount of trash that goes into landfills. Calculating the landfill wastes diverted per
year provides a better understanding of its environmental impacts on the community sustainable
development. No previous surveys conducted research on the total amount of the city’s landfill
waste diversion in the NYC’s farms and gardens. Therefore, this study attempts to describe their
landfill waste diversion through a sample of farms and gardens. Figure 6 demonstrates the
landfill waste diversion provided by urban farms and community gardens. This community
garden sample shares an average of 4431.84 pounds.
Landfill Waste Diversion by Weight (Pounds)

6000 5,439.00
5,000.00
5000
3,960.50
4000
3,327.84
3000
2000
1000
0
100 Quincy Prospect Farm Q Gardens UCC Youth Farm
Community Garden
Figure 6: Landfill Waste Diversion Comparison

5.1.2.2 Economic Aspect
Economic activities were measured using the UA harvest counts and market sales. Figure
7 indicates the wide range of all types of harvest total counts per year among eight urban farms
32
and community gardens. They averagely gained a harvest weight of 726.69 pounds. It reflects
that the current UA has not achieved the high food production and significant economic values.
Harvest Counts per Year (Pounds)

2500
1,969.68
2000
1500 1,376.90
1000 800.70
514.00 435.98
500 286.60 261.64
168.00
0
Drew Sustainable KCC Urban Kelly Street Bed Stuy 134th Street 134th Street Hell's
Gardens Flatbush Farm Garden Farm Farm Greenhouse Kitchen
Healing Farm Project
Herb
Garden
Figure 7: Harvest Counts Comparison

Similar to the harvest counts discussed as above, Figure 8 shows that the market sales of
community gardens per year make no significant contributions to the city food trading market.
Notably, the market sales range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, which implies the
differences of the production scale and output channels among these community gardens.
Market Sales per Year (Dollars)

6000
5149.1
5000
4000
3000 2393.68
2000
1000 613.59 683

400.5 149
0
Morning 811x Health New Roots Bed Stuy Soil Start The Youth
Glory Garden Garden Community Farm Farm Farm @ HSPS
Farm
Figure 8: Market Sales Comparison
33
5.1.2.3 Ethical Aspect
A few community gardens, such as the Center for Family Life Garden and the Healthy
Choice Garden, recorded their participant moods when they entered into gardens and left out of
gardens. These records support the argument that farming activities in the UA environment make
a difference to the human moods. Figure 9 and Figure 10 present the obvious emotional change
from more anxious and angry attitudes to more happy and peaceful attitudes.
Moods before Entering into Gardens

Calm, Anxious,
16.67% 33.33%
Tired,
16.67%
Angry,
33.33%
Anxious Angry Tired Calm Happy Peaceful
Figure 9: Participant Mood When Enterig into Gardens
Moods after Leaving out of Gardens

Tired,
16.67%
Peaceful,
33.33%
Calm,
16.67%
Happy,…
Anxious Angry Tired Calm Happy Peaceful
Figure 10: Participant Mood When leaving out of Gardens

34
5.1.3 Statistical Regression
The main findings from linear regression models are listed in Table 5, 6, 7, and 8. They
illustrate that there are significant relationships between UA counts in PUMAs and these
influencing variables – demography dimension (life expectancy, senior population, high
education attainment, resident cultural background and race, public housing application, and
crime incidents), environment dimension (walking distance to open space), economy dimension
(median household income, unemployment rate, and poverty rate), and equity dimension
(nutrition assistance program engagement, diabetes rate, and fruit and vegetable consumption).
This study does not further explore the degree of relationships disclosed by coefficient values but
includes a brief discussion about their influencing trends denoted by the positive or negative
coefficients.
5.1.3.1 Urban Agriculture and Demography
The results in Table 5 suggest that UA has a significantly negative association with life
expectancy, similar to the conclusions of the senior population impacts on UA counts (with the
age of 65 and larger). In contrast, there tends to be less UA if the population is more foreign born
and less white. The statistical results also indicate a significantly positive relationship between
UA and school numbers in the PUMAs. Moreover, the number of families on the Public Housing
Waiting List (PHWL) has a negative association. The more families on PHWL, the less UA
cases in the PUMAs. The total number of major felonies has a positive relationship with UA spot
numbers, suggested by the regression models.
35
Table 5: Correlation between UA and Demographic Indicators

P-
Evaluation aspect Selected indicator Relationship Significance
value
Life expectancy - 0.000 ***
Age Population with age below 17 + 0.092
Population with age 65 + - 0.002 ***
Population Overall population - 0.195
School location counts + 0.000 ***
Education Percentage of population with education of college
- 0.083
or higher
Percent of individuals 5 years and older who
report that they speak English “less than very - 0.421
Culture well”
Percent born outside the U.S. or U.S. territories - 0.01 ***
Percentage of population that are white - 0.002 ***
Total Number of Families on the Public Housing
+ 0.000 ***
Waiting List
Housing
Percentage of households spend 35% or more of
+ 0.696
their income on rent
Crime Number major felonies were reported in 2016 + 0.009 ***
5.1.3.2 Urban Agriculture and Environment
From the environmental perspective, two indicators, air quality and park access, have a
different potential impact on UA. As shown in Table 6. The increase of UA numbers has a
positive relationship with resident park access. Unlike park access distance, the linear regression
model determines a non-significant correlation between air quality and UA counts.
Table 6: Correlation between UA and Demographic Indicators

P-
value
Annual average of micrograms of fine
Air quality particulate matter (PM 2.5) per cubic meter + 0.103
Percentage of residents live within walking

