The study was born out of a request from Pima County officials to
Courtney Crosson, an assistant professor of architecture in the UArizona College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, to investigate whether vacant, publicly owned land in Tucson could be turned into small farms that could efficiently produce enough food with sustainably collected water.
Crosson and her co-authors – UArizona geography graduate student
Yinan Zhang, lead author Daoqin Tong from Arizona State University and Qing Zhong, also from ASU – reference a city of Tucson study from 2012 that found Tucson to be the sixth poorest metropolitan area in the U.S., with food insecurity as a leading issue.