Today in lab, our group finalized our project topic. We had been grappling with multiple different potentials for our topic, ranging from how non-permeable surfaces impact microclimates to how urban gardens shaped as “wildlife-friendly” habitats benefit biodiversity. On top of the difficulties surrounding trying to create a broad, non-place specific framing question, we were finding it quite difficult to create one focus question in specific. Finally, our focus question began to come to form exploring how urban community gardens create community and impact overall health and wellbeing across a broad range of socio-economic areas in Portland. But, we discovered that another group in our ENVS 220 lab was also covering this same topic, so we decided to converge. By splitting the range of socio-economic areas in two, we found that we can study the topic from differing perspectives. We flipped a coin and the other group landed on the exploration of community gardens within lower socio-economic areas, while our group is now specifically looking at those in middle to higher socio-economic areas.
We are interested in coming together to pool our data to understand whether a range of socio-economic areas might have differing motivations behind the creation of community gardens. While lower socio-economic areas might create urban community gardens to provide access to fresh produce, higher socio-economic areas might be more interested in gardening as a hobby and wanting to create connections within their community. In addition, community gardens in lower socio-economic areas might be geared towards creating spaces of safety and happiness for members of the community.
As well as the motivation behind the creation of the community garden, is community created within community gardens? Do community gardeners have more access to fresh produce than prior to their participation? Do community gardens help people get exercise? Are community gardeners contented through their experiences with the garden? At this point, we are all curious as to the benefits of urban community gardens this research will uncover and whether they will differ between the specificities of our groups.