[Community_garden] Benefits of community gardens-perhaps relevant or at least of interest

[Keith Tidball]

I have been following the posts about sources for documentation of benefits
of GC's with interest...so nice to find out about more of these resources!

 

List members may not be aware of community greening research here at Cornell
happening within our Civic Ecology Initiative (Department of Natural
Resources).  The following items may be of interest:

 

1.      "From Risk to Resilience: What Role for Community Greening and Civic
Ecology in Cities?" appears as chapter 7 in Wals, Arjen (editor) (2007),
Social Learning Towards a more Sustainable World, Wageningen Academic
Publishers, Wageningen, The Netherlands.   In this chapter we argue that
urban community greening and other "civic ecology" approaches that integrate
natural, human, social, financial, and physical capital in cities, and that
encompass diversity, self-organization, and adaptive learning and management
leading to positive feedback loops, have the potential to reduce risk from
disaster in cities through helping communities to develop resilience before
a disaster, and to demonstrate resilience after disaster strikes.  You can
read a version of this chapter here:
http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/mek2/file/Tidball_Krasny_Urban_Resilience.pdf

 

2.      "Civic Ecology Education: A Systems Approach to Resilience and
Learning in Cities" is an article currently in review at the Journal of
Environmental Education Research.  In this article we argue that urban
community greening embodies resilience attributes through incorporating
diversity, self-organization, and adaptive learning. Furthermore, we posit
that urban community gardens provide a unique context for environmental
education because they integrate western science and indigenous knowledge
(or diverse forms of knowledge), and community action (or
self-organization).   This article, as yet unpublished, can be viewed at:
http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/mek2/file/Krasny_Tidball_Civic_Ecology_Education.
pdf

 

3.      For an overview of the Civic Ecology Initiative, see:
http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/mek2/page/research-ce.php

 

 

I hope these items may be of use to some of you.  Onward!

 

Best,

 

KGT

 

 

Keith G. Tidball

 

Extension Associate     

Associate Director, Initiative for Civic Ecology

Dept. of Natural Resources

Cornell University

 

101A Rice Hall

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853

 

Campus phone 607-254-5479

Home Office phone 315-568-9710

Mobile phone 202-288-0299

 

http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/people/ra/profiles/tidball.htm

http://www.civicecology.org

http://www.gardenmosaics.cornell.edu/

 

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

-- Howard Hathaway Aiken, physicist and computer pioneer

 

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