Intersecting race, space, and place through community gardens

Hite, Emily Benton; Perez, Dorie; D'Ingeo, Dalila; Boston, Qasimah; Mitchell, M. Miaisha

doi:10.1111/napa.12113

Cited by 15 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…This translates into an emphasis on a primary antagonism between these two 'agents'-all city dwellers on the one hand, forces of capital and the state on the other hand-and their respective 'rights '." (p.673) This contest between government led, externally driven change and community centered, internally driven change was also consistently presented in articles that focused on issues like the politics and economics of place and placemaking (Darcy and Rogers 2014;Hite et al 2017;Koopmans et al 2017), place marketing (Fincher et al 2016;Kramer 2017;Madureira 2015) and gentrification (Kramer 2017;Oakley and Greenidge 2017). It is this contestation that has led to a number of researchers proposing that placemaking lie somewhere between these binary end points.…”

Section: Key Themes From the Data Describing The Placemaking Processmentioning

confidence: 96%

Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking

Ellery¹,

Ellery

Borkowsky³

2020

Int. Journal of Com. WB

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Historically, planners, community development groups, and other place-engaged organizations and practitioners have worked to elevate the importance of place and placemaking in economically, socially, and environmentally responsible development. However, recent studies have presented the concept of placemaking from professionally different perspectives using a variety of definitions to both rationalize and operationalize this still somewhat nebulous concept. This ambiguity surrounding the term placemaking is further compounded by the use of three different types of spellings for the term in the research literature, with none of the spellings having a clear, consistent, or universally accepted definition aligned to it. Without a common understanding of placemaking as a concept, or how placemaking works theoretically, measuring the value or impact placemaking has as a process on community development is conjectural. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the academic research literature related to placemaking over the past 5 years, describe the current state of placemaking as a concept based on the issues raised in past literature, identify key theoretical principles that consistently support placemaking as it is being used in the research literature, and then use these principles to propose a theoretical model describing how placemaking works as a process. The theoretical model proposed in this work is offered for further examination, description, and testing and as a foundation for future research on the role placemaking plays in community development professional practice.

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Section: Key Themes From the Data Describing The Placemaking Processmentioning

confidence: 96%

Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking

Ellery¹,

Ellery

Borkowsky³

2020

Int. Journal of Com. WB

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“…Clover, 2002; Walter, 2013), as their practices resonate with the idea of conscientisation (Freire, 1970). The experiential learning in community gardens shows that they can enable communities to identify and address their socio‐economic issues, as well as rethink and envision alternatives (Barron, 2017; Haedicke, 2018; Hite et al., 2017; Mmako et al., 2018; Souza et al., 2019; Yap, 2019). A participant of M. White's (2011, p. 23) study affirmed that ‘growing your own garden is the most popular form of popular education, learning by doing, placed‐based, spiritual, all those things in one and in its resistance’.…”

Section: Feminist Considerations Within Community Gardens Beyond Gend...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although these experiences come from different places, they share similarities associated with struggles related to gender, ethnicity, class and age, reflecting on the forms of ‘systemic and symbolic violence’ that prevent participants' right to occupy urban spaces, as discussed by Hite et al. (2017, p. 64). These findings suggest that community gardens can also operate spaces for ‘subaltern counterpublics’, as proposed by Fraser (1990, p. 67), where marginalised social groups can come together, reflect on their condition, and circulate and enact counter‐discourses.…”

Section: Feminist Considerations Within Community Gardens Beyond Gend...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Community gardens as feminist spaces: A more‐than‐gendered approach to their transformative potential

2022

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In recent years, research in urban agriculture (UA) initiatives has adopted a more critical and transdisciplinary approach, proposing that UA enables shifts in socio‐economic, community, environmental and urban paradigms. Following this critical agenda, this paper draws attention to the multi‐scalar transformative potential that participation in community gardens (as a form of UA) can provide to volunteers, informed by a feminist approach. Firstly, we review the literature on the diverse gendered benefits, and degrees of empowerment women have experienced from working in community gardens, both individually and collectively. Examples from the literature review are informed by concepts from feminist geographies that support the exploration of community gardens as sites of embodied, relational and multi‐scalar experience. Following that, we expand the discussion to review opportunities community gardens offer individuals to gain greater awareness of symbolic forms of oppression, and envision alternatives for social change, drawing on feminist geographies in ways that move ‘beyond gender’. These benefits are mostly informed by conscientisation, decolonial and feminist political ecology approaches. Finally, the paper suggests that community gardens can be conceptualised as feminist spaces, given their fluidity and capacity to enable critical perspectives in volunteers, which may result in alternative forms of political action. The paper concludes with suggestions for further critical research on UA spaces.

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“…Much of the existing scholarship on urban agriculture focuses on the use of vacant spaces in cities as the primary site of urban food production. In the Global North, these spaces are often configured as 'community gardens', and are motivated by issues such as distrust of the contemporary food system, desire to become self-reliant, interest in reclaiming and re-greening the city, and creating public space and community (Baker 2004;Chung et al 2005;Hite et al 2017;Morgan 2015;Nonini 2013;Poulsen et al 2014;Rogus and Dimitri 2014;Sokolovsky 2011;Turner 2011;Wakefield et al 2007). 3 Analyses of urban agriculture in the Global South often offer macro-level accounts of structural readjustment, urban poverty, and development.…”

Section: Terrace Gardening As Urban Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…with or interest in gardening" that accounts for this difference in participation (Poulsen et al 2014, 80). For analyses that engage with racial and class inequalities, see Hite et al (2017); Sokolovsky (2011) and White (2011). 4 For two exceptions, see Premat (2012) and Archambault (2016).…”

Section: Terrace Gardening As Urban Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

"Grow what you eat, eat what you grow": urban agriculture as middle class intervention in India

Frazier

2018

Journal of Political Ecology

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In Bengaluru, India's "IT Capital" and one of its fastest growing cities, an increasing number of middle class residents are growing fruits and vegetables in their private spaces for home consumption. This article examines the motivations and practices of Bengaluru's organic terrace gardeners ("OTGians") in order to understand the possibilities and limitations of urban gardening as a middle class intervention into unsafe food systems and decaying urban ecologies. OTGians are driven primarily by concerns about worsening food quality and safety, and secondarily by the desire to create green spaces that counteract environmental degradation in the city. Like community gardeners in the Global North, they understand urban gardening as a way to mediate problems in the contemporary food system and the urban ecology. However, like other alternative food and environmental movements, OTGians' efforts are anchored in class-specific concerns and experiences. While they have been successful in creating a vibrant community, their efforts remain limited to the middle class. This is in large part due to the site, scale, and production practices that anchor their interventions. I briefly consider a different approach to food production in Bengaluru—that of a caste-specific farming community that has been dispossessed of much of its agricultural land in the name of urban development—to illuminate divergent histories, narratives, and practices of urban agriculture. However, I also emphasize the sites of intersection between these narratives, and suggest that OTGians can find commonalities with other food producers in the city in ways that might revolutionize Bengaluru's food future. I thus look for potential sites of collaboration and intersection in understanding the uneven power relations and politics of urban socio-natures.

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Intersecting race, space, and place through community gardens

Cited by 15 publications

References 28 publications

Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking

Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking

Community gardens as feminist spaces: A more‐than‐gendered approach to their transformative potential

"Grow what you eat, eat what you grow": urban agriculture as middle class intervention in India

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