Park access + 0.000 ***
distance of a park or open space
36
5.1.3.3 Urban Agriculture and Economy
As examining economic activities (Table 7), median household income results in a
negative impact on UA development while unemployment and poverty rates have positive
contributions to UA occurrence. It is unforeseen that the number of labor in agricultural and
other relevant fields, the supermarket footage per 100 people, as well as the assessed land values
have a non-significant influencing role in UA numbers.
Table 7: Correlation between UA and Economic Indicators
Evaluation P-
Selected indicator Relationship Significance
aspect value
Number of labor in the industry of
Agricultural
Agriculture, forestry, fishing and - 0.521
jobs
hunting, and mining
Supermarket Supermarket square footage per 100
+ 0.488
areas population
Household
Median household income (dollars) - 0.002 ***
income
Percent of the civilian population 16
Unemployment + 0.001 ***
years and older that is unemployed
Percent of individuals living below
Poverty + 0.000 ***
the federal poverty threshold
The average tentative assessed land
Land Value - 0.598
value
5.1.3.4 Urban Agriculture and Equity
As shown in Table 8, the obesity rate and diabetes rate positively influence UA practices.
For food justice, the number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients
narrates a positive relationship with UA counts. Meanwhile, the negative association between
UA spots and daily fruit and vegetable consumption is presented in the regression models.
37
Table 8: Correlation between UA and Ethical Indicators

P-
value
Age-adjusted percent of adults that is obese (BMI
of 30 or greater) based on self-reported height and + 0.050 ***
weight
Age-adjusted percent of adults that had ever been
Health Justice
told by a healthcare professional that they have + 0.001 ***
diabetes
Age-adjusted percent of adults that reported
+ 0.964
getting any exercise in the last 30 days
Age-adjusted percent of adults that reported eating
at least one serving of fruits or vegetables in the - 0.006 ***
Food justice last day
Total Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
+ 0.000 ***
recipients
5.2 Urban Agriculture Case Study
After citywide investigation of UA distribution and functions, narrowing down to
individual UA case studies provides detailed and in-depth insights into the UA system.
5.2.1 Background Investigation
Some preliminary analyses based on the Faming Concrete dataset present the current
conditions and production statues of the UA case study sites. The Youth Farm only entered its
2015 market sales in the database, while 100 Quincy Community garden kept yearly records for
various farming activities since 2015.
In Figure 11, the top six production types of market earnings tell the commercial attempts
of the Youth Farm. Referring to Figure 8, the Youth Farm has an annual income over 5,000
dollars which highly exceeds the average value around 1,500 dollars.
38
Market Sales for the Youth Farm by

Production Type (Dollars)
1000 927.5
900
800
700 612.5
600
500 391.9 390.89
400 349.29
300 235.9
200
100
0
Callaloo Kale & Tomato Eggplant Cucumber Beans
Collards
Figure 11: The Yorth Farm Market Sales by Production Type

Thanks to the three-year updates from 100 Quincy Community Garden, it is feasible to
invesigate its historical and current conditions in terms of rainwater harvest, landfill waste
diversion, and compost production. Figure 12 records the annual volume of rainwater collection
using its 8 feet *11 feet roof from 2015 to 2017. Compared to of other gardens, some of which
are encoded by numbers due to missing name information, 100 Quincy Community Garden
reaches a relatively high annual rainwater harvesting efficiency (Figure 4 in Chapter 5.1.2.1).
100 Quincy Community Garden Rainwater

Harvesting (Gallons)
800 753.44
700
600 529.3 529.14
500
400
300
200
100
0
2015 2016 2017
Figure 12: 100 Quincy Community Garden Rainwater Harvesting
39
Figure 13 shows that 100 Quincy Community Garden remains a constant annual compost
production ranging from 400 to 900 pounds during the period from 2015 to 2017. Compared to
other community gardens with an average of 1161.167 pounds of compost production, 100
Quincy Community Garden achieves a relative low amount of compost production weight.
However, standardizing the compost production by garden surface areas, as an estimate of
composting capacity for each garden, realizes composting efficiency calculation and comparison.
100 Quincy Community Garden remains a medium value of compost production efficiency
(Figure 14).
100 Quincy Community Garden Compost

Production by Weight (pounds)
1000 913.55
900
800
666.00
700
600
500 402.00
400
300
200
100
0
2015 2016 2017
Figure 13: 100 Quincy Community Garden Compost Production by Weight
40
Compost Production by Weight per Square Feet

(Pounds/ Square Feet)
0.9
0.79
0.8
0.7
0.6 0.56
0.5
0.4
0.3 0.25
0.2
0.1 0.02
0
100 Quincy Chenchita's Melrose New Prospect Farm (3207
Community Garden Community Garden Generation (5064 sq sq ft)
(2641 sq ft) (2017 sq ft) ft)
Figure 14: Compost Production Comparison by Weight per Square Feet

Figure 15 presents a significant increase of landfill waste diversion for 100 Quincy
Community Garden from less than 1000 pounds in 2015 to more than 7000 pounds in 2017. Due
to limited size of the garden, it arrives a relative low value of total land fill waste diversion when
comparing it with other gardens. After an adjustment by garden areas, 100 Quincy Community
Garden realizes a relative high value of landfill waste diversion efficiency (Figure 16).
100 Quincy Community Garden Landfill Waste

Diversion by Weight (pounds)
8000 7,391.33
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000 1,675.12
1,290.11
917.06
1000
0
2015 2016 2017 2018
Figure 15: 100 Quincy Community Garden Landfill Waste Diversion
41
Landfill Waste Diversion by Weight per

