Browsing by Author "Poljacik, Kelsey"

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    Comparing Urban Community Gardens in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area
    (2020-12) Poljacik, Kelsey
    It is well-documented that community gardens are diverse entities; they arise under varying conditions and may produce multiple meanings for both users and non-users. Yet, while it is generally understood that community gardens are diverse, less attention has been paid to specific internal structural and social differences between them than to the outcomes they produce. This research explores the similarities and differences between community gardens by examining a sample of gardens in the Twin Cities Metro Area, Minnesota. As the community gardeners utilized varying management approaches within their gardens, different spatial practices, and consequently different outcomes, resulted. I explored these practices through in-depth interviews with garden managers at 34 community gardens in the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs, through a purposive random selection of gardens which varied on features of age, ownership, and location. I found that the accessibility of community gardening spaces, their internal rules and structures, and the benefits that gardeners derived from participating differed depending on the garden. Ultimately, while some gardens focused on food justice and acted as open-access commons, many others sought to facilitate gardening as a hobby, with more inaccessible and privatized models. Because community gardens are not one-size-fits-all, better understanding their diversity and the ways gardeners manage communal resources may improve urban agricultural policymaking, urban planning decisions, and future community garden research. Moreover, recognizing that some internal management practices support specific outcomes over others may allow both community garden managers and gardeners to target their preferred outcomes during the initial stages of creating or joining a garden.
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    Laws, markets, and local politics drive outcomes of Minnesota’s county managed forests
    (Journal of Forestry, 2021) Fleischman, Forrest; Schmitz, Marissa; Poljacik, Kelsey
    There are frequently calls to increase local government control over forests in the US. Minnesota’s county forests contain approximately 30% of all local government managed forests in the United States. These forests are managed in ways that protect public access while providing a stable timber supply to mills. This happens because of the intersection of law, markets, and local politics. County forests are legally obligated to provide revenue to local tax districts while paying for management from money earned from timber sales. This pushes counties towards managing with the goal of providing a stable revenue stream from their lands, a goal which is supported by local politics in timber dependent counties. The result is that counties are more production-oriented than other public forestland managers, however they provide more consistent public access than private forest owners.