Spaces of Social Inclusion: What are the Ideal Conditions That Encourage the Long Term Resilience of Community Gardens in London?

Abstract

Community gardens are community-led initiatives, where food production can be used as a tool to foster socially inclusive spaces in a neighbourhood. In London, there is a growing interest towards the positive influences they contribute to catchment areas. However, they suffer from a two-fold problem as they are often built on derelict or vacant pockets of land and are generally developed without the necessary planning and well-conceived design. In addition, their targeted contributions to their surroundings are not yet fully valued by planners hence, they tend to be regarded as a temporary utilisation of space, which limits the extent of support and funding they should ideally attract. This projects sheds light on the impacts that community gardens have on their respective surroundings in terms of physical fabric and potential users, particularly in achieving social inclusion goals. This will be coupled with an analysis of existing community gardens in London, to evaluate the factors that lead to their success. The findings are used to develop a two-layered tool kit, which explores the ideal management and design principles stakeholders can apply during the development of community gardens to further support their success, long term resilience and sustainability.