Square feet (Pounds/Square Feet)
1.8 1.70
1.6
1.4 1.26
1.2
1
0.8
0.55
0.6
0.4 0.21
0.2
0
100 Quincy Prospect Farm (3207 Q Gardens (7200 sq UCC Youth Farm
Community Garden sq ft) ft) (23766 sq ft)
(2641 sq ft)
Figure 16: Landfill Waste Diversion Comparison
5.2.2 Urban Agriculture Modelling
On the basis of the UA model and interviews (Figure 2), the key characteristics of the
Youth Farm and 100 Quincy Community Garden are summarized and documented in terms of
people (primary actors/ stakeholders), activities (farm/garden activities), environment
(community interactions), and tools (communication tools) in Table 9. Through documenting
these UA elements and the interactions among them, this chapter aims at a detailed description
about these two case studies, in order to delineate the functions, mechanism, participation, and
operations of the typical UA cases in NYC. The in-depth discussion of the relative UA benefits
and challenges will be only constructed based on a full understanding of the UA practices.
42
Table 9: Key Characteristics of Two Case Studies based on UA Model

Feature categories Key characteristics The Youth Farm 100 Quincy Community Garden
Managerial broads BK Farmyards Community gardeners in the Block Association
Land owners NYC Department of Education NYC Department of Parks and Recreation
Primary actors The Brooklyn Greenhouse, Greenthumb program, Brooklyn Botanical Garden,
/stakeholders Partnership Farm school NYC, High School for Public Service, Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, Citizens Committee For
organizations NYC Department of Education, and Green New York City, Bedford Stuyvesant Early Childhood
Guerillas Development Center
Weeding, Planting, watering, harvesting, tidying up,
Farming/gardening Weeding, Planting, watering, harvesting, tidying up,
composting, landfilling, building/ fixing, raising
activities composting, landfilling, building/ fixing
chickens, rainwater collecting
Product types Vegetables, fruits, flowers, and composts Vegetables, fruits, composts, eggs, and flowers
Go Green! Class, the Farm Intensive Certificate
School plots
Educational activities program, and Professional Development for
Farm/garden Children and student site visits
Teachers
activities
Free to members and small food donations to
Marketing activities Sales to members, farmer’s markets, and restaurants
community
Volunteer activities Open hours / Volunteering days Open hours
Social activities Community volunteer participation Community BBQ days and community notice board
Other garden
Resource sharing and workshop attendance Resource sharing and workshop attendance
connections
Membership Maintaining the garden during weekly working shifts,
Purchasing farming products
responsibility and planting crops in their own plots as need
$525 for vegetable shares and $215 for flower
Membership cost Free
shares per season
Community
Accepting EBT, Women, Infants, and Children
interactions
Nutrition Assistance (WIC), Health Bucks, and Senior Farmers Market NA
Nutrition program coupons
Volunteer involvement Citywide students and youth people Community neighbors
Social donations Online donations available Private donations with small amounts
Websites Well-designed and active website Website active before 2014
Communication
Blogs (inactive before 2013), Facebook Page,
tools Social media Facebook Page, Instagram, blogs, and Twitter
Instagram, google group for membership
43
Chapter 6. Discussion
This chapter will widely discuss UA distribution, benefits, and challenges based on the
results listed in Chapter 5. Also, policy recommendations toward UA development and
regulation will be proposed to balance UA distribution, promote UA benefits, and overcome UA
challenges in the current urban settings of NYC.
6.1 Urban Agriculture Distribution
Based on spatial analyses, the findings suggest an uneven UA distributive pattern. Central
Harlem, the South Bronx, including Concourse Village, Melrose, and Highbridge, and the
northern part of Brooklyn, including Brooklyn Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights,
Bushwick, and Brownsville, are fruitful in urban farms and community gardens. This
geographically uneven distribution can be justified in terms of agricultural history, urban fabric,
and food security across the five boroughs.
Historical factors contributed to this uneven distribution. In 1970s, a large number of lots
were abandoned due to the financial crisis, especially in Manhattan neighborhoods, including
Harlem and the Lower East Side. The Green Guerillas, a non-profit grassroots program, started
to convert vacant lots into urban parks, gardens, and farms.
The regional differences of urban fabrics and dominant industries led to the UA spatial
clusters as well. After decades of urban and economic development, Downtown and Midtown
Manhattan were transformed into high-rise commercial districts under the influence of capital
investment. The economic development in the South Bronx and Harlem lagged, currently
remained a high unemployment rate and a high poverty rate. The relatively less-density
urbanization in these areas conserved some community gardens, such as Robert L. Clinkscales
Playground and Community Garden, Elizabeth Langley Memorial Garden, Woodycrest
44
Community Garden, Neighborhood Advisory Committee Community Garden, and Anderson
Avenue Community Garden.
In addition, the clustered emergence of UA resulted from food security concerns.
Brooklyn, one of the most productive agricultural areas in the nation in the 19th century, reached
a food insecurity rate of 20 percent. According to the FoodBank NYC report in 2016, it became
the only borough which increased this indicator since 2009. As the rising concerns of food
insecurity, the food advocates, educational institutions, and communities in Brooklyn cooperated
to convert vacant lots in the communities and rooftop spaces in the manufacturing areas for
organic and affordable food production, such as the Youth Farm, 100 Quincy Community
Garden, and Brooklyn Grange. This popular vacancy-to-UA conversion aggregated the UA
prevalence and facilitated the UA resource sharing, which resulted in the emergence of UA
clusters in Brooklyn.
6.2 Urban Agriculture Benefits and Challenges
The descriptive analyses and statistical regression of UA justified the UA multifunctional
impacts on the city. This chapter explores the relative UA benefits and challenges based on the
findings from Chapter 5, and discusses the future trends of UA development in NYC.
6.2.1 Urban Agriculture Benefits
This study supports that UA makes tremendous contributions to the city when
functioning as a community public space, a farming educational site, and an urban ecological-
circulation system, regardless of the other findings about UA concerns or challenges.
6.2.1.1 Community-Supported Agriculture
In the UA model, people and community are two primary elements to promote the UA
internal interactions and to gain the direct UA beneficiary. UA involves a large wide of actors
45
and stakeholders, from different levels of government institutions to non-profit agencies, from
community gardeners and urban farmers to community residents, and from academic researchers
to private business owners. The formation and development of UA cases attaches importance to
these people and communities
The bottom-top process of 100 Quincy Community Garden sets an example of multi-
stakeholder process for the formation and management process of UA. In 2012, the garden
location was a vacant lot owned by DOHPD. Several community people, driven by a shared
interest of expanding community green space, grouped together. They held internal meetings to
open the discussion of the vacant space future design, distributed online questionnaires giving
ear to community opinions regarding vacant lot development, and voiced their proposals to
attract more attention in Community Board meetings. Finally, with the help of 596 Acres, the
ownership of this vacant lot was transferred to DPR. It was finally converted into a community
garden and was registered under the GreenThumb program.
Currently, the neighboring people from the Block Association and the garden members
from the community take the responsibilities of managing and maintaining the garden. Different
levels of public and private organizations, such as Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, Brooklyn
Botanical Garden, Citizen Committees, GreenThumb program, and Grow NYC, participate in
the garden development, management, and maintenance.
Figure 17 narrates the community participation actions in the formation process of 100
Quincy Community Garden. The wide-range and multiple-dimensional community participation
encourages the garden formation, maximizes the management support, ensures the public
interest, and meets the community needs. As the returns, the garden answers the exact personal
needs for all the garden members, in terms of planting, feeding, harvesting, recycling, greening,
46
and recreating, and shapes the public space for the whole community to communicate, cooperate,
message, socialize, and unite.
Figure 17: Community Participation Actions for 100 Quincy Community Garden Formation
Slightly different from 100 Quincy Community Garden, the Youth Farm was founded in
a top-bottom process. In 2010, it was a joint program initiated by DOE, the High School for
Public Service (HSPS), and Green Guerillas. Later, BK Farmyards took over the farm
management role and built the wide cooperation with different agencies and programs, including
Grow to Learn, the Brooklyn Greenhouse, New York Cares, Repair the World NYC, DOE, the
NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets, the NYS Department of Health, and Cornell
University Department of Crop an Soil Science. These cooperative opportunities bridged the
communication between the farm and different social entities and enriched the farm activities
and functions as a public space in the city.
Figure 18 draws the picture of the community connection network in the development
