Deploying Discourses of Nature, Citizenship and Race: An Exploration of Why Community Vacant Lot Gardens Have Been Engaged as an Urban Revitalization Strategy in Chicago

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar V

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over nine years, this paper critically explores why institutions interested in urban revitalization have produced three discourses—about the positive benefits of urban nature, the proper roles of citizens in society, and the interests and skills of urban black Americans—on the ground in the form community vacant lot gardens in the North Lawndale community on Chicago’s West Side.

Author

• Christine Dunford, Northwestern University