Associate Professor
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies | California State University, Northridge
I study the relationship between environmental and social processes by using mixed methods, including fieldwork, spatial analysis and geospatial technology. Most broadly, I am interested in understanding community-environment interactions: how households and communities create livelihoods, manage resources, and interact with the natural environment at local scales vis-à-vis societal power structures and broader-scale environmental change.
I have studied the intersection of livelihoods and the environment through topics such as urban agriculture and food systems, urban-rural networks, and disaster recovery and resilience.
This project takes place in two locations: community site in Port Vila, Vanuatu and a demonstration/research site at CSUN. It integrates gravity-fed drip irrigation and indigenous gardening techniques. Rainwater catchment will be used to irrigate garden plots of indigenous crops in a demonstration and training program for ni-Vanuatu children and youth managed by Breakthru Women’s Voice Vanuatu (BWVV), a women’s group drawn from four churches across Port Vila. Drip irrigation will be used to irrigate traditional crops such as dryland taro, island cabbage, yam, and kumala (sweet potato). A test site at CSUN to film instructional videos and to compare water conservation techniques for crop success.
Ambae Island in the Melanesian country of Vanuatu experienced volcanic eruptions, drought, and crop damage from livestock from 2017 to 2020. This project examines land cover change related to the multiple overlapping impacts on livelihoods. Remote sensing techniques are used to examine disaster impacts and recovery through analysis of multi-spectral satellite imagery; interpretation of this data will include theoretically-informed use of the livelihoods and disaser resilience project. High resolution data come from the following satellites: WorldView 3 (30cm and 2m resolution), WorldView 2 and Pleiades 1 (50cm and 2m resolution), and Sentinel-2 (10m and 20m resolution).
This project has several components. 1) Translocal livelihoods examines spatial patterns of networks that connect indigenous Ambae Islanders across different islands in urban and rural Vanuatu. 2) Qualitative and Quantitative Evacuation Experiences Project, to examine the experiences of volcanic eruptions and evacuations through fieldwork in 2018 and 2019. 3) Long-term Social and Environmental Impacts of Evacuations, to examine adaptation to extended evacuations and rebuilding on Santo Island. 4) Social and Environmental Recovery on Ambae Island, to examine multiple overlapping impacts through fieldwork and water resource survey.
This project evaluates research technology and tools that are accessible for community organizations but still provide professional-quality research. Includes mobile air quality sensors; mobile GNSS and GPS; pole-based aerial photography.
2017-2019. Most research on Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles focuses on the mid-century displacement of Mexican-American residents, but little is known about the livelihoods of the place before those events. We used archival maps and census data to visualize neighborhood data of Chavez Ravine from 1940. 62 randomly sampled heads-of-household, using public records from the 1940 Census, were mapped by triangulating census data with street locations from the Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas Collection, because the streets were replaced with Dodger Stadium parking lots 60 years ago. Socio-economic data from the census records were then appended to the GIS data in order to identify spatial patterns across the mapped neighborhoods. The findings unsettled historical narratives that the area was a slum and revealed economic and social diversity that had been missing from the literature.
2015-2018.The project aimed to connect the places where food is grown to socio-economic data on the neighborhoods where those farms sell food at farmers’ markets. We conducted fieldwork at 33 farmers’ markets in Los Angeles and identified the locations of 282 farms that supplied those markets. A mobile app was developed by a graduate student on the project in order to compile data in the field with to a map-based interface. We then developed a many-to-many database to connect each farm to each market where it sold food. By using network analysis tools in geographic information systems software, our analysis compared market locations to demographic data and U.S. Department of Agriculture-defined food desert criteria.
2014-2015. Based at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University. Funded by the Rita Allen Foundation, this project evaluated the potential to reuse vacant properties to provide healthy food access in Trenton, New Jersey. This was a collaboration between the Isles (a non-governmental organization), the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability at Rutgers University. Our work combined GIS modelling, field surveys of 30,000 parcels using ArcGIS Collector, and questionnaires and focus groups of 20 community gardens. Our findings were published in Cities and the Environment and in AIMS Environmental Science.