process of the Youth Farm. Community people, educational institutions, and commercial entities
input land, labor, donations, and resources, including cropping, composting, and landfill
47
materials and tools into the farm. The farm exports farming vegetables and flower products, a
green-skill experiment base, and a community public space, as the production outputs to the
community. These two-way interactions in the farm build a robust community-supported system,
which also activates and promotes the community communication, connection, integration, and
harmony.
Figure 18: Community Connection Network for the Youth Farm Development
6.2.1.2 Green-industry Education
Based on the statistical regression models, the PUMAs with more schools tend to possess
more UA locations. This relationship can be explained by the fact that some of community
gardens and urban farms cooperate with schools in terms of organizational management, land
leasing, and agricultural education. NYC has the wide-range school gardening and farming
programs. One example of these programs, Grow to Learn NYC, assists 545 public schools to
48
connect with the garden projects since 2011 (Ackerman, 2011). These farm-to-school programs
provide a cooperative platform for schools to nourish farming-skill training workshops and
youth-leadership educational programs. In addition to program cooperation, some schools
provide lands, resources, capital, and labor for UA development and management. Figure 19
summarizes the educational purposes of the Youth Farm programs for different target population
with different time duration.
Figure 19: Different Levels of Educational Programs at the Youth Farm
6.2.1.3 Ecological-Circulation System
In addition to the benefits of community integration and green-industry education, the
citywide UA system makes contributions to the city through creating green spaces, promoting
ecological circulation, and improving participant moods. The regression models show a positive
association between UA counts and the percentage of residents living within walking distance of
49
a park. This phenomenon is logical since UA can be considered as a productive urban park or
open space at some degree. In addition, the descriptive analyses of rainwater harvesting,
composting production, and landfill waste diversion (Figure 4 – 6 in Chapter 5.1.2) explain the
ecological cycling systems behind UA. The comparison of participant emotion before entering
into gardens (Figure 9) and after leaving out of gardens (Figure 10) together emphasizes the
ethical values of UA green activities. Figure 20 simply draws the UA ecological circulation
system summarized from the two case studies.
Figure 20: Typical Ecological Circulation System for Urban Agriculture
6.2.2 Urban Agriculture Challenges
6.2.2.1 Immigrant Separation and Race Inequity
Some evidence from literature review implies that color population and cultural identity
promote UA formation, development, and activeness in some cases, such as Latino community
gardens in NYC fostering the immigrant cultural heritage (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2004)
and commercial urban agriculture in Canada creating an inclusive community environment
(Beckie and Bogdan, 2016). However, these case studies examined the typical and reputed
immigrant UA projects, which cannot represent the citywide UA-and-race distributive balance.
In the statistical regression, the relationship between UA and the foreign-born and non-
white population indicates that immigrant integration and race equity remain unbalanced across
the UA in the city. This partial distribution might be explained by two driving factors -
50
neighborhood relationships and public consciousness. The immigrant population usually tended
to root in and earn a living in the cheap rural areas, which have the short urban development
history. Their relative superficial neighborhood relationships and insufficient public
consciousness resulted in the deficient UA practices in these areas. It is a challenge for the
current UA system to achieve more social impacts when adapting into the immigrant
environment of NYC.
6.2.2.2 Insignificant Economic Contribution
From the regression findings, there are more UA spots if the PUMAs have a lower
median household income, a higher poverty rate, and a higher unemployment rate, concluding
that the current UA system makes little contributions to the economic development of these
communities. Also, at the level of individual farms and gardens, the descriptive analyses toward
harvest counts and market sales in Figure 7 and Figure 8 suggest their limited economic incomes.
However, due to the small amount (only three) of commercial farms and gardens
accounting for the whole UA dataset, the results in Chapter 5 mainly describe non-commercial
farms and gardens. To discuss the economic contribution of UA, it is justified to separate the
commercial UA from non-commercial UA. The former aims to achieve high economic incomes,
which requires the sophisticated models of UA business, while the latter targets more social
impacts, which highlights the balanced budget of UA projects. Therefore, how to support the
different development focuses and needs of commercial and non-commercial UA and how to
emphasize the smart growth of commercial UA will be one of the main challenges of UA
economic improvements in the future.
51
6.2.2.3 Land Shortage
The high-dense urbanization and crowded population in NYC lead to land shortage issues
for several decades. Investigating the association between UA numbers and affordable housing
applications in the PUMAs indicates a future challenge for UA practices. The regression models
offered a new investigation on the positive relationship between UA counts and the number of
families in the PHWL. This result, at some degree, demonstrates the urban land use conflicts
between affordable housing and UA.
To address the housing shortfall in the city, a hot debate was to raze vacant or low-
utilized lots into potential affordable housing development sites. Twelve city-owned community
gardens faced this taking challenge (Nir, 2016). Some farmers and gardeners insisted that the
green space obtained from UA would be the public wealth of the city while the taking of UA
faced the risks of injustice affordable housing access. For instance, urban farmers, local
residents, and health food activists protested construction plans that would dig the Green Valley
community farm out to build up to 20 units of affordable housing. They argued that the planned
houses were not actually affordable but truly reduced urban green space. It is vital to develop
land use strategies that maintain the land balance between affordable housing demands and UA
development needs.
6.2.2.4 Non-significant Health Justice and Food Security Improvement
UA has been widely praised owning to its potential on promoting health justice and food
security. However, the results from regression models suggest that the current UA system in
NYC does not witness this promising vision. The PUMAs with a higher obesity rate, a higher
diabetes rate, a lower fruit and vegetables daily consumption rate, shorter life expectancy, less
senior population, and more SNAP recipients, might have more UA.
52
These findings demonstrate that there is still a practical gap of adopting UA programs as
a direct public health and food security strategy. The challenges are how to improve the UA
system efficiency in order to maximize the advantages of the shortened food miles, how to
cooperate with the UA upstream-downstream industries in order to construct a robust food
network using the existing local resources, and how to orient the UA target population in order to
serve the most vulnerable people with affordable and healthy food.
6.2.2.5 Crime Occurrence
The regression model emphasizes a positive relationship between UA numbers and crime
rate in the PUMAs. It drew a different conclusion from the common sense that UA might
decrease the occurrence of crime events (Reynolds and Cohen, 2016). This standpoint came into
being based on the phenomenon that UA provides a brighter and nicer built environment after
the conversion from the previous dark vacant spots. However, in NYC, the high-dense urban
environment and strongly-modernized street views might mitigate the security influence from the
vacancy-to-UA conversion. Therefore, it was arguable to consider UA as a effective strategy to
improve urban security.
6.3 Urban Agriculture Policy Recommendations
In order to pursue better UA performance and a robust UA network, some policy
recommendations are proposed to blueprint UA development agenda and legalize UA planning
regulations.
6.3.1 Integrating Urban Agriculture Dataset
The accuracies of the UA studies are extremely constrained by the data integrity and
reliability. Same to this study, especially these heavy data-driven sections - location mapping,
spatial analysis, descriptive analysis, and statistical regression. Currently, there is no uniform,
53
complete, accurate, comprehensive, and all-in-one UA dataset for NYC. Only some
governmental agencies (DPR and NYCHA) and research institutions (Five Borough Farm
program) provide simple UA subsets from different aspects. Even though, the Farming Concrete
dataset, as a final deliverable of the Five Borough Farm project, attempts to offer a platform for
gardeners and farmers to document and analyze their own records, it still remains a series of data
issues – incomplete coverage, inaccurate inputs, and inconstant updates. The construction of UA
datasets can benefit not only community gardeners and urban farmers, but also the policy
makers, capital investors, and academic researchers in this field.
It is promising that the city has passed Int. No. 1661-A to involve different agencies
together to build an active UA website by July 2018. However, building a website is far not
enough for the future UA development. There are abundant key challenges, such as developing
