Category: Research

Communities across the country want to protect their water quality while also getting the greatest possible benefit out of every investment they make. Many are conserving, restoring, or enhancing natural areas while incorporating trees, rain gardens, vegetated roofs, and other practices that mimic natural systems into developed areas to manage rainwater where it falls. These types of approaches, known as “green infrastructure,” are an integral component of sustainable communities primarily because they can help communities protect the environment and human health while providing other social and economic benefits, allowing communities to achieve more for their money. Using green infrastructure strategies to reduce stormwater runoff can strengthen efforts to preserve open space and natural areas and encourage development in existing communities. Green infrastructure elements help make neighborhood streets and greenways pleasant and safe for walking and biking and reinforce a sense of place. Integrating green infrastructure and sustainable communities encourages collaboration in development decisions and promotes green building practices.

Engaging the entire community creates a vision for the future based on people’s and businesses’ needs, desires, and aspirations. This vision guides the plan and ultimately implementation. A sustainable communities and green infrastructure plan will touch nearly every aspect of a community’s design. Involving a wide range of community members in developing both the vision and the plan creates broad support and encourages multiple champions to emerge to handle different aspects of implementation. Such broad-based involvement also helps ensure people from all walks of life, including vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, can share in the benefits that come from implementing a green infrastructure plan.

Successful plans include clear goals, an assessment of assets and opportunities, a comprehensive look at how to achieve implementation, a means for funding implementation, a way to monitor and measure progress toward achieving the community’s goals, and a strategy for long-term operations and maintenance. With such a plan in place, a community will be well on its way to improving quality of life, protecting the environment, improving public health, becoming economically stronger, and preparing for climate change impacts.

Environmental institutions have been working on diversity
efforts for the better part of five decades. This report discusses
the findings of a study of three types of environmental
institutions: 191 conservation and preservation organizations,
74 government environmental agencies, and 28 environmental
grantmaking foundations. It also reports the findings of
interviews conducted with 21 environmental professionals
who were asked to reflect on the state of diversity in
environmental institutions. The study focuses primarily
on gender, racial, and class diversity in these institutions as
it pertains to the demographic characteristics of their boards
and staff. It examines the recruitment and hiring of new
workers as well as the types of diversity initiatives undertaken
by the organizations. The report also discusses other kinds of
diversities such as cultural, sexual orientation, intergenerational,
and rural-urban.

Urban agriculture has become a popular topic for metropolitan areas to engage in on a program and policy level. It is touted as a means of promoting public health and economic development, building social capital, and repurposing unused land. Food policy councils and other groups that seek to position urban agriculture to policy makers often struggle with how to frame the benefits of and potential problems with urban agriculture. In some cases, the enthusiasm is ahead of the evidence. This review provides an overview of the documented sociocultural, health, environmental, and economic development outcomes of urban agriculture. Demonstrated and potential benefits, as well as risks and limitations, of this growing field will be discussed. We also offer recommendations for further research to strengthen the scholarship on urban agriculture.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/110JyrHUp61FPXT-B9Wdk0DPKXQhf-RVz/preview?usp=drivesdk” title=”urban-ag-literature-review.pdf

The legacies of racist land-based policies are built into the urban and exurban landscapes of the United States. The area of food systems planning provides a special opportunity within planning practice to recognize these histories and work to ameliorate contemporary inequities. Racial equity assessment tools offer one strategy for prioritizing principles of racial equity into food systems
planning processes. The Food System Racial Equity Assessment tool and process is one such strategy for considering how people, place, process, and power are interrelated in a particular plan, policy, or proposal. Pilot sessions with local food-centered organizations informed the development
of this tool and provided valuable insight into its relevance in planning practice. By using food system-specific racial equity tools, planners can normalize conversations about racial difference, ask critical questions about who is or is not served by plans, and prioritizes deliberate consideration of who is involved in visioning, framing, and proposing solutions to planning problems.

The central thesis to this article is that blacks were intended to work the land, but never to own the land. The progression from working the land via slavery,
to peonage, and to land ownership is explored. Africans arrived on American soil carrying with them a rich legacy in caring for the land, and while they did so in America, it was under the most onerous of conditions. Once freed, blacks became prodigious land owners, but with the onset of the twentieth century various systemic factors impacted landownership for blacks. These same factors along with
mechanization, herbicides, government policy, and the courts all served to undermine farm ownership for black Americans. The Pigford Class Action Suit is
central to understanding the complexities of the plight of the black farmer and the attempts of various advocacy groups to maintain black land ownership.

The percentage of people of color in nonprofit executive director roles has remained under 20% for the past decade. To increase the number of people of color leading nonprofits, the sector needs a new narrative about the problem and new strategies to address it. Nonprofits have to transfer the responsibility for the racial leadership gap from those who are targeted by it (aspiring leaders of color), to those governing organizations.

Green_roof_urban_farming_for_buildings_in_high-den.pdf

Many urban cities in the world are trying to enhance sustainability by improving urban greenery and promoting urban farming. By installing green roofs with urban farming, it is possible to achieve environmental, social and economic sustainability for the buildings in urban cities because it can contribute to the mitigation of environmental problems, enhancement of community functions and development of urban food systems. This paper presents the findings of a research to investigate green roof urban farming for high-density urban cities like Hong Kong. The benefits and potential of rooftop urban farming are examined; some experiences in the world are described. The characteristics and constraints of high-density urban cities are studied and the situation in Hong Kong is evaluated critically. It is hoped that the research information will be useful to promoting sustainable buildings and environment in urban cities.

The idea of a community food system is much larger than just urban farming. It deals with everything, all the components that are needed to establish, maintain, and perpetually sustain a civilization.

Urban farming is key in the reclamation of an Earth and ecology-based value system, and it plays an important role: We need urban food production, communities growing food in an urban environment. But with a community food system, neighborhood stakeholders are the ones growing that food, moving it around, and in control of land tenure or wherever soil-, food-, and Earthbased materials are being grown. Basically we are talking about sovereignty, about having land and water rights.

This is not a new concept; indigenous communities globally struggle with powerful external entities that attempt to extract raw and refined resources from land that has traditionally been stewarded by families who understand the natural laws of replenishment and proper natural-resource management. In a locally-operated food system we engage all members of the community, taking special care to engage the most marginalized members and those most impacted by food and land degradation. We begin with simple questions:

“Where are you going to get water from, and how are you getting the water?” “Who makes the decision about how land—open space and commercial space—is being used?”

These simple questions activate civic and civil rights and accountability with government, because there are always regulatory issues and agendas that (as is often revealed) community members are unaware of and have not been included in the conversations. So true sustainability in terms of community food systems means that disenfranchised people, especially youth and their families, are involved in the process not only as beneficiaries of “good (and carbon-neutral) food” but as central participants in the planning, development, and execution of the food system, including its interlocking
parts: energy, housing, public transportation, economic development, and so on. You’re building a whole infrastructure that supports local food systems.