Urban agriculture is promoted as a strategy for dealing with food insecurity, stimulating economic development, and combating dietrelated health problems in cities. However, up to now, no one has known how much gardening is taking place in urban areas.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a methodology that they used to quantify the urban agriculture in Chicago.
John Taylor, a doctoral candidate working with crop sciences researcher Sarah Taylor Lovell, was skeptical about the lists of urban gardens provided to him by local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). “Various lists were circulating,” he said. “One of them had almost 700 gardens on it.”
On closer inspection, however, many of these “gardens” turned out to be planter boxes or landscaping and were not producing food. On the other hand, Taylor suspected that there were unnoticed gardens in....