2011-2013. Based at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University. Co-managed survey design, data collection and analysis of 445 organizations in 50 states and eight Canadian provinces, representing 8,550 garden sites.The analysis identified the organizational context of community gardening includes governmental and non-governmental organizations that work at various scales—from neighborhood, to city, to state-wide—to support community gardens. Key challenges in this work include funding, participation, land, and materials. Together, this analysis suggests that community gardens can be better integrated into local food systems through analysis of how people involved with this work navigate these shared processes. The results are published in an issue of Agriculture and Human Values.
2012-2013. Based at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University. Existing research focused on outcomes and criteria for successful gardens, but less was clear about how community gardens worked. To address this, I used interviews and participant observation to examine how people start and maintain community gardens in urban and suburban New Jersey. I also directed three undergraduates and one graduate student in the production of site plans for comparative analysis. Findings point to the ways that spatial and social contexts shape key issues such as water access, participation, and horticultural techniques. Spatially, this relates to the internal organization and the external neighborhood environments. Socially, successful management depends on a balance of both individual and collective labor. Findings were published in Journal of Extension.
2013. Based at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University. This project, funded by an $18,000 grant from Rutgers University, examined urban agriculture capacity through the processes of community engagement in New Brunswick, New Jersey. First, a participatory design research project, which brought together Rutgers faculty and students with community gardeners to jointly design and implement improvements to two community gardens and a farmers’ market. Second, a pre- and post- survey assessed attitudes regarding civic engagement, gardening knowledge, and the community-university partnership itself to support ongoing strategic planning. The results of this study were published in the book Cities of Farmers.
2011-2013. Based at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University. We conducted archival research on community garden advocacy over the past 125 years. Using a Foucauldian genealogy method, we argued that community gardens are constantly invoked as means to an end, but are never treated as integral parts of the urban landscape. This dominant narrative was started by institutions but has since been taken on by community gardeners, presenting challenges to long-term land access. This work is published as part of a special issue in Cities.
2010-2015. PhD dissertation research at the Department of Geography, Rutgers University. In my dissertation, I argued that uneven access to knowledge, resources, and labor both enable and impede efforts to establish and sustain urban food production. Theoretically, I drew on network approaches from political ecology and economic geography, and participatory approaches in geographic information science. I assessed how urban agriculture means accessing knowledge, resources, and labor through networks, and the difference such connections make to producing and sustaining agriculture sites. I used participatory GIS methods to visualize the spatial distribution of resources and community gardeners; participants were then able to evaluate internal and external flows. My findings reveal four types of urban agriculture networks. In the first, local NGOs act as central hubs, distributing resources to urban farm and garden sites. The second is premised on the recirculation of resources; a collection of urban farms, gardens, and NGOs seek a closed-loop supply chain where farms supply seedlings to community gardens, who then sell surplus produce to local restaurants. The third model is in the form of coalitions, where members share resources and take political action. Fourth, virtual networks form among urban agriculture practitioners who work without spatially proximate partners. Theoretically, my study contributes to the growing literature on diverse economies by advancing a relational framework to understand the regional dynamics of community-based economic activities.
2009-2010. Master's thesis research at the Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami. Community gardens attract widespread interest for the potential of not only food production, but also for social, environmental, and educational benefits. Yet community gardens have also been scrutinized as sites of governmentality that produce neoliberal subjects. My fieldwork-based thesis provided six case studies as representative of three ways to organize and manage gardens: grassroots, externally-organized, and active nonprofit management. I used performativity theory to examine how definitions and enactments of community can be used to include, exclude, or bridge difference. The analysis highlights some of the specific moments in garden organizing and management that influence participation or resistance to community-oriented urban food production.
