Implications for Environmental Justice, Food Access, and the Right to the City
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THE SOCIAL OWNERSHIP OF COMMUNITY GARDENS: IMPLICATIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, FOOD ACCESS, AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY A dissertation presented By Jill Eshelman to The Department of Sociology and Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the field of Sociology and Anthropology Northeastern University Boston, MA December 2016 i THE SOCIAL OWNERSHIP OF COMMUNITY GARDENS: IMPLICATIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, FOOD ACCESS, AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY A dissertation presented By Jill Eshelman ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University December 2016 ii Abstract This study analyzes the roles and contradictions embedded within the establishment and maintenance of community gardens within urban communities. I apply Henri Lefebvre’s framework of the social production of space to evaluate the capacity for urban residents to shape their neighborhoods, in the context of neoliberal development practices. These realities shape the experiences of gardeners in a multitude of ways, including the extent to which they have access to amenities, political resources, and the spaces themselves. Throughout this study, utilizing data from a combination of 25 in-depth interviews and extensive participant observation in 45 community gardens across the city of Boston and the surrounding area, I demonstrate how narratives surrounding community gardens have shifted throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century and have adapted to dominant cultural rhetoric in order to justify their continued existence. Throughout the history of the community gardening movement, justifications for the spaces have included environmental justice, food access, and community resilience. My findings demonstrate that due to neoliberal development pressures and the imperatives of the growth machine, community gardens in Boston are protected primarily through the non-profit sector, which has lead to numerous inequalities in the community gardening experience. Low-income people, racial and ethnic minorities, and immigrant populations, particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods, face barriers in accessing the spaces, despite the fact that they are often the most likely to need the spaces for the purpose of improving their access to fresh and healthy food. In disadvantaged communities, community gardens are often part of an oppositional strategy and the Right to the City movement, which seeks to counter gentrification. In these instances, community gardens serve not only as spaces for expression of environmental and food justices, but they also allow for the demonstrations of iii ownership in the form of art, staging grounds for political dissent and transportation advocacy, and reclamation of space in communities with histories of violent crime. This study demonstrates that community gardens have a multiplicity of meanings for their stakeholders and contributes to our understanding of how community gardens relate to the broader urban social fabric. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation would not be possible without the contributions of my research participants, and I am very appreciative of the time that they gave in order to make this project possible. I would like to thank the members of my committee, Danny Faber, Liza Weinstein, James Connolly, and Chris Bosso for their guidance through this process, as well as Shelley Kimelberg, who served as my advisor through the dissertation proposal stage of this project. I also thank Sam Maron, Elisabeth Wilder, Alex Press, Liana Tuller, Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, Anna Revette, and Yingchan Zhang for providing feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I thank Amy Lubitow, Katherine Rickenbacker, Lauren Nicoll, Amanda Crabb, Leandra Smollin, Andrea Hill, Sean Brown, Eric Madfis, Trish Morris, Justin Betz, Chase Billingham, M. Judge, Estye Ross Fenton, Vicki Schow, and Autumn Mathias-Fiske for continuously informing and encouraging my sociological work. I would also like to acknowledge my former colleagues, Marta Pagan-Ortiz, Wendy Pernal, Lauren Dealy, Victor Cabada, Charlie Selk, Atsushi Matsumoto, and Susan Garverich who supported me through a critical stage in the PhD process. Finally, I thank my family for all of their support and encouragement. I dedicate this dissertation to my little brother, Jeffrey. v Table of Contents Abstract……...…………………………………………………………………………...………ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………v Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………..vi Chapter 1 Introduction to Community Gardens and the Research Project…………………1 Overview of Community Gardens……………....