Exploring urban agriculture, social cohesion and environmental justice

Interviews and conversations collected between March 2011 and November 2013 on urban agriculture, social cohesion and environmental justice. Respondents were urban agricultural projects' leaders, allotment officers, sustainable food strategies designers, landless people, allotment holders and various policy makers.
<p>This research project aims to investigate emerging forms of Urban Agriculture (UA) in the UK, and their impact on social cohesion and environmental justice.
After having been marginalised for half a century, UA is encountering a great resurgence in popularity in the cities of the Global North. Community groups, social enterprises and guerrilla gardeners are promoting food growing in a wide range of unusual contexts: public space and housing estates, brown fields and rooftops, window sills and parish greens.
Despite being generally portrayed as:

- benevolent and unproblematic, with the potential to partially solve problems associated with food quality and affordability

- contribute to reduced ecological footprints

- increase community cohesion

- achieve greater community resilience to the economic crisis

- promote urban sustainability.

UA raises many controversial and potentially unjust dynamics, which lie unexplored.
This research will be the first academic investigation into UA as a social practice in UK, investigating its cultural, social and institutional dimensions and will experiment with a creation of a social platform (a forum) where urban agriculturalists and policy makers can jointly discuss which resources, skills, infrastructural and regulative models are needed to ensure socially and environmentally just urban agricultural practices in the Leeds City Region context.</p>

本数据集采集自2011年3月至2013年11月期间，围绕都市农业（Urban Agriculture, UA）、社会凝聚力与环境正义开展的访谈与对话。受访对象涵盖都市农业项目负责人、菜地分配专员、可持续食品战略设计者、无地人群、菜地承租户以及各类政策制定者。

本研究项目旨在探究英国境内都市农业（UA）的新兴形态，及其对社会凝聚力与环境正义的影响。
在被边缘化半个世纪后，都市农业在全球北方（Global North）的城市中迎来了广泛复兴。社区团体、社会企业与游击园丁（guerrilla gardeners）正在各类非常规场景推广食品种植：公共空间与住宅区、棕地（brown fields）与屋顶、窗台与教区公共绿地。
尽管都市农业通常被描绘为：
- 兼具善意且毫无争议，有望部分解决与食品质量及可负担性相关的问题
- 有助于降低生态足迹（ecological footprints）
- 增强社区凝聚力
- 提升社区应对经济危机的韧性
- 推动城市可持续发展。
但都市农业仍存在诸多未被探索的争议性与潜在非正义的运作逻辑。
本研究将是英国境内首次将都市农业作为社会实践展开的学术探究，将考察其文化、社会与制度维度，并尝试搭建一个社交平台（论坛），供都市农业从业者与政策制定者共同讨论：在利兹城市区域语境下，需要哪些资源、技能、基础设施与监管模式，才能确保都市农业实践兼具社会与环境正义性。