Increasingly, people living in cities are turning to community gardening to improve their nutrition and access to quality produce. With little income to support them, the urban poor have frequently been abandoned by the major grocery chains creating what are referred to as food deserts, where the only access to food are fast food restaurants and convenience stores. In response, community organizers and church groups are starting local gardens situated in vacant lots and farmer’s markets in abandoned parking lots. This growing movement can now be found in nearly every city, where food production has become a central place for fostering community development and reconnecting people with the natural world. This urban food security/sovereignty movement has cross-fertilized with growing “buy local” and “grow your own” sentiments on the part of more affluent urbanite consumers to create vibrant networks of community/urban gardens, farmers markets, and other community-supported agriculture efforts that make up today’s Sustainable Food movement. In 1996, UNDP estimated that urban agriculture contributed 15% of the world’s food with the potential to produce significantly more. However, scientific research to understand the agroecological processes of urban gardens has received little attention. Nonetheless, there is a growing focus on research that both improves our scientific understanding of the ecology of urban gardens and engages citizens in ecological research that have few opportunities to experience nature. This session will spotlight agroecological research that addresses the unique challenges to agriculture in urban environments, including soil science, pollination, pests and disease ecology. Research on positive benefits of urban gardens for their communities will be discussed, including improvements to food security and urban greenspace. Finally, presentations will include several programs that focus on the connections between research and learning where urban gardens serve as a classroom and outdoor laboratory for science education. The goal of this symposium is to bring together researchers that are finding urban gardens to be unique and interesting study systems for research that contributes directly not only to the need for a better understanding of agroecology in urban settings, but also to broader themes in ecology and science education. If time permits, the session will conclude with a discussion to identify research needs and priorities and the potential to support communities involved in urban agriculture.