“Seeing Dar” is the first of a series of publications resulting from my Foodscapes professorship at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in which I have involved Master students in Landscape Architecture, Architecture and Urbanism in research projects of the Rural Sociology Group. This publication is the result of a 12 week design studio, which commenced with a 10 day field visit of Academy of Architecture students to Dar es Salaam, linked to Marc Wegerif’s PhD project and the work of Daniel Mbisso on markets at the School of Architecture and Design of Ardhi University. The publication is a collection of individual design projects and essays focussing on different aspects of Dar es Salaam’s foodscape: food markets, food and food-related waste, climate change adaptation, gender, public space and distribution infrastructure. For the students the 10 day exploration of Dar es Salaam’s foodscape was crucial to come up with spatial designs that aligned well with the everyday life and cultures of people living, working, travelling and eating in Dar es Salaam. For me it was an interesting experience to link spatial design to sociological research. More publications in which spatial design meets rural sociology will follow later this year and next year.

While urban agriculture is often used as a tool for increasing social cohesion in neighbourhoods, Esther Veen believes that it does not always lead to better relationships between residents. This is the subject of her doctoral thesis, which she successfully  defended at Wageningen University on Monday 15 June 2015.

For her doctoral research, Esther Veen observed various community gardens where people from the same neighbourhood came together. She noted that not everyone participates in these gardens and how there is a tendency for groups to form.

“It is often assumed that community gardens benefit the neighbourhood, but the gardens are also a ‘real world’ in which issues arise,” Veen explains. “Municipalities, initiators of urban agriculture projects and other stakeholders should adjust their often high expectations. A neighbourhood community garden does not break through existing social structures just like that, and it is hard to bring people from different socio-economic backgrounds into contact with each other.” Veen’s research does show that neighbourhood community gardens allow people to get to know each other better and ask each other for help more easily.

Interchangeable conversations

In addition to studying neighbourhood community gardens, Veen also observed community gardens where residents are mainly interested in growing fruits and vegetables but do not necessarily come from the same area. It showed that people like chatting to each other in a community garden, but that these contacts are easily exchangeable for conversations with others. Moreover, these chats rarely lead to contacts or friendships outside the community garden.

Not against ‘the system’

Scientific literature often assumes that people who actively use community gardens have a certain resistance against the current food system, and that for them the community garden functions as an alternative food network. Veen’s studies showed that these assumptions were erroneous in the community gardens she researched. People mainly like to garden because they enjoy the act of gardening, not because they want to change the world or oppose the conventional food system. Veen: “Food from neighbourhood community gardens may fit into a lifestyle in which organic or local products play a major role for some people, but this is a personal consideration to them. They don’t see themselves as part of an alternative food network.”

Participative observation

By means of interviews and surveys, Veen studied seven community gardens in Almere (two), Amsterdam, Assen, Leeuwarden, Rotterdam and Zutphen. She also observed four of the seven community gardens via ‘participative observation’ – taking part and helping in activities organised by the community gardens, such as an Easter brunch and a harvest market. “This method allowed me to experience personally what it’s like in the community garden,” she says. “Interviewing people helped me learn much more about the social relationships that develop.”

This blog is a copy of a Wageningen UR press release and a follow-up of a previous blog announcing the public defence.

Today the 29th issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine has been published online, featuring a special issue on city region food systems.

This issue addresses the growing attention for policy and practice approaches that focus on food issues in urban areas from a city-regional perspective, taking into account possible contributions from urban and periurban agriculture and a strengthening of urban-rural relations. It is largely based on our EC funded research programme SUPURBFOOD but also features articles from other projects and initiatives.

The Magazine will be officially launched in hardcopy at the ICLEI Resilient Cities Congress on 10 June 2015 in Bonn, Germany, during which event three Urban Food Forum sessions are held in collaboration with the SUPURBFOOD consortium together with policymakers and SMEs from the SUPURBFOOD city regions.