Grand Challenges in Urban Agriculture: Ecological and Social Approaches to Transformative Sustainability

Zimmerer, Karl S.; Bell, Martha G.; Chirisa, Innocent; Duvall, Chris S.; Egerer, Monika; Hung, Por‐Tying; Lerner, Amy M.; Shackleton, Charlie M.; Ward, James; Ochoa, Carolina Yacamán

doi:10.3389/fsufs.2021.668561

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Yet solving grand challenges is difficult because they are complex and multilevel, cutting across occupational and professional boundaries. To derive appropriately comprehensive solutions requires insights from multidisciplinary actors, such as in engineering (Bucchiarone et al, 2020; Tan et al 2021), medicine and public health (Weeramanthri and Bailie, 2015; Foulkes and Sharpless, 2021), social work (Herbert Williams, 2016; Padilla and Fong, 2016), agriculture (Bradshaw, 2020; Zimmerer et al, 2021), transportation (Chester and Ryerson, 2014; Kaewunruen, Sussman, and Matsumoto, 2016), and energy (Veers et al, 2019; Henry, Prasher, and Majumdar, 2020). While it is painstaking work, making progress toward addressing grand challenges catalyzes scientific breakthroughs, advances knowledge of the world around us, drives industrial and economic progress globally, and promotes collaborations that might not otherwise exist—all in the service of tackling core problems that the world must face together (Archives of the White House, 2021).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hope Cultures in Organizations: Tackling the Grand Challenge of Commercial Sex Exploitation

Sawyer

Clair

2021

Administrative Science Quarterly

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Many organizations struggle with tackling grand challenges. Research has shown that coordinating and collaborating are central to these endeavors, but the emotions inherent in doing so have been overlooked. From a two-year narrative ethnographic study of an organization tackling the grand challenge of commercial sex exploitation, we build a key theoretical insight about the role of hope culture in the pursuit of grand challenges. We define hope culture as a set of assumptions, beliefs, norms, and practices that propagate hopeful thoughts and behaviors in pursuit of an organization’s goals. We show that when a hope culture is stronger, organizations more vibrantly engage with the grand challenge—the well-being of organizational members flourishes, and organizations ambitiously pursue their goals. When the strength of a hope culture flags, the opposite occurs. Two core mechanisms appear to drive the strength of a hope culture in these contexts: (1) narrative sensemaking of “triggering” organizational events and (2) emotional contagion. Our results demonstrate how hope cultures wax and wane in strength over time, operating as double-edged swords in organizations seeking to tackle grand challenges, with both positive and negative downstream implications. We offer rich, much-needed theory about the emotional realities of tackling grand challenges, as well as necessary guidance on how organizations might hope for a brighter future in the face of adversity.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hope Cultures in Organizations: Tackling the Grand Challenge of Commercial Sex Exploitation

Sawyer

Clair

2021

Administrative Science Quarterly

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“…The main reasons for this are the fact that food prices continually increase but the grant amount does not, moreover grants are not solely used to buy food (Chakona and Shackleton, 2019;Waidler and Devereux, 2019). Therefore, urban agriculture has a crucial role to play as "safety net" and secondary food supply (Zimmerer et al, 2021) and ensuring local food supplies in times of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic where global supply chains were severely affected (Gulyas and Edmondson, 2021). To promote urban agriculture, cooperation is needed with government entities on multiple levels as well as stakeholder participation in decision-making (Obosu-Mensah, 2002;Puppim de Oliveira and Ahmed, 2021).…”

Section: Strategies For Successful Adoption Of Urban Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Why Home Gardens Fail in Enhancing Food Security and Dietary Diversity

et al. 2022

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Visions of sustainable cities mostly conjure up well tended home and community gardens, where owners and residents plant fruits and vegetables that supply some of their livelihood needs. Indeed, home gardens can contribute to household food security but often fail to do so. Moreover, gardens can provide several additional ecosystem services and impact entire communities. This paper seeks to answer why these gardens often do not provide adequate services to make a substantial contribution to food security and identifies possible solutions. We undertook a case study in South Africa in a low-income former township area. The area is characterized by poverty, high levels of unemployment and food insecurity. We interviewed 140 respondents with home gardens to determine what role their own garden plays in household food security. Only 10% of households were found to be completely food secure. Of the rest, 39% experienced hunger that affected everyone in the household and 51% were at risk of hunger. Despite the fact that 72% of the respondents planted vegetables or fruits, the gardens did not contribute substantially to food security. The respondents mostly bought their food, with subsequent food shortages when they did not have enough money. The dietary diversity and consumption of vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables were very low. The most important constraints inhibiting urban agriculture in the study area were cultural practices, such as the presence of large, bare, open spaces, or “lebala,” the focus of home gardeners on ornamental species and lawns; and a reliance on purchasing of foods.

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“…What greening infrastructure implies, besides ensuring that a key part of the urban skeleton of the urban environment becomes vegetal, is that the underlying strength of the productive capacity of the city comes from nature and that the productive capacity is being maintained through regenerative approaches (Girardet 2015 ). Such ecological transformations of cities (Zimmerer et al 2021 ) see in ‘ friches urbaines ’ (urban wasteland) the potential to ‘give urban productive spaces’ a new nature (Russo and Cirella 2020 ; Rashed 2018 ). Brown fields could be given a new role, mixing primary and tertiary sectors into a set of activities focused on improving the city’s food self-sufficiency both through UA initiatives of different types (outdoor allotments, rooftop farming, greenhouses, vertical farming, hydroponics, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘Covid-Trigger’: New Light on Urban Agriculture and Systemic Approach to Urbanism to Co-Create a Sustainable Lisbon

Simon

2022

Syst Pract Action Res

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In 2018, Lisbon won the title of Green capital of Europe 2020. It was described by the Expert Panel as an inspirational city which had started its journey towards sustainability during a period of economic crisis. A year later, Covid-19 had become a global pandemic. Imposed confinements highlighted the extent to which globalisation has spread the virus, as well as the particular fragility of places like cities where people, living together, were asked to not physically interact anymore. Exploring further that very particular global crisis can help to identify the faults in our economic systems and to ask why Lisbon was neither resilient nor sustainable in the face of that adversity. In addition to highlighting how weak our health is, Covid-19 has exacerbated vulnerabilities in Lisbon such as job losses (especially in the touristic sector), food supply (Portugal imports 70% of its food) and food waste. This paper explores how the activity which, ‘ par excellence’ , meets the most basic of our needs (food), through the example of Urban Agriculture (UA), could contribute to discussions on what makes a city sustainable. A literature review on UA in Lisbon highlights its various benefits, complemented by a broader literature review which converges to showing how UA can help to address the vulnerabilities generated or exacerbated by Covid. Having shown its potential contribution to addressing crises, this article then suggests to examine how systems approaches could help to incorporate UA further in a new type of more participatory urbanism aimed at creating sustainable cities.

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Grand Challenges in Urban Agriculture: Ecological and Social Approaches to Transformative Sustainability

Abstract: KSZ acknowledges intellectual interactions with several colleagues in the general background and specific preparation of this article. These include Christophe Soulard,

Cited by 21 publications

References 100 publications

Hope Cultures in Organizations: Tackling the Grand Challenge of Commercial Sex Exploitation

Hope Cultures in Organizations: Tackling the Grand Challenge of Commercial Sex Exploitation

Why Home Gardens Fail in Enhancing Food Security and Dietary Diversity

The ‘Covid-Trigger’: New Light on Urban Agriculture and Systemic Approach to Urbanism to Co-Create a Sustainable Lisbon

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