Can community gardens and farmers' markets relieve food desert problems? A study of Edmonton, Canada

This article integrates community gardens and farmers' markets into a spatial analysis of food deserts in the City of Edmonton, Canada. Our results show that community gardens and farmers' markets can improve fresh food accessibility and help relieve food desert problems to some extent, especially for mature, inner-suburban neighborhoods. However, based on the minimum road network distance and high need indicators, four neighborhoods throughout the city can still be considered as food deserts even after farmers' markets and community gardens are taken into consideration. Regression results reveal that community gardens tend to cluster with supermarkets, so that neighborhoods that have poor access to supermarkets also tend to have limited access to community gardens.