Gated gardens: Effects of urbanization on community formation and commons management in community gardens. Issue 96 (November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Egerer, Monika; Fairbairn, Madeleine
• Is Part Of: Geoforum. Issue 96(2018)
• Page Start: 61
• Page End: 69
• Publication Date: 2018-11
• Subjects: Urban agriculture -- Enclosure -- Gentrification -- California -- Resource management -- Urban sustainability; Geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; Sciences de la terre -- Périodiques; Géographie -- Périodiques; Géographie humaine -- Périodiques; Aménagement du territoire -- Périodiques; Earth sciences; Geography; Human geography; Regional planning; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.07.014
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0016-7185

Abstract

Highlights: Urban pressures differentially shape commons management in community gardens. Gentrification prompts community formation through member selection or enclosure. Regional resource restrictions manifest in racialization of resource management. Struggles and tensions within gardens thus result from landscape-scale processes. Abstract: 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.