The City as an "Agricultural Powerhouse"? Perspectives on Expanding Urban Agriculture from Detroit, Michigan

Colasanti, Kathryn; Hamm, Michael W.; Litjens, Charlotte M.

doi:10.2747/0272-3638.33.3.348

Cited by 143 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…However, the shortage of empirical evidence supporting this premise must first be addressed. The wish to reconnect with nature is cited as motivating community gardeners without sufficient examples (Firth et al, 2011;McClintock, 2010), whilst some cases demonstrate this is not a universal desire (Colasanti, Hamm, & Lithens, 2012;Domene & Sauri, 2007). Gardeners' will to engage with nature is not without its ambiguities, suggesting no simple association between gardening and environmental concern (Bhatti & Church, 2004).…”

Section: Community Gardening As a Route To Environmental Concernmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities

Pitt

2017

Social & Cultural Geography

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Citation for final published version:Pitt, Hannah 2017. Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities. AbstractThis paper challenges the proposition that connecting with nature through direct encounters with nonhumans promotes ethical regard for them. It probes the limits of more-than-human ethics founded on personal encounters which struggle to cross distance and difference. I consider how personal engagement influences ethical perspectives and attend to processes by which care for nonhumans is learnt.Empirical research in community gardens reveals diverse relationships with nonhumans and underlines the importance of attending to qualities of relating. I propose typologies for thinking through more-than-human relationships, organising them according to degree of care. The research finds limits to gardening's potential to promote more care-full relations with others, with care limited by the prevalence of instrumental relationships with nonhumans. Learning to care for nonhumans requires a sense of connection to combine with disconnection gained through reflection, setting specific encounters within the context of more extensive relations and their power dynamics. More important than encounters teaching care for specific nonhuman dependents are those promoting understanding of the interdependent nature of more-than-human communities, and that stimulate reflection on the cumulative impact of a human tendency to forget this.

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Section: Community Gardening As a Route To Environmental Concernmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities

Pitt

2017

Social & Cultural Geography

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“…The unauthorized course is simultaneously close and distant to terra nullius. In this scenario, residents cultivate abandoned or vacant lands without official approval, such as guerrilla gardening in New York City (Schmelzkopf 1995;Staeheli et al 2002) or grass-roots developments in Detroit (Colasanti et al 2012;White 2011). A third category could be included, those with contested authorized status, a key factor leading to the dispute between the South Central Farm and the City of Los Angeles (Barraclough 2009;Irazabal and Punja 2009).…”

Section: Cultivation and Dispossession Of Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Agrarian Imaginary in Urban Life: Cultivating Virtues and Vices Through a Conflicted History

Mayes

2013

J Agric Environ Ethics

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This paper explores the influence and use of agrarian thought on collective understandings of food practices as sources of ethical and communal value in urban contexts. A primary proponent of agrarian thought that this paper engages is Paul Thompson and his exceptional book, The Agrarian Vision. Thompson aims to use agrarian ideals of agriculture and communal life to rethink current issues of sustainability and environmental ethics. However, Thompson perceives the current cultural mood as hostile to agrarian virtue. There are two related claims of this paper. The first argues that contrary to Thompson's perception of hostility, agrarian thought is popularly and commercially mobilized among urban populations. To establish this claim I extend Charles Taylor's notion of a social imaginary and suggest that urban agriculture can be theorized as an agrarian imaginary. Entwined with the first claim is the second, that proponents selectively use agrarian history to overemphasis a narrative of virtue while ignoring or marginalizing historical practices of agrarian violence, exclusion and dispossession. I do not discount or deny the significance of agrarian virtue. By situating agrarian thought within a clearer virtue ethics framework and acknowledging potential manifestation of agrarian vice, I suggest that the idea of agrarian virtue is strengthened.

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“…Overall, this means that UA can be seen as a ‘progressive or regressive’ move for the city, for different reasons (Colasanti et al . , p. 362). One implication is that any judgement about the effects and outcomes of any one UA initiative need to begin with a sophisticated understanding of what people believe is being judged in the first place; that is, what they think UA is.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The relational character of urban agriculture: competing perspectives on land, food, people, agriculture and the city

Neilson

Rickards

2016

Geographical Journal

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In recent years the diverse primary food production activities in cities known as ‘urban agriculture’ have proliferated on the ground, in policy and in academic discourse. Most explicit representations of urban agriculture (UA) are positive, advocating its many related benefits and success stories, or critiquing barriers that restrict it. Despite widespread appeal, the way UA is imagined and planned remains highly varied and uncertain. To understand better the splintering and insular discourses and competing arguments about the role of UA in cities (especially in a developed world context), we draw on empirical research in Melbourne, Australia, to unpack what different stakeholders mean by the term. Using critical discourse analysis, we map contrasting perspectives on UA expressed by various groups (government, practitioners, media, academia) including some groups who could engage with UA but do not. We find that while UA is perceived by some as a strongly positive development, it is seen to be of little consequence by many others. General disinterest in UA is evident among traditional agriculture stakeholders and rural‐oriented groups in particular. Discourses about UA reflect differences in (1) whether UA is primarily conceived through the lens of land, food or people; and (2) how UA is imagined to relate to the rest of agriculture and the rest of the city. We conclude that although UA is increasingly ‘inside the urban tent’ as a legitimate land use and activity, it remains marginal. Moreover, it remains ‘outside the agriculture tent’ in that it does not seem to be conceived as a legitimate form of agriculture in comparison to the implicit Other: rural agriculture. We conclude that UA needs to move beyond its city‐centric approach and rural agriculture needs to move beyond its general disinterest in UA so that important and necessary connections can be recognised and forged.

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The City as an "Agricultural Powerhouse"? Perspectives on Expanding Urban Agriculture from Detroit, Michigan

Cited by 143 publications

References 37 publications

Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities

Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities

An Agrarian Imaginary in Urban Life: Cultivating Virtues and Vices Through a Conflicted History

The relational character of urban agriculture: competing perspectives on land, food, people, agriculture and the city

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