effective and efficient UA data collection rules, customizing constant and robust UA data update
strategies, and specifying comprehensive and explicit institutional supervisory roles. It is highly
recommended to invite both UA managers and functional departments to update, maintain, and
supervise the UA database.
6.3.2 Legislating Urban Agriculture Practices
Different from other states that have legislated UA practices, such as California, Hawaii,
Colorado, District of Columbia, and New Jersey, New York State lacks of UA legislation. In
almost-4,000-page NYC zoning ordinance, the only word relevant to UA – “agriculture” is
mentioned only a few times. The margin of UA legislation impedes UA development from
different aspects. For instance, the UA practices face a challenge from zoning restriction that it is
prohibited to grow and sell UA products in the same lots, which forces the isolation of
production and sales location. Also, NYC’s rooftop farms are currently located in the industrial
54
and manufacturing (Brooklyn Grange at the Navy Yard), transportation and utility (Brooklyn
Grange at the Long Island City), and commercial and office buildings (Eagle Street Farm and
Gotham Greens). They are prevented in residential zones, where have a huge suitable space
inventory that meets the criteria of building height, sunlight, and roof flatness for UA initiatives.
Moreover, the indoor farming is ambiguous in zoning codes.
To encourage UA practices and support local food production, other states took different
measures – creating UA Incentive Zones, such as California (AB 551, 2013), Missouri (HB 542,
2013), and Louisiana (HB 761, 2015), and granting UA tax credits, such as Maryland (HB 1062,
2010), Utah (SB 122, 2012), and Kansas (SB 280, 2015). Following these state examples, it is
recommended to enact legislation that allows UA initiatives in the wide-range residential and
other conditional zoning areas, or amends property tax law to appraise UA development in NYC.
6.3.3 Promoting Citywide Cooperation
Some states pushed the establishment of UA committees, departments or programs to
enhance citywide cooperation, such as Missouri (HB 1848, 2010 and HB 2006, 2016), Texas
(2011), District of Columbia (B 677, 2015), and Minnesota (SB 191, 2016). Greenthumb
program has been well reputed as the largest community gardening program in the nation.
However, the incomplete coverage of all the community gardens and the exclusion of urban
farms limits the Greenthumb program’s citywide management and cooperation. It is
recommended to found citywide departments, agencies or committees to lead UA development,
supervise UA management, encourge industrial communication, facilitate citywide UA
cooperation, and offer abundant UA resources.
55
6.3.4 Designing Multi-Stakeholder Process
In order to “address the needs and priorities of the different stakeholders”, MUP is a
smart strategy to achieve extra benefits, such as ensuring the justice when decision making,
increasing the likelihood of implementation, serving for the widest population, and involving the
maximum capital, labor, techniques, and resources (Dubbeling and Merzthal, 2006). The case
studies from 100 Quincy Community Garden and the Youth Farm narrated the bottom-top or
top-bottom MUP, suggesting an advanced and successful model of UA formation, development,
and management. Minnesota (SB 5a, 2015) enacted legislation to direct the convenience of
interested stakeholders to promote UA development. This MUP is recommended to the city as a
sophisticated model to promote UA formation and development.
6.3.5 Ensuring Social Equity
As the discussion in Chapter 6.2.2, the development of UA in NYC currently faces
multiple equity issues, including immigrant and race equity, housing affordability, health justice,
and food security. Few states attempted to address these issues through legislation and
regulation. However, the promotion of equity, a never-ending battle for all the New Yorkers,
should be assigned with one of the highest priority during the NYC’s UA development and
improvement.
Recognizing and prioritizing those vulnerable population during the UA development is
the first step in pursuit of equity. It is recommended to held immigrant welcome parties in the
community gardens or establish cultural urban farms for the minor population, which can
encourage the immigrant and color participation and promote the community integration in the
UA practices.
56
In pursuit of health justice and food security, not only the impartial UA development but
also the joint efforts from the entire food and health industrial chains were required. From the
perspective of UA development, some strategies have potential on the guarantee of the equitable
access, acquisition, and sharing of UA resources and opportunities among different age, income,
and health groups. For instance, if a wide range of UA practices, similar to the current farmer’s
markets in NYC, connect to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), they can
accept SNAP tokens and serve the vulnerable target population.
6.3.6 Balancing Urban Agriculture Development and Land Shortage Crises
Some farmers and gardeners held a concern that the UA spots in the city-owned lots will
be taken to meet the land demand of other land use purposes, such as affordable housing
development. It is vital to balance UA development aligning with other land development
purposes in NYC.
Some strategies have potential of keeping the balance between these two-end needs. For
example, Hawaii (HB 560, 2013) authorized the incentives of housing development projects that
incorporate UA programs. In NYC, some high-tech farming mechanisms have potentials to
achieve high production-to-area ratio, such as indoor greenhouses, vertical farms, aquaponics,
and aeroponics. In addition, there are extensive flat rooftop areas with appropriate daily sunlight,
available and suitable for farming or gardening.
However, the site selection of potential urban agricultural places is a complicated and
limited process, especially facing environmental challenges. For environmental concerns, soil
contamination and water resources determine the UA site suitability in general. In NYC, many
farms and gardens adopt soil replacement to mitigate soil remediation and increase farming
57
production. Rainwater collection and storm management are widely adopted as the useful water
management strategies.
Current vacant lots are the primary source for future UA sites from a realistic point of
view. According to Pawlowski (2016), the rooftop spaces remain unused summing up to 14,000
acres in NYC and has a potential ability to feed 20 million people. But this number would
necessarily be reduced to meet UA site selection criteria - flat and sufficient spaces allowing for
farming or gardening activities, limited building heights facilitating the transport of products,
tools, and resources, legislated locations in industrial, commercial, and transportation zones.
Ackerman (2011) published a comprehensive report to propose the potential urban areas for UA.
Among the five boroughs, about 5,000 acres of vacant areas were identified after examining the
open space, NYCHA property, parking lots, green streets, backyards and rooftops.
Chapter 7. Conclusion
In an era of urbanization, there is a constant debate about whether it is worthwhile for
cities to take a step back from the intense promotion of capital development to the self-sufficient
system of agricultural production. Developing a robust and suitable UA network requires careful
weighing of benefits and challenges. This study suggests that NYC should support UA
development owing to the tremendous benefits of community development, farming education,
and green values. There is no denying the potential challenges to promoting UA sustainable
development, including immigrant and race separation, the non-significant contribution to
economic development, the shortage of land inventory, the insignificant improvement of health
injustice and food security, and the occurrence of crime incidents. However, looking forward to
the future, integrating an all-in-one UA dataset, legislating UA practices, promoting citywide
58
cooperation for UA development, designing a multi-stakeholder process, ensuring social equity,
and balancing land use among different urban activities will push forward the flourishing UA
development and the vision of a beautiful future propelled by UA in the city.
59
References
Ackerman, K. (2011). The potential for urban agriculture in New York City: Growing capacity,
food security, & green infrastructure. Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute Columbia
University.
Ackerman, K., Dahlgren, E., & Xu, X. (2013). Sustainable urban agriculture: Confirming viable
scenarios for production. New York: NYSERDA.
Agrawal, M., Singh, B., Rajput, M., Marshall, F., & Bell, J. N. B. (2003). Effect of air pollution
on peri-urban agriculture: a case study. Environmental Pollution, 126(3), 323-329.
Altman, L., Barry, L., Barry, M., Kühl, K., Silva, P., & Wilks, B. (2014). Five Borough Farm II:
Growing the Benefits of Urban Agriculture in New York City. Design Trust for Public
Space.
Armar-Klemesu, M. (2000). Urban agriculture and food security, nutrition and health. Growing
cities, growing food. Urban agriculture on the policy agenda, 99-118.
Angotti, T. (2015). Urban agriculture: long-term strategy or impossible dream?: Lessons from
prospect farm in Brooklyn, New York. public health, 129(4), 336-341.
Atkinson, A. E. (2012). Promoting health and development in Detroit through gardens and urban
agriculture.
Badami, M. G., & Ramankutty, N. (2015). Urban agriculture and food security: A critique based
on an assessment of urban land constraints. Global Food Security, 4, 8-15.
Beckie, M., & Bogdan, E. (2016). Planting roots: Urban agriculture for senior
immigrants. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 1(2),
77-89.
Bowyer-Bower, T. A. S., & Tengbeh, G. T. (1997). Environmental implications of (illegal) urban

