Declining Significance of Gardens: Local Food Provisioning in Urban BIPOC Communities

• In Event: 50864 - Resistance and Repression

Abstract

Despite the consistent anecdotal accounts of local food provisioning in urban BIPOC communities through early 20th century, such practice has rarely been formally or consistently documented. This creates a gap in our understanding of exactly when such practice ceased to be commonplace, if it ever did, and more importantly, why. While the current folk explanation for this decline of gardening, fishing, hunting, foraging or other forms of local food production and distribution tend to emphasize individual choices to terminate the practice. Structural factors of urbanization history present hypotheses for how the use of urban spaces for food procurement did not fit the power elites’ priorities for the capitalistic development of the cities. Based on archival data analysis of Washington, DC, and New Orleans, LA, this study explores the third hypothesis; there were intentional attempts to undermine, devalue, and rewrite the practices’ existence, significance, and potential for mobilizing and empowering the marginalized communities.

Author

• Yuki Kato, Georgetown University