Dig for vitality: UK urban allotments as a health-promoting response to COVID-19

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ABSTRACT

Using empirical ethnographic data, and citing UK allotments as a case study, this think piece examines changes in the use of urban growing spaces as a response to a national crisis. Despite established links between urban growing spaces and improved health, competition for land globally threatens their existence. In the UK, COVID-19 has drawn attention to the importance of urban allotments as local resources and a means of increasing food security. Even so, some European local authorities quickly closed urban allotments in response to the pandemic. Allotments in their design offer a ready-made socially distanced solution to urban food, mental and physical health challenges. This think piece exposes the divergence between citizens’ actions and government responses to the pandemic.

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© 2021 JC Niala. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• urban policy
• allotments
• urban gardening
• food security
• urban health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

JC Niala

JC Niala is a doctoral anthropology researcher at St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. Her ethnographic research is based on allotments in the city of Oxford where she also practises urban gardening. Her interests include utopia and the imagination, banal nationalism & practices of cultivation. JC is currently writing a book entitled A Loveliness of Ladybirds based on current research and her experiences of establishing a successful organic farm in an informal settlement in Kibera, Nairobi. The book was shortlisted for the Nan Shephard Nature Writing Prize in 2019.