| Summary: | Community gardens are cultivated in many North American cities and play a crucial role in neighborhood revitalization. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, urban food gardens are an important social, cultural, and environmental practice. They have the potential to offer many benefits that shape how we envision and participate in the future of the neighborhood: serve as an instrument to support land banks and community-led land management, as well as enhance the quality of public spaces; incentivize community engagement; influence neighborhoods’ effort to provide green infrastructure; and, particularly, support the involvement of citizens that are at risk of being isolated from civic participation, Such as senior citizens and the unemployed and underemployed. Food gardens, if properly planned, can become an important transitional zoning tool to design new spaces, and also an important social place that fosters civic life (what sociologists call a “third place”). They are not the solution for all urban problems but can enhance the livability of our neighborhoods. This thesis analyzes the potential of urban food gardens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, drawing on the Cambridge Mobile Data Set to better understand communities' priorities as well as what they like and dislike about civic life. Insights for this study are drawn from interviews with senior citizens, particularly community leaders, who work with MIT’s AgeLab to tackle various challenges that seniors face in the city, with a focus on independent-living facilities for retired communities. The author, drawing on interviews conducted, virtually, with 10 residents of Cambridge Cohouse, a housing development with intergenerational groups who cultivate a community garden, worked with the “lifestyle leaders” (65+) to create a framework to better think of design programs that would facilitate food and “therapy gardens,'' and to assess their interest in managing food gardens. Some of these gardens were also studied to better understand the benefits of “therapy gardens'' for encouraging active lifestyles while aging, and thereby improving both mental and physical health. The work highlights the general aspirations of the residents living in retirement communities to remain socially connected and be engaged with their communities, and it shows the value of urban gardens as “third places” that build community. The thesis also sheds light on the different ways by which urban land used for food production has been addressed in municipal plans and incorporated into business practices. Examining gardens in urban neighborhoods has the potential to foster an understanding of the future of a "third place” as crucial to strengthening social infrastructure and civic life; whilst integrating urban gardens in civic participation plans improves social infrastructure and supports civic health and social and environmental ecosystems.
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