Drake, L., Liunakwalaua, H., and Hango Hango Community Association. 2022. Locating the traditional economy in Port Vila, Vanuatu: Disaster relief and agrobiodiversity. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 63(1), 80-96.
Drake, L. 2020. Visualizing and analyzing diverse economies with GIS: A resource for performative research. In The Handbook of Diverse Economies, (eds) J.K. Gibson-Graham and K. Dombrosk, pp. 493-501. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Drake, L. 2019. Network analysis of local food in California: A study of farmers' markets in Los Angeles and their farm supply chains. California Geographer 58: 1-20.
Drake, L. 2019. Surplus labor and subjectivity in urban agriculture: Embodied work, contested work. Economic Geography 95(2), 179-200.
Drake, L., Ravit, B., and Lawson, L. 2016. Developing a vacant property inventory through productive partnerships: A university, NGO, and municipal planning collaboration in Trenton, New Jersey. Cities and the Environment (CATE) 8(2), Article 6. Available at:
Lawson, L., Drake, L., and Fitzgerald, N. 2016. Foregrounding community-building in community food security: A case study of the New Brunswick Community Farmers Market and Esperanza Garden. In Cities of Farmers: Urban Agricultural Practice and Processes. Edited by Alfonso Morales and Julie Dawson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Drake, L. and Lawson, L. 2015. Best practices in community garden management to address participation, water access, and outreach. Journal of Extension 53 (6)
Drake, L., Ravit, B., Dikidjieva, I., and Lawson, L. 2015. Urban greening supported by GIS: From data collection to policy implementation. AIMS Environmental Science 2(4), 910-934.
Drake, L., and Lawson, L. 2015. Results of a U.S. and Canada community garden survey: Shared challenges in garden management amid diverse geographical and organizational contexts. Agriculture and Human Values 32 (2), 241-254
Lawson, L., and Drake, L. 2015. From beets in the Bronx to chard in Chicago: The discourse and practice of growing food in the American city. In Food in the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation (pp. 143-162). Edited by Dorothée Imbert. Washington D.C.: Harvard University and Dumbarton Oaks
Drake, L. 2014. Governmentality in urban food production: Following “community” from intentions to outcomes. Urban Geography 35 (2), 177-196.
Drake, L., and Lawson, L. Validating verdancy or vacancy? The relationship of community gardens and vacant lands in the U.S. Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning. 40, Part B (0):133-142
Barron, E., Drake, L., and Morrow, O. 2014. Introduction to the symposium. Book symposium on Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities by J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2013. Social and Cultural Geography 15 (8), 966-967.
2020. Interactive report of data analysis of coffee farmer livelihoods, and GIS training, for World Vision Vanuatu (humanitarian non-governmental organization). Available at https://arcg.is/1Pq9K5.
2019. Interactive website created with Hango Hango Community Association, Port Vila, Vanuatu, “Backyard Gardening for Resilience.” Available at https://arcg.is/1njHfy.
2018. Three interactive websites created with Pacoima Beautiful, Pacoima, California:
2018. Drake, L. Report of 2017 Pilot Study of Walaha Community Network. Prepared for Walaha Village community and Hango Hango Association, Vanuatu.
2015. Drake, Luke, Beth Ravit, Laura Lawson, Elizabeth Ostrowski, and Danny Rico. Integrating re-use of abandoned properties for healthy food options in Trenton, New Jersey. Rutgers University Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability.
2014. Lawson, Laura, Drake, Luke, Kristine Kopia, Deanna Lu, Chantae Moore, and Hanife Vardi-Topal. Building gardens and capacity with the community gardening movement in New Brunswick: A report of the summer 2013 service-learning internship. Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University.
2013. Lawson, Laura, Drake, Luke. 2012 Community gardening organization survey. Community Greening Review (18): 20-41.
2013. Lawson, Laura, and Drake, Luke. Gardening the Garden State: Exploring the diversity of New Jersey’s community gardens. Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers University.