Urban Agriculture And Resiliency Of At-Risk Communities: Evaluation And Implementation At The University Of Minnesota Golf Course

Abstract

Recent light on infrastructural shortcomings during the COVID-19 pandemic and civil uprising against racial disparity has shown signs of a nationwide paradigm shift in more than just politics. Cities, and more specifically, Minneapolis, grew out of a created dichotomy between material infrastructure and the sociocultural realm (Bishop et al., 121). Outdated urban networks of both the physical and immaterial in urban environments have reached a tipping point where their supposed designers and regulators of operation are being opposed for the lack of common good in mind. This study examines what the creation and use of sustainable urban agriculture at the University of Minnesota Golf Course would propagate as means of infrastructural change both physically and socially for the oppressed and exploited communities of Minneapolis, and more specifically Lauderdale. Recent precedents of urban infrastructural failures as well as successful urban agricultural systems and modes of connectivity will be analyzed to support the hypothesis that urban agriculture can be a means to increase resiliency of at-risk urban communities and the morphing of a new paradigm in city infrastructure.