Cultural Geographies http://cgj.sagepub.com/ Cultural geographies in practice: The South Central Farm: dilemmas in practicing the public Laura Lawson Cultural Geographies 2007 14: 611 DOI: 10.1177/1474474007082297 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cgj.sagepub.com/content/14/4/611.citation Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Cultural Geographies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://cgj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://cgj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav >> Version of Record - Oct 30, 2007 What is This? Downloaded from cgj.sagepub.com at TUFTS UNIV on January 14, 2014 082297_CGJ-611-616.qxd 10/16/2007 7:40 PM Page 611 cultural geographies 2007 14: 611–616 Cultural geographies in practice The South Central Farm: dilemmas in practicing the public Laura Lawson Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign riving down Alameda Street in South Central Los Angeles in 2000, I knew I had reached Dmy destination when warehouses, salvage yards, and truck transfer stations gave way to a large green space punctuated by banana trees and 12” high corn. The South Central Farm – also known as the South Los Angeles Community Garden and the Urban Gardening Program of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank – was a 14-acre community garden that provided 350 primarily Latino households with space to garden.1 As part of my research on commu- nity gardens, I had read articles that praised this garden since its inception in 1993. Fourteen years later, the Farm was again in the news, but this time for its contested closure and ulti- mate destruction. While unique in many ways, the South Central Farm illustrates the ambigu- ous public nature of community gardens that often puts the appeal of the idea at odds with its reality as a physical site. Even though community gardening garners widespread support as an activity that produces many personal and social benefits, as a land use it lacks value as a permanent resource. The case also underscores the tendency to consider gardening as a movable, replaceable resource, ignoring the labor and social networks necessary to create such spaces. Strategies to secure user-initiated spaces like community gardens require shifting public perception from appropriated space to validated public resource. The idea to establish a community garden in South Central Los Angeles grew out of civic concerns about community health and well being. The garden was initially spearheaded by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank as a way to heal the community in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King beating and subsequent civil disturbances that exposed the city’s racial and economic disparities. At the same time, gardening fulfilled the Food Bank’s mission to improve food access and nutrition to low-income households. A community garden would not only provide a place for people to grow food but also, as empirical research and anecdotal accounts suggested, it would expand social networks and provide opportunities for cultural expression, skill development, household income subsidy, and environmental restoration.2 Credited with many positive outcomes, highly participatory, and relatively cheap to start compared to other community development initiatives, the Food Bank’s proposal met with enthusiastic support that garnered land, volunteers, and funding. The city owned a vacant lot adjacent to the food © 2007 SAGE Publications 10.1177/1474474007082297 Downloaded from cgj.sagepub.com at TUFTS UNIV on January 14, 2014 082297_CGJ-611-616.qxd 10/16/2007 7:40 PM Page 612 cultural geographies 14(4) FIGURE 1 Aerial image of South Central (www.googleearth.com) bank that they donated for the project. Even though the lease stated that the City could give a 30-day notice to leave the site cleared of all vegetation, fencing, and use, the project pro- ceeded with little attention to its temporary status. In addition to initial funding received from individuals, foundations, and public agencies, the garden also benefited from a United States Department of Agriculture’s Urban Resource Partnership Program Grant. While anticipation of many beneficial outcomes catalyzed broad support for the project, the actual gardening and day-to-day interactions involved individuals who chose to partici- pate for their own personal reasons. Initially, local residents were hesitant to invest their labor into the project but interest quickly grew so that after a few months all plots were assigned and there was a waiting list. Most participants were from Mexico, El Salvador, and other Central American countries along with some Caribbean and African American participants. While some came from nearby neighborhoods, the garden also drew participants from other areas in Los Angeles. After initial management by the Food Bank, the gardeners took over responsibility for its operation. Pragmatically laid out on a grid, the individual plots, enclosed by fences and locked gates, reflected the cultures of the gardeners through cultivation prac- tices, crops, and social spaces. The driveway that ran through the center provided parking as well as an informal marketplace for selling produce, CDs, and other goods. Even as gardeners were busy planting corn, tomatoes, nopales, and other crops, the site became embroiled in a land struggle that set the claim of its public usefulness at odds with actual public ownership. The City of Los Angeles had initially acquired the site in the late 1980s through the process of eminent domain for the purpose of building a trash inciner- ator plant. Eminent domain grants certain governmental agencies the power to require a pri- vate landowner to accept just compensation for the sale of private property if it is needed 612 Downloaded from cgj.sagepub.com at TUFTS UNIV on January 14, 2014 082297_CGJ-611-616.qxd 10/16/2007 7:40 PM Page 613 Lawson: The South Central Farm for a public good. Amid public protest about the environmental injustice of locating such a contaminating facility in a low-income neighborhood, the plan for an incinerator was rejected. The site sat idle and shifted ownership to another public agency in search of a public purpose when it was proposed for the garden. However, while the garden was lauded as an important community resource, it was never validated as a ‘public good’ that justified its procurement through eminent domain.3 As a result, when several of the site’s original owners brought the City to court for not offering them the ‘right of first refusal’ to repurchase the property, as is required in eminent domain proceedings, the City, once so supportive, acquiesced. Negotiations between the City and one of the owners led to his repurchase for approximately $5 million, which is close to the price he had paid for the land 17 years prior. The owner then sent eviction notices to the gardeners. To some of the gardeners, site possession meant that they were entitled to be part of the process. Arguing that the negotiations had not been public and that the garden was serving a public good worth protection, the gardeners organized into the South Central Farmers Feeding Families and used letter campaigns, speaking at city council meetings, marches, protests, and ultimately site occupation to publicize the conflict and gain support. The garden made national news when several famous activists and actors, including singer Joan Baez and actress Daryl Hannah, were arrested as part of the site occupation. Meanwhile the sympathetic Mayor’s office worked with the Trust for Public Land and other foundations to purchase the property at the owner’s asking price of $16 million. The battle became increasingly contentious, to the point that the owner not only raised the price but also refused to release the land to the gar- deners because of the personal insults he had received. Ultimately the sheriff ’s department enforced the eviction on 13 June 2006 and the garden was bulldozed. The City identified alter- native gardening spaces under high-voltage power lines, to which some gardeners have since moved, reinvesting their sweat and energy into making a garden on untilled land. While determining site ownership was largely a legal procedure, the Public debate that the conflict sparked centered on the public or private nature of the garden itself. News reports generally favored the gardeners and highlighted the economic, cultural, and social roles that the garden served. In an area of the city that lacked recreation facilities and open space, the FIGURE 2 View along one of the paths of the Farm. Photograph by author, 2000. 613 Downloaded from cgj.sagepub.com at TUFTS UNIV on January 14, 2014 082297_CGJ-611-616.qxd 10/16/2007 7:40 PM Page 614 cultural geographies 14(4) FIGURE 3 Many of the garden plots also included personalized spaces. Photograph by Lewis Watts, 2001. garden provided food, nutrition, household income savings, recreation, social interaction, and a place to carry on agrarian cultural traditions for 350 households and their social and famil- ial networks. In opposition, the owner argued that individuals were profiting from this use of city property and that gardening was not a valid form of public recreation. Instead, as part of his negotiations with the City, he offered 3 acres of the site to be developed as a soccer field, stating, ‘A soccer field is open to the whole community – anybody in the com- munity can use that. The garden isn’t. These little plots are used by them exclusively. If you or I wanted to take our rake or shovel or hoe and do a little gardening there, we can’t.’4 While advocates considered the larger public good derived from individual participation, crit- ics focused on the private gain and loss of potential economic development through private development of the industrially zoned site.