Abstract
Local agricultural production provides opportunities for communities to cultivate resilience in local food supply systems, especially in urban areas underserved by supermarkets or other sources of fresh, affordable, healthy foods. While suitability analyses have traditionally been used to identify suitable locations for community-based food gardens, these models do not typically account for the potential for exposure to pollutants in urban settings, including contamination from industry, transportation infrastructure, or other sources. Using the city of Houston, Texas, as a case study, this paper describes a proposed suitability analysis for siting urban gardens that includes a pollution hazard index in addition to more typical criteria such as size, slope, and solar access. Geographical information systems spatial analyses were employed to determine if existing community gardens in Houston, Texas, are appropriately sited when a composite pollution hazard index score was added as a siting criteria. Results suggest a need to better optimize community garden siting to attenuate both disparate access to fresh produce and reduce risk of urban horticultural environmental exposure to contaminants in many areas.
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This work was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) under Grant number P42ES027704 through the Texas A&M University Superfund Research Center. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIEHS.
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Kirsch, K.R., Newman, G.D., Zhu, R. et al. Applying and Integrating Urban Contamination Factors into Community Garden Siting. J geovis spat anal 6, 33 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-022-00129-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-022-00129-7