Author: Chiara Tornaghi Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351811010 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
While most of the existing literature on community gardens and urban agriculture share a tendency towards either an advocacy view or a rather dismissive approach on the grounds of the co-optation of food growing, self-help and voluntarism to the neoliberal agenda, this collection investigates and reflects on the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of these initiatives. It questions to what extent they address social inequality and injustice and interrogates them as forms of political agency that contest, transform and re-signify ‘the urban’. Claims for land access, the right to food, the social benefits of city greening/community conviviality, and insurgent forms of planning, are multiplying within policy, advocacy and academic literature; and are becoming increasingly manifested through the practice of urban gardening. These claims are symptomatic of the way issues of social reproduction intersect with the environment, as well as the fact that urban planning and the production of space remains a crucial point of an ever-evolving debate on equity and justice in the city. Amid a mushrooming over positive literature, this book explores the initiatives of urban gardening critically rather than apologetically. The contributors acknowledge that these initiatives are happening within neoliberal environments, which promote –among other things - urban competition, the dismantling of the welfare state, the erasure of public space and ongoing austerity. These initiatives, thus, can either be manifestation of new forms of solidarity, political agency and citizenship or new tools for enclosure, inequality and exclusion. In designing this book, the progressive stance of these initiatives has therefore been taken as a research question, rather than as an assumption. The result is a collection of chapters that explore potentials and limitations of political gardening as a practice to envision and implement a more sustainable and just city.
Author: Christina D. Rosan Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 1442628553 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
Urban agriculture offers promising solutions to many different urban problems, such as blighted vacant lots, food insecurity, storm water runoff, and unemployment. These objectives connect to many cities' broader goal of "sustainability," but tensions among stakeholders have started to emerge in cities as urban agriculture is incorporated into the policymaking framework. Growing a Sustainable City? offers a critical analysis of the development of urban agriculture policies and their role in making post-industrial cities more sustainable. Christina Rosan and Hamil Pearsall's intriguing and illuminating case study of Philadelphia reveals how growing in the city has become a symbol of urban economic revitalization, sustainability, and - increasingly - gentrification. Their comprehensive research includes interviews with urban farmers, gardeners, and city officials, and reveals that the transition to "sustainability" is marked by a series of tensions along race, class, and generational lines. The book evaluates the role of urban agriculture in sustainability planning and policy by placing it within the context of a large city struggling to manage competing sustainability objectives. They highlight the challenges and opportunities of institutionalizing urban agriculture into formal city policy. Rosan and Pearsall tell the story of change and growing pains as a city attempts to reinvent itself as sustainable, livable, and economically competitive.
Author: George McKay Publisher: Frances Lincoln ISBN: 9780711235380 Category : Gardening Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
War is the natural occupation of man . war-and gardening. Winston Churchill to Siegfried Sassoon, 1918 In the common public perception, contemporary gardening is understood as suburban, as leisure activity, as television makeover opportunity. Its origins are seen as religious or spiritual (Garden of Eden), military (the clipped lawn, the ha-ha and defensive ditches), aristocratic or monarchical (the stately home, the Royal Horticultural Society). Radical Gardening travels an alternative route, through history and across landscape, linking propagation with propaganda. For everyday garden life is not only patio, barbecue, white picket fence, topiary, herbaceous border.. From window box to veggie box, from political plot to flower power, this book uncovers and celebrates moments, movements, gestures, of a people's approach to gardens and gardening. It weaves together garden history with the counterculture, stories of individual plants with discussion of government policy, the social history of campaign groups with the pleasure and dirt of hands in the earth, as well as original interviews alongside media, pop and art references, to offer an informing and inspiring new take on an old subject.
Author: Curtis Allen Stone Publisher: New Society Publishers ISBN: 1771421916 Category : Gardening Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
There are twenty million acres of lawns in North America. In their current form, these unproductive expanses of grass represent a significant financial and environmental cost. However, viewed through a different lens, they can also be seen as a tremendous source of opportunity. Access to land is a major barrier for many people who want to enter the agricultural sector, and urban and suburban yards have huge potential for would-be farmers wanting to become part of this growing movement. The Urban Farmer is a comprehensive, hands-on, practical manual to help you learn the techniques and business strategies you need to make a good living growing high-yield, high-value crops right in your own backyard (or someone else's). Major benefits include: Low capital investment and overhead costs Reduced need for expensive infrastructure Easy access to markets Growing food in the city means that fresh crops may travel only a few blocks from field to table, making this innovative approach the next logical step in the local food movement. Based on a scalable, easily reproduced business model, The Urban Farmer is your complete guide to minimizing risk and maximizing profit by using intensive production in small leased or borrowed spaces. Curtis Stone is the owner/operator of Green City Acres, a commercial urban farm growing vegetables for farmers markets, restaurants, and retail outlets. During his slower months, Curtis works as a public speaker, teacher, and consultant, sharing his story to inspire a new generation of farmers.
