Sustainable HCI for grassroots urban food-growing communities

Mainstream food growing practices around the world call in to question our future food security, and in particular the sustainability of food consumption in urban centres. At the same time there has been a dramatic recent increase in grassroots urban food-growing communities in the UK and beyond. This paper looks at how research in sustainable human-computer interaction (HCI) can support better social and environmental practices through a focus on urban food-growing communities. In this paper we respond to recent work within sustainable HCI. We report on a field study at an urban city farm in inner London which took a participatory research approach with staff and volunteers. We discuss the values, needs and practices of the farm community which have emerged from the fieldwork. We conclude with a discussion of the implications and opportunities for designing with computational technology to help inform the conceptualisation of sustainable HCI and to serve as a resource for designers engaging with urban food-growing communities.