(Re)Imagining the City: Urban Agriculture, Policy, and Social Justice

Abstract

At their core, urban garden debates are about who controls land, for what purposes, and who has the power to decide. While often framed as a new phenomenon, urban gardens have long been used to inscribe and contest social hierarchies on the landscape. I examine these dynamics in Minneapolis through two urban garden movements a century apart, using the lens of urban imaginaries, the socially constructed understandings of the material and symbolic conditions that constitute a city’s past, present, and possible future(s). First, I follow the arc of the Garden Club of Minneapolis, an early 20th-century beautification campaign. I argue that the Garden Club offered a remarkable opportunity for residents to produce urban spaces that reflected their aesthetic and gustatory needs and desires. However, the garden land was enmeshed in speculative real estate development and racial segregation, belying the Garden Club's lofty egalitarian aspirations. Furthermore, the leaders were unwilling or unable to make structural changes to ensure a lasting place for gardens in the city. Turning to the 2010s, I examine policy efforts to make land owned by the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board available for gardening. I find that surface-level agreement on expanding access to public land for gardens served to mask the underlying tensions between the urban imaginaries of policy actors. Excavating the wide array of urban imaginaries underlying garden land policy debates highlights whose imaginaries are ultimately reflected or excluded from the final policies. Lastly, a comparative case study of the City and Park Board policy process and resulting policy text reveals that the Park Board policy goes far further in reducing barriers to racial equity than the City. Furthermore, the Park Board's mission to hold land in perpetuity for the public good offers greater possibility for protecting urban gardens on the landscape over the long term. Tracing urban agriculture efforts over time highlights the remarkable persistence of wide-ranging and grand-scale hopes for urban gardens, (2) the continued lack of sustained material and structural support for gardens, and (3) the potential for gardens to contribute to processes that (re)produce inequality. Throughout, I highlight insights useful to both scholars as well as practitioners interested in cultivating more just urban landscapes.