Gated gardens: Effects of urbanization on community formation and commons management in community gardens

Autor: Madeleine Fairbairn, Monika Egerer
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Geoforum. 96:61-69
ISSN: 0016-7185
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.07.014
Popis: Community gardens are often positioned as spaces where urban people can build community, reclaim common space, and reassert a “right to the city” in urban landscapes that are shaped by gentrification and the privatization of space. However, the literature on urban agriculture often focuses on the struggles of gardens to endure external political-economic processes, largely overlooking within-garden tensions relating to social inequality and resource access. In this study we examined how the pressures associated with urbanization are inscribed in three community garden landscapes in the central coast of California—a region undergoing massive urban transformation in recent decades. The cases reveal that social tensions from urbanization permeate garden boundaries to influence the production of space and the social relations within the garden. Specifically, the resource struggles and social inequities in these regions are made visible in the gardens through conflicts over membership rules, resource management, and theft of produce. The analysis of these conflicts illustrates how extreme real estate valuation and gentrification shapes the particular ways in which the urban commons are managed, including the forms of inclusion and exclusion, claims-making, and racialization of resources that are employed. Uncovering and complicating our understanding of the struggles of and tensions within community gardens is a necessary step in the pursuit of “just sustainability” within changing cityscapes.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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