"We Belong to the Land": Centering Aesthetic Experience in CSCW Research on Urban Farming

Urban farming is increasingly recognized as a response to sustainability challenges caused by industrial agriculture. However, CSCW research has largely examined farming through optimization and coordination in large-scale and rural agricultural settings. This paper shifts the focus from achieving sustainability as a predefined goal to examining the ongoing process of sustaining, through which cooperative work is maintained over time, using aesthetic experience as an analytical lens. Drawing on an empirical study of small-scale urban farmers, we show that sustaining unfolds through four interrelated qualities of aesthetic experience, including attunement, rhythm, expressive form, and consummation. Through these qualities, farmers’ efforts to nourish neighbors, balance access with livelihood, and repair communities take form in everyday practice. At the same time, these experiences are continually shaped, and frequently disrupted, by material, social, ecological, and organizational constraints. We call for designing for sustaining to support continuity under constraint by deepening attunement, aligning rhythms, and supporting expressive forms that foster mutual appreciation. This study advances CSCW research by foregrounding the aesthetic dimensions of urban farming and opens up new directions for future digital technologies that foster sustainable community food systems.