Author: Claire Nettle Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317163419 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
There has been a resurgence of community gardening over the past decade with a wide range of actors seeking to get involved, from health agencies aiming to increase fruit and vegetable consumption to radical social movements searching for symbols of non-capitalist ways of relating and occupying space. Community gardens have become a focal point for local activism in which people are working to contribute to food security, question the erosion of public space, conserve and improve urban environments, develop technologies of sustainable food production, foster community engagement and create neighbourhood solidarity. Drawing on in-depth case studies and social movement theory, Claire Nettle provides a new empirical and theoretical understanding of community gardening as a site of collective social action. This provides not only a more nuanced and complete understanding of community gardening, but also highlights its potential challenges to notions of activism, community, democracy and culture.
Author: Chiara Certomà Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526126117 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
The book presents an in-depth and theoretically-grounded analysis of urban gardening practices (re)emerging worldwide as new forms of bottom-up socio-political participation. By complementing the scholarly perspectives through posing real cases, it focuses on how these practices are able to address – together with environmental and planning questions – the most fundamental issues of spatial justice, social cohesion, inclusiveness, social innovations and equity in cities. Through a critical exploration of international case studies, this collection investigates whether, and how, gardeners are willing and able to contrast urban spatial arrangements that produce peculiar forms of social organisation and structures for inclusion and exclusion, by considering pervasive inequalities in the access to space, natural resources and services, as well as considerable disparities in living conditions.
Author: Kristin Reynolds Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 082034950X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
Urban agriculture is increasingly considered an important part of creating just and sustainable cities. Yet the benefits that many people attribute to urban agriculture-fresh food, green space, educational opportunities-can mask structural inequities, thereby making political transformation harder to achieve. Beyond the Kale argues that urban agricultural projects focused explicitly on dismantling oppressive systems have the greatest potential to achieve substantive social change. Through in-depth interviews and public forums with prominent urban agriculture activists and supporters-primarily people of color and women, whose strategies have often been underrespresented in the literature Kristin Reynolds and Nevin Cohen illustrate how urban farmers and gardeners not only grow food for their communities but also use their activities and spaces to disrupt the dynamics of power and privilege that perpetuate inequity. Beyond the Kale provides recommendations for these in philanthropy, government, nonprofit organizations, and academia to support such initiatives. Book jacket.
Author: Andrea Wulf Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307390683 Category : Gardening Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, a fascinating look at the Founding Fathers like none you've seen before. “Illuminating and engrossing.... The reader relives the first decades of the Republic ... through the words of the statesmen themselves.” —The New York Times Book Review For the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation. Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.
Author: Lindsay K. Campbell Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501714708 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 408
Book Description
City of Forests, City of Farms is a history of recent urban forestry and agriculture policy and programs in New York City. Centered on the 2007 initiative PlaNYC, this account tracks the development of policies that increased sustainability efforts in the city and dedicated more than $400 million dollars to trees via the MillionTreesNYC campaign. Lindsay K. Campbell uses PlaNYC to consider how and why nature is constructed in New York City. Campbell regards sustainability planning as a process that unfolds through the strategic interplay of actors, the deployment of different narrative frames, and the mobilizing and manipulation of the physical environment, which affects nonhuman animals and plants as well as the city's residents. Campbell zeroes in on a core omission in PlaNYC's original conception and funding: Despite NYC having a long tradition of community gardening, particularly since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the plan contained no mention of community gardens or urban farms. Campbell charts the change of course that resulted from burgeoning public interest in urban agriculture and local food systems. She shows how civic groups and elected officials crafted a series of visions and plans for local food systems that informed the 2011 update to PlaNYC. City of Forests, City of Farms is a valuable tool that allows us to understand and disentangle the political decisions, popular narratives, and physical practices that shape city greening in New York City and elsewhere.
Author: Michael Buxton Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING ISBN: 1486308961 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 185
Book Description
Peri-urban landscapes are some of the world’s most vulnerable areas. Although they are often thought of simply as land awaiting development, these landscapes retain important natural resources and make valuable contributions to agriculture, water use, biodiversity conservation, landscape preservation and human well-being. Billions of people use them and enjoy their natural values. Their continuing loss threatens to alter our relationships with nature and have a negative impact on the environment. The Future of the Fringe first explores the history of peri-urban areas, international peri-urban policy and practice, and related concepts. It analyses internationally relevant issues such as green belts and urban growth boundaries, regional policy, land supply and price, and the concepts of liveability, attractiveness, well-being and rural amenity. It then examines a range of Australian peri-urban issues, as an extended case study. The book argues for a precautionary approach so that we retain the greatest number of options to adapt during rapid and unprecedented change.
Author: Chiara Tornaghi
Author: Christina D. Rosan
Author: George McKay
Author: Curtis Allen Stone
Author: Claire Nettle
Author: Chiara Certomà
Author: Kristin Reynolds
Author: Andrea Wulf
Author: Lindsay K. Campbell
Author: Michael Buxton