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Urban Community gardens have a positive impact on access to healthier and fresher produce. Those located in neighborhoods and communities in which fresh and healthy produce is not of easy access, is where community gardens come in and solve this issue.
In the article, Sustainable Gardening for Economic Inclusion, Poverty Reduction, and Culture Preservation, it highlights the key differences between the chinampas of Mexico, which a purely for substience farming, compared to the urban community gardens we use here in the USA, which serve the purpose to resist the corporatization of food production and spotlight education on urban gardening (Rivas-Aceves). In countries like Mexico, chinampas are used as sites for gardening that communities can use that help preserve culture, ancient gardening techniques, and ancient cropping methods. These chinampas are used as community gardens, but serve a different purpose compared the to the community gardens here in the USA. Highlighted by the immigrant urban community gardens in New Orleans, the purpose of these gardens was different compared to the purpose of the chinampas.
The community gardens in the USA are created to get away from the corporatization of food production and sales. Organic and healthier food options have become more expensive within our market, making it harder to access these types of foods. Rivas noted how urban community gardens may not produce lots of income, but help preserve traditions, and builds environmental and nutritional education over multiple generations (Rivas-Aceves). This sustainable initiative for food insecurity does not have much economic prowess, yet holds other capabilities that make it worth buying into. By integrating ancient farming methods and cropping techniques, like with the chinampas, these techniques and approaches can be preserved though time by passing them down generation to generation.
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Deep environmental and nutritional knowledge of crops, how to use them, and how to keep taking care of them are potential benefits from community gardening. Urban gardeners in New Orleans are taking inspiration from the agricultural history, and growing crops to become self-sufficient, rather than relying on a system that has failed them for years (Gopalakrishnan). Revitalizing the long history and tradition of urban agriculture is a way to have social assistance networks within the black community. Families can trade crops with each other or share when one is in need, creating a stronger bond within members in the community.
Urban community gardening is a creative form of gardening and uses the urban infrastructure in new ways to provide healthy and nutrious foods. By looking at intersectional frameworks, like environmental restoration and food security networks, there is a common goal between both and by sharing resources both networks can be enlarged, and health and environmental concerns can be addressed at the same time (Ross). Combining goals from frameworks like food insecurity and envirmental restoration embodies the idea of one planet living, a holistic approach to living in which we as humans live with the ecological limits of the earth. Urban Community gardening can help achieve this goal of one planet living though promoting sustainable local food systems and economies, sustainable community and culture practices, health, and equity.