agriculture in Harare: A preliminary report of field research (1994/95). Geographical
Journal of Zimbabwe, (28), 7-24.
Broadway, M. (2009). Growing urban agriculture in North American cities: The example of
Milwaukee. FOCUS on Geography, 52(3- 4), 23-30.
Brown, K. H., & Jameton, A. L. (2000). Public health implications of urban agriculture. Journal
of public health policy, 21(1), 20-39.
60
Campbell, L. K. (2016). Getting farming on the agenda: Planning, policymaking, and governance
practices of urban agriculture in New York City. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 19,
295-305.
Cavallo, A., Di Donato, B., & Marino, D. (2016). Mapping and assessing urban agriculture in
Rome. Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia, 8, 774-783.
CHUMBLER, M., NEGRO, S., & BECHLER, L. (2015). URBAN AGRICULTURE: POLICY, LAW,
STRATEGY, AND IMPLEMENTATION.
Chumbler, M., Negro, S., & Bechler, L. (2015). Urban agriculture: Policy, Law, Strategy, and
Implementation.
CoDyre, M., Fraser, E. D., & Landman, K. (2015). How does your garden grow? An empirical
evaluation of the costs and potential of urban gardening. Urban Forestry & Urban
Greening, 14(1), 72-79.
Cohen, N. (2016). Policy Brief: New Directions for Urban Agriculture in New York City. CUNY
Urban Food Policy Institute. Retrieved from
http://www.cunyurbanfoodpolicy.org/news/2016/10/19/policy-brief-new-directions-for-
Deelstra, T., & Girardet, H. (2000). Urban agriculture and sustainable cities. Bakker N.,
Dubbeling M., Gündel S., Sabel-Koshella U., de Zeeuw H. Growing cities, growing food.
Urban agriculture on the policy agenda. Feldafing, Germany: Zentralstelle für
Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (ZEL), 43-66.
Dieleman, H. (2017). Urban agriculture in Mexico City; balancing between ecological,