………………………………...............1 Overview of the Project…………………………………………………………………...7 Chapter 2 Theoretical Frameworks And Literature Review on Community Gardens……12 Chapter 3 The Geographical Landscape of Community Gardens in Boston, Community Garden Typology, and Methodological Approach...……..……....…24 Historical Background of Community Gardens in Boston……...……………………….24 Boston Neighborhoods and the Community Gardening Landscape………..……………35 Neighborhoods With No or Few Community Gardens………………………….38 Advantaged/Gentrifying Neighborhoods………………………………………...41 Disadvantaged Neighborhoods…………………...……………………...............46 Communities in the Boston Metro Area…………………………………………………52 Types of Community Gardens…………………………………………………………...54 Neighborhood Gardens…………………………………………………………..54 Communal Gardens……………………………………………………...............58 Institutional Gardens……………………………………………………………..59 Data and Methods………………………………………………………………………..61 Sampling………………………………………………………………………....63 Participant Observation…………………………………………………………..64 Interviews………………………………………………………………………...66 Secondary Data Analysis…………………..……………….....…………………67 Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………….68 Chapter 4 Varying Perceptions of Use, Purpose, and Entitlement in Community Gardens: A Shift from Environmental Mindset to Amenity Mindsets……………………………….70 Shifting Perceptions on the Importance of Environmentalism…………………..……....83 The Paradox of Valuing Privacy in Community Gardens……………………………….85 Limited Public Support and A Shift in Responsibility Toward the Non-Profit Sector……………………………………………………………89 Discussion of Findings…………………………………………………………………..95 vi Chapter 5 Can Urban Community Gardens Improve Food Security?: Barriers to Access for Immigrants, Racial Minorities, and Low-income Residents in Boston………………………………………………………..……..99 The Rhetoric of Food in Community Gardens…………………………………………103 The Relationship Between Diverse Gardeners and Food Production in Gardens……………………………………………………….106 Pragmatic Barriers to Access: Long Waiting Lists and Unavailability of Gardening Space…………………………………..………………....113 Cultural Barriers to Access…………………………………………………..................117 Discussion of Findings……………………………………………………………….…118 Chapter 6 The Community is Changing But We Have a Right to Remain: Oppositional Community Gardening As a Statement of Democracy………………………..….………...122 The Right to the City……………………………………………………………….…...126 The Right to Remain, Community Gardens, and The Role of Bottom-to-Bottom Networks…………………………………………129 Relationship to Transportation Networks and Transit Justice………………………….141 Crime, Security, and Reclamation of Land……………………………………………..142 Competing Symbolic Ownerships……………………………………………...............147 Discussion of Findings………………………………………………………………….158 Chapter 7 Policy Recommendations and Analysis………………………………………….161 Appendix A: List of Gardens in the Study, By Neighborhood……………………………..182 Appendix B: Summary of Demographic Data Among Interviewees……………................184 Appendix C: Signed Informed Consent Document…………………………………………186 Appendix D: Recruitment E-mail Text…………...……………..…………………...............190 Appendix E: Interview Schedule……………………………………………………………..191 Appendix F: Works Cited…………………………………………………………………….196 vii Chapter 1: Introduction to Community Gardens and the Research Project Overview of Community Gardens According to one widely accepted definition, community gardens are spaces in which gardeners share resources such as land, water, and sunlight for a variety of purposes including the ability to learn from and communicate with others, to commune with nature, to exercise, and to grow food for themselves and other members of the community (Naimark 1982). Community gardens can take many different forms. The most traditional notion of a community garden is an open space comprised of several made up of individual plots, where a single gardener or family both maintains and harvests a specific parcel of land, and typically people grow herbs, fruits, vegetables. However, some gardeners may only grow flowers and create private sitting and recreational areas. Other community gardens are more communal, where there may be only a few or no individual plots, and the main purpose of the space is creating a sense of community spirit and neighborhood identity. People may grow food to share amongst all the gardeners or the community at large. In some gardens, people may not grow food at all, instead opting for the creation of a garden space, which primarily serves as a nature sanctuary or a symbolic site for healing of past violence, crime, or gang activity. Throughout this study, I argue that the experiences of community gardeners, like many other aspects of the modern urban experience, are increasingly differentiated between elite and non-elite stakeholders. Many of these inequalities