Urban agriculture and the sustainability fix in Vancouver and Detroit |
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| Authors: | Samuel Walker |
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| Institution: | Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Room 5047, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada |
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| Abstract: | Both Vancouver, British Columbia, and Detroit, Michigan, have significant and growing urban agriculture movements. In this article, I follow recent work investigating the connection between urban agriculture and neoliberalization to determine how these local governments have used urban agriculture in narratives of economic development to selectively pursue a sustainability fix. I analyze how different regimes of local governance have influenced the urban agriculture movements, leading to local, hybridized fixes that adapt to different material and discursive contexts in each place. I argue that in both cities, urban agriculture has radical potential as a grassroots response to economic and environmental injustice, but has also been enrolled as a device by the local state in which the primary goal of sustainability planning becomes enhanced economic competitiveness. Pursuing an agenda of food justice requires examining the larger context and effects of municipal involvement with food movements. |
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| Keywords: | Detroit food justice neoliberalization sustainability fix urban agriculture Vancouver |
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