economic, social and symbolic value. Journal of Cleaner Production, 163, S156-S163.
Drechsel, P., & Kunze, D. (Eds.). (2001). Waste composting for urban and peri-urban
agriculture: Closing the rural-urban nutrient cycle in sub-Saharan Africa. CABI.
Dubbeling, M., & Merzthal, G. (2006). Sustaining urban agriculture requires the involvement of
multiple stakeholders. Cities farming for the future: Urban agriculture for green and
productive cities, RUAF Foundation, IIR, IDRC, Ottawa, Canada, 19-40.
Egoz, S., Bowring, J., & Perkins, H. C. (2006). Making a ‘mess’ in the countryside: Organic
farming and the threats to sense of place. Landscape Journal, 25(1), 54-66.
Freudenberga, N., Cohenb, N., Poppendieckc, J., & Craig, C. (2018). Food Policy in New York
City Since 2008: Lessons for the Next Decade. CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute.
Retrieved from http://www.cunyurbanfoodpolicy.org/news/2018/2/16/food-policy-in-
new-york-city-since-2008-lessons-for-the-next-decade
61
Grow NYC. (2018). Rainwater Harvesting. Achieved from:

https://www.grownyc.org/openspace/rainwater-harvesting.
Hardman, M., & Larkham, P. J. (2014). The rise of the ‘food charter’: A mechanism to increase
urban agriculture. Land Use Policy, 39, 400-402.
Hammer, D. A. (Ed.). (1989). Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment: municipal,

industrial and agricultural. CRC Press.
Isaksson, R., & Garvare, R. (2003). Measuring sustainable development using process models.
Managerial Auditing Journal, 18(8), 649-656.
Kaiser, E. J., Godschalk, D. R., & Chapin, F. S. (1995). Urban land use planning (Vol. 4).
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Lindemann-Matthies, P., & Brieger, H. (2016). Does urban gardening increase aesthetic quality
of urban areas? A case study from Germany. Urban forestry & urban greening, 17, 33-41.
Linder, M., & Zacharias, L. S. (1999). Of cabbages and Kings County: Agriculture and the
formation of modern Brooklyn. University of Iowa Press.
Maxwell, D. G. (1995). Alternative food security strategy: A household analysis of urban

agriculture in Kampala. World Development, 23(10), 1669-1681.
Nir, S. (2018). Community Gardens Imperiled by New York’s Affordable Housing

Plans. Nytimes.com. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/nyregion/community-gardens-imperiled-by-new-
yorksaffordable-housing-plans.html
Ngumbi, E. (2017). Growing Urban Agriculture (SSIR). Ssir.org. Retrieved from

