"Paradise Transplanted, Paradise Lost?" Boom: A Journal of California, 4(3):86-94, 2014. (original) (raw)
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Cultivating belonging: Refugees, urban gardens, and placemaking in the Midwest, USA
Social and Cultural Geography, 2017
In the aftermath of failed urban renewal projects and the decline of central cities, community gardens have become increasingly popular in urban planning, public health, and environmental circles. However, gardens still occupy a tenuous and contradictory position in the city. While urban gardens are bounded spaces, they are also dynamic places where different understandings of (agri)culture, land use, and belonging are enacted and contested. In this paper we identify three distinct ways in which gardens in a small Midwestern city are used and experienced by refugee gardeners and local officials: the material garden, the imagined garden, and the community's garden. The material garden, embodied in the biophysical aspects of the soil, seeds, and resources needed to cultivate plants, shapes what can grow in the garden and the transformations by refugee agricultural practices. While planners tend to see urban gardens as temporary spaces that can promote limited pathways of migrant incorporation, gardeners practice and imagine gardening differently through social, cultural, and economic interactions. We argue that these practices challenge traditional understandings of nature and urban planning, and can promote inclusive understandings of agriculture, cities, and sustainability, embodied in the ideal of the community's garden. Keywords: urban agriculture; migrant incorporation; multicultural planning; refugees; Midwest fundamentally 'places of movement and migration' (2014, 1). Geographers and foodways scholars have traced the transfer of rice and other crops across the Atlantic during European colonialism (Carney, 2002) and described how immigrant and refugee farmers draw on practices, experiences, and memories of agriculture in their country of origin to cultivate plants that are culturally significant to newcomers (Airriess and Clawson, 1994; Pearsall et al., 2016). Within urban gardens, seeds, agricultural practices and ecological knowledge, soil inputs, and gardeners themselves often come from elsewhere. At the same time, urban gardeners interact with neighbors and local officials as they rent garden plots, alter landscapes, and harvest, distribute, and consume their produce. Urban gardens, therefore, are dynamic places where multiple understandings of agriculture, economic development, and land use planning are enacted as well as contested. Gardens also embody longstanding tensions over the appearance and control of urban landscapes. As Sarah Moore (2006) argued, the recent interest in urban agriculture can overlook a rich history of subsistence and community gardening in cities. Since the 19 th century, officials in Europe and the United States have used green space and gardening programs as key components of urban revitalization. Critics of industrial cities argued that the separation of urban residents from nature was 'unnatural,' much like cities themselves, and resulted in negative health and social consequences for city dwellers. In response, early reformers and planners built public parks, boulevard systems, and grand monuments as part of The City Beautiful movement (Gandy, 2002). City officials also promoted gardening on vacant land and school grounds during economic crises (Lawson, 2005). Although vacant lot gardens were almost always temporary, reformers argued that being in nature and working with the soil would help poor children and adults develop good work habits and 'American' values, particularly as they related to food (Ziegelman, 2010). In these initiatives, gardens and green space functioned as forms of environmental determinism that would rejuvenate and transform the character of marginalized urban residents, many of whom were
2008
This research incorporates 'production of space' theory to explore how individual and societal characteristics influence community gardening practices and outcomes for individuals and neighborhoods in Havana, Cuba and Boston, Massachusetts. Methods used for this research include demographic analysis, interviews, surveys, field mapping, photo documentation and direct observation. The hope is that this research will bring to light certain policies and actions that will help ensure access to community garden space by diverse individuals. The following describes the main findings of this research. In Boston, some neighborhoods experiencing rapidly escalating rents are also experiencing an outmigration of ethnic minorities, particularly Hispanic-Latinos and African Americans. As neighborhoods lose their ethnic diversity, so do the community gardens located in these neighborhoods. The consequence is that cultural gardening practices and traditions are lost for gardeners, and often...
"Reclaiming the Soil: Gardens and Communities in South Los Angeles"
UC Press, 2012
In recent years, school and community gardens across Los Angeles have effectively combated diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. In South Los Angeles, school gardens also serve overlooked communities, providing nutritious food, integrative education, and even green entrepreneurial skills to elementary and high school students. At the 24th Street Elementary School in West Adams, for example, children, parents, teachers, and administrators have enjoyed vegetables planted and harvested by its 932 enrolled students. Since 2005, the Garden School Foundation (GSF) has assisted the 24th Street community in planting the ¾ acre kitchen garden and orchard. GSF is one of many non-profits, community organizations, and local businesses attempting to strengthen the economic viability of South Los Angeles through the power of gardens and food forests. Alongside many other organizations, GSF takes its cues from the needs and interests of local neighborhoods. Like any successful farmer, non-profits must listen and understand the local climate. Within the community and school gardens of South Los Angeles, this climate is looking increasingly favorable. This article explores the history and future of local foods in this region of Los Angeles.
Ethnobotany of Urban Home Gardens in East Los Angeles THESIS
Ethnobotany of Urban Home Gardens in East Los Angeles, 2008
Ethnobotany is the study of people’s interactions with plants. The way people incorporate plants into their daily lives and cultural traditions reveals much about the people themselves. Much of the work in ethnobotany focuses on the study of aboriginal, pre-industrial peoples and their relations with plants, but they do not recognize the complex relationships and interdependence between plants and modern societies. This study explores the interactions between people and plants in 15 urban home gardens of East Los Angeles. East L.A. has the largest Mexican-American population in the U.S. This case study explores the extent to which urban home gardens play a role in the practice and preservation of traditional Mexican culture. It identifies plant categories that are being cultivated in these gardens and what they are being used for. It critically examines the economics of these 15 household gardens by comparing the return of garden benefits against the initial investments. It seeks to determine if gardening work plays a role in promoting the physical and social-psychological makeup of East L.A. gardeners. It also examines whether East L.A. home gardens play a role in adding to the nutrition of the household, to community beautification, or in helping protect the immediate environment.
