Parks: Community Gardens

Grow food, friendships, and opportunitiesBy Ann ChristophCommunity gardens are increasingly appreciated as urban amenities, where social isolation—both from standardized-housing tract design and from COVID-19 pandemic restrictions—can be relieved. For example, the community of Rancho Mission Viejo in southeast Orange County, Calif., advertises “Get closer to nature and neighbors with all the elements to grow and thrive.” A 2022 study by Eiji Toda and Edward Lowe1 of Soka University surveyed six community gardens in south Orange County. Their findings substantiate this trend and suggest that community gardens reflect a shift in the “utopian visions of post-suburban planning” away from a consumerist/privacy-oriented lifestyle to a “newer one that enables access to nature and sustained social connections among residents.”