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/growing_urban_agriculture
NYC Department of City Planning (2018). NYC Population: Current and Projected Populations.
(2018). Www1.nyc.gov. Retrieved from https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-
maps/nyc-population/current-future-populations.page
NYC Department of City Planning (2018). Percentage of public green space (parks and
gardens). (2018). Worldcitiescultureforum.com. Retrieved from
http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/of-public-green-space-parks-and-gardens
NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (2018). History of the Community Garden Movement.
Retrieved from https://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/community-
gardens/movement
62
Pawlowski, T. (2016). From Food Deserts to Just Deserts: Expanding Urban Agriculture in U.S.
Cities Through Sustainable Policy. Brooklyn Law School.
Saldivar-Tanaka, L., & Krasny, M. E. (2004). Culturing community development, neighborhood

open space, and civic agriculture: The case of Latino community gardens in New York
City. Agriculture and human values, 21(4), 399-412.
Soga, M., Gaston, K. J., & Yamaura, Y. (2017). Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-
analysis. Preventive medicine reports, 5, 92-99.
Voicu, I., & Been, V. (2008). The effect of community gardens on neighboring property
values. Real Estate Economics, 36(2), 241-283.
Warren, E., Hawkesworth, S., & Knai, C. (2015). Investigating the association between urban
agriculture and food security, dietary diversity, and nutritional status: A systematic
literature review. Food Policy, 53, 54-66.
Winne, M. (2010). Food rebels, guerrilla gardeners, and smart-cookin'Mamas: fighting back in
an age of industrial agriculture. Beacon Press.
Zezza, A., & Tasciotti, L. (2010). Urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: Empirical
evidence from a sample of developing countries. Food policy, 35(4), 265-273.
63
Appendix A
Criteria Category
General Farms, Gardens
Purposes Community, Institutional, Commercial, Individual
Locations Ground-based, Rooftop, Balcony, Backyard, Indoor greenhouse
Techniques Traditional, Vertical, Aquaponics, Aeroponics
Appendix B
Full links for different dataset sources

Variable Dataset source Full link
category
Urban NYC Greenthumb https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/NYC-
agriculture Community Gardens Greenthumb-Community-Gardens/ajxm-kzmj
NYCHA Developments https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Housing-
Development/Map-of-NYCHA-Developments/i9rv-
hdr5
Five Borough Farm http://designtrust.org/publications/five-borough-
Report farm-ii/
Farming Concrete https://farmingconcrete.org/mill/
Influencing Demographic, Social, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-
variables Economic, and Housing Government/Demographic-Social-Economic-and-
Profiles by PUMA Housing-Profiles-b/kvuc-fg9b
Social Indicators Report https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Social-
Data Services/Social-Indicators-Report-Data-By-
Community-Distric/nvqd-aa32/data
School Point Locations https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Education/School-
Point-Locations/jfju-ynrr
American Community https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/nyc-
Survey (ACS) population/american-community-survey.page
Community Health http://data-
Profiles nycdohmh.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/fa12249f3a
f74d628af48c2be12501f4_0
Community District https://communityprofiles.planning.nyc.gov/
Profiles
Primary Land Use Tax https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-
Lot Output maps/open-data/dwn-pluto-mappluto.page
64

LinRuoran GSAPPUP 2018 Thesis

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

LinRuoran GSAPPUP 2018 Thesis

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

LinRuoran GSAPPUP 2018 Thesis

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Urban Agriculture in New York City Ruoran Lin

Distribution, Benefits, Challenges, and Recommendations of

Urban Agriculture in New York City

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Science in Urban Planning

Ruoran Lin (rl2852)

Thesis First Draft

Advisor: Professor Malo Hutson

Reader: Professor Jonathan Martin

whether to develop or abandon a comprehensive UA plan. Employing a two-step, quantitative-

contribution to this debate through a full-range evaluation of UA distribution and sustainability

descriptive analysis of UA performance, and examined the statistical association between UA

sustainable development and 25 influential indicators in terms of demography, environment,

community garden, to provide in-depth insights into UA benefits and challenges.

through its mature Community-Supported Agriculture networks, its huge green-industry

challenges in terms of immigrant separation, non-significant economic contributions, land

zoning ordinances, promote citywide cooperation, ensure a multiple-stakeholder process, ensure

Acknowledgements and Dedication

5.1.1 Spatial Analyses ....................................................................................................... 23

ii. List of Maps

iii. List of Tables

iv. List of Abbreviations

DCP Department of City Planning

Chapter 1. Research background

1.1 The Definition of Urban Agriculture

miles, the distance between food producers and market consumers.

1.2 Urban Agriculture Development

transportation – plantation in countries but consumption in cities, UA makes a difference to

unbalanced regional consumption between urban and rural areas.

Under the influence of “agricultural transformation, urbanization and industrialization”

self-supported system is producing an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food.

of vegetables for Detroiters (Ngumbi, 2017).

As the growth of UA industry, several UA programs have been developed and

prominent environmental and social effects.

1.3 Urban Agriculture in New York

large-scale food production and the expansion of highly-mechanized agricultural systems

production (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2014). Encouraged by the contemporary community

institutional farms and gardens.

customize development agenda for the city.

Chapter 2. Research Statement

influential indicators, based on a statistical regression from the perspectives of environment,

better urban agriculture development in the future.

Chapter 3. Literature Review

3.1 Urban Agriculture Benefits and Challenges

issues. In addition to ensuring food security, some supporters of UA see it as a solution to an

negative environmental impacts (Bowyer-Bower and Tengbeh, 1997), it intensifies housing

over the future UA decision-making.

three-legged framework of sustainability - environment, economy, and equity.

3.1.1 Environmental Aspect

UA contributes to urban areas by mitigating or addressing a set of environmental issues.

environmental resources, through rainwater management (Hammer, 1989), waste compost

Girardet (2000) published an overall discussion about UA and environmental sustainability.

biodiversity, and improving environmental awareness were identified as UA ecological

functions. In addition, a study (Lindemann-Matthies and Brieger, 2016) showed that UA

were perceived unequally among different social-demographic groups.

indulged mosquito breeding.

3.1.2 Economic Aspect