Making the City of Lakes: Whiteness, Nature, and Urban Development in Minneapolis

Walker, Rebecca H.; Ramer, Hannah; Derickson, Kate Driscoll; Keeler, Bonnie L.

doi:10.1080/24694452.2022.2155606

“…For example, in the 1910s the Minneapolis Garden Club led a massive beautification campaign that eventually grew to encompass 400 acres. The social reformers who founded the garden club sought to reshape the physical and social landscape, and prominent real estate developers provided enthusiastic supportsometimes in combination with racial covenantsto boost property values (Walker et al, 2023). During the Great Depression, the Family Welfare Association managed a massive unemployment relief garden tended by hundreds of families (Salsberry, 1931).…”

Section: Minneapolis Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Local leaders also promoted patriotic gardening campaigns during both World War I and II (Pack, 1919;"Victory Garden Goals Doubled" 1943). Over the following decades, urban gardens attracted interest from apartment dwellers, counterculture hippies, and immigrant communities which included the growing number of Hmong refugees (Wascoe, 1981). By the 1990s, Minneapolis ranked second nationally in community gardens per capita (Lawson, 2005).…”

Section: Minneapolis Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2023

J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev.

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left, and Nicola Inglefield, right, kneel with their farmer-researcher sign in a pepper patch that was part of Rebecca's multifarm sweet pepper breeding project in cooperation with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario's (EFAO) Farmer-Led Research Program. Rebecca and Nicola also conducted a trial in cooperation with EFAO testing different methods for cabbage seed production. See more in the article in this issue, "Farmer knowledge as formal knowledge: A case study of farmer-led research in Ontario, Canada."

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“…For example, in the 1910s the Minneapolis Garden Club led a massive beautification campaign that eventually grew to encompass 400 acres. The social reformers who founded the garden club sought to reshape the physical and social landscape, and prominent real estate developers provided enthusiastic supportsometimes in combination with racial covenantsto boost property values (Walker et al, 2023). During the Great Depression, the Family Welfare Association managed a massive unemployment relief garden tended by hundreds of families (Salsberry, 1931).…”

Section: Minneapolis Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Local leaders also promoted patriotic gardening campaigns during both World War I and II (Pack, 1919;"Victory Garden Goals Doubled" 1943). Over the following decades, urban gardens attracted interest from apartment dwellers, counterculture hippies, and immigrant communities which included the growing number of Hmong refugees (Wascoe, 1981). By the 1990s, Minneapolis ranked second nationally in community gardens per capita (Lawson, 2005).…”

Section: Minneapolis Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digging in: Toward a more just urban garden land policy

Ramer,

Nelson

2023

J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev.

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Surging interest in urban agriculture has prompted cities across North America to adopt policies that give gardeners access to publicly owned land. However, if not carefully designed, these policies can exacerbate existing racial inequities. Drawing on theories of urban and environmental justice, we use a contextualized case comparison to explore the radical potential and practical constraints of garden land policies at two distinct institutions: the City of Minneapolis and the independently elected Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Based on participant observation, document review, and interviews with a range of policy actors, we argue that what appear to be minor, common-sense policy details systematically shape who benefits from the garden land policies, sometimes in surprising ways. Compared to the City, the Park Board goes substantially further in addressing racial equity. Furthermore, though both cases included public participation, we argue that the more intensive participation during the Park Board policy development process—particularly in determining the details—was pivotal in crafting a policy that reduced barriers to racial equity. The present study contributes to the growing scholarship on urban agriculture and environmental governance and offers concrete insights for actors working toward more just policies.

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Environmental Authenticity: Constructing Nature in Postindustrial Parks

Loughran

2024

Qual Sociol

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If nature is socially constructed, how do cultural producers construct it? Few social spaces materialize social constructions of nature as powerfully and as directly as parks, which represent cultural beliefs about nature’s form and function. This paper considers how landscape architects and other social actors involved in creating contemporary urban park landscapes think about nature and decide how to represent it through cultural objects. Drawing on the analysis of three case studies – New York’s High Line, Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail/606, and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park – I consider the aesthetic judgments that cultural producers make about nature when designing and placing value on park landscapes. I find that in the cultural conditions of the twenty-first century, three aesthetic judgments prevail, converging to create a particular vision of nature that is both highly valued and tightly linked to racialized currents of cultural and economic capital. These aesthetic judgments prize nature as local, wild, and imbricated with urban space. They structure what I term “environmental authenticity”: the idea that socially valued forms of nature are rooted in classical understandings of a socially unmediated, nonhuman nature whose agency in creating landscapes is minimally violated by obvious human cultivation and that exists, seemingly organically, in postindustrial settings. Judgments about environmental authenticity, I argue, are centrally about who has the power to shape landscapes.

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Making the City of Lakes: Whiteness, Nature, and Urban Development in Minneapolis

Cited by 8 publications

References 28 publications

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Digging in: Toward a more just urban garden land policy

Environmental Authenticity: Constructing Nature in Postindustrial Parks

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