ABSTRACT: Ethnobotany of Urban Home Gardens in East Los Angeles
Abstract: Ethnobotany of Urban Home Gardens in East Los Angeles, 2008
Ethnobotany is the study of people’s interactions with plants. The way people incorporate plants into their daily lives and cultural traditions reveals much about the people themselves. Much of the work in ethnobotany focuses on the study of aboriginal, pre-industrial peoples and their relations with plants, but they do not recognize the complex relationships and interdependence between plants and modern societies. This study explores the interactions between people and plants in 15 urban home gardens of East Los Angeles. East L.A. has the largest Mexican-American population in the U.S. This case study explores the extent to which urban home gardens play a role in the practice and preservation of traditional Mexican culture. It identifies plant categories that are being cultivated in these gardens and what they are being used for. It critically examines the economics of these 15 household gardens by comparing the return of garden benefits against the initial investments. It seeks to determine if gardening work plays a role in promoting the physical and social-psychological makeup of East L.A. gardeners. It also examines whether East L.A. home gardens play a role in adding to the nutrition of the household, to community beautification, or in helping protect the immediate environment.
Agriculture and human values, 2004
To determine the role Latino community gardens play in community development, open space, and civic agriculture, we conducted interviews with 32 community gardeners from 20 gardens, and with staff from 11 community gardening support non-profit organizations and government agencies. We also conducted observations in the gardens, and reviewed documents written by the gardeners and staff from 13 support organizations and agencies. In addition to being sites for production of conventional and ethnic vegetables and herbs, the gardens host numerous social, educational, and cultural events, including neighborhood and church gatherings, holiday parties, children's activities, school tours, concerts, health fairs, and voter registration drives. In some cases, the gardens also serve to promote community activism. The primary concern of gardeners is to secure land tenure in the face of pressures to develop the garden sites for housing. The support organizations and agencies provide help with land tenure, as well as with advocacy, organization, and horticultural practices. Although the role of the Latino gardens in community development appears to be more important than their role in open space or agricultural production, the gardens can also be viewed as unique ''participatory landscapes'' that combine aspects of all three movements, as well as provide a connection between immigrants and their cultural heritage.
The basic question guiding this article is what do people living in an underserved neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, think about the urban gardens that have sprouted up around them during the last ten years. The question arose because of the mixed success of a produce market that was meant to target the nutritional needs of this African American community. Based on interviews conducted at two garden sites created by the nonprofit HopeBUILD, the author found that the community members valued the gardens less for the nutrition they offered than for the values and sense of heritage they conveyed. The ways they spoke about the gardens and produce resonated with old agrarian myths about the cultural importance of working the land to build a strong sense of character and independence. Many have relatives who took part in the Great Migration from the rural South in the early twentieth century. Although African Americans suffered devastating hardships from corrupt and racist tenant and farm policies, many held fast to the agrarian myth that to own a farm, or produce one's own food, enabled self-determination and full rights of citizenship. These inner-city African Americans, therefore, stake claim to one of the longest-lasting and most potent symbols of American national identity—the American farmer. The symbol of the farmer is as relevant in urban lots as it is in the countryside. The point is that healthy food and nutritious food are not necessarily the same thing. Healthy foods are ones that sustain cultures, not just bodies.
Digging in: lawn dissidents, performing sustainability, and landscapes of privilege
Social & Cultural Geography, 2016
'Lawn dissidents' are people who violate norms of turfgrass yards often found in North American suburbs. This paper uses qualitative methods and engages a performance view of landscape to examine how these subjects' sustainability-oriented lawn alternatives work unintentionally to create exclusionary landscapes. As capitalism adopts environmentalism as a 'sustainability fix' , niche 'green' capitalist markets allow lawn dissidents to cultivate subject positions within sustainability that ignore social justice concerns. Alongside their environmentalist concerns, lawn dissidents continue to approach land through frames that treat it as a commodity and as a signifier of cultural distinction, particularly within an elite cosmopolitan subcategory of whiteness. Nonetheless, inasmuch as lawn dissidents enact social scripts and cultivate landscapes that perform white bourgeois sensibilities around urban sustainability, the exclusionary effect of this practice is neither inevitable nor necessary. By viewing the landscapes that lawn dissidents create through the theory of the interstice, we posit an alternative direction in which sharing economies offer a more inclusive vision of sustainability in urban residential landscapes. Creuser: dissidents des pelouses, mise en oeuvre de durabilité et paysages de privilège RÉSUMÉ « Les dissidents des pelouses » sont des gens qui enfreignent les normes des surfaces à gazon souvent présentes dans les banlieues d'Amérique du Nord. Cet article utilise les méthodes qualitatives et participe à une vision de la performance du paysage afin d'examiner comment les alternatives de pelouses à des fins de durabilité de ces sujets conspirent de manière non intentionnelle à créer des paysages d'exclusion. De même que le capitalisme adopte l'environnementalisme comme une solution à la durabilité, les marchés capitalistes spécialisés dans le « vert » permettent aux dissidents des pelouses de cultiver des positions de sujets dans le cadre de la durabilité qui ignorent les questions de justice sociale. En plus de leurs inquiétudes environnementales, les dissidents des pelouses continuent de traiter la terre comme une marchandise et comme un signe de distinction culturelle, particulièrement dans le cadre d'une sous-catégorie d'une élite cosmopolite blanche.