21 pages, Surging interest in urban agriculture has prompted cities across North America to adopt policies that give gardeners access to publicly owned land. However, if not carefully designed, these policies can exacerbate existing racial inequities. Drawing on theories of urban and environmental justice, we use a contextualized case comparison to explore the radical potential and practical constraints of garden land policies at two distinct institutions: the City of Minneapolis and the independently elected Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Based on participant observation, document review, and interviews with a range of policy actors, we argue that what appear to be minor, common-sense policy details systematically shape who benefits from the garden land policies, sometimes in surprising ways. Compared to the City, the Park Board goes substantially further in addressing racial equity. Furthermore, though both cases included public participation, we argue that the more intensive participation during the Park Board policy development process—particularly in determining the details—was pivotal in crafting a policy that reduced barriers to racial equity. The present study contributes to the growing scholarship on urban agriculture and environmental governance and offers concrete insights for actors working toward more just policies.
"This paper indicates that persons in neither the farm nor non-farm work setting may be any more dissatisfied than the other. Rather, a more fruitful explanation appears to rest in the degree of integration of the worker into either setting."
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 2 Document Number: B00211
Notes:
AgComm Teaching. Hal R. Taylor Collection, CRC Report No. 3. Communications Research Center, School of Public Relations and Communication, Boston University. 51pp.
Via online access. 7 pages., Comments on an article in the fashion and style section of the New York Times about urban residents creating small-space farms near urban areas where people are "hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium."
25 pages., via online journal, Rural internet use, although still limited, is growing, raising the question of how rural people are using social media politically. As a vehicle of communication that permits the rapid transmission of information, images and text across space and connections between dispersed networks of individuals, does technological advance in rural areas presage significant political transformations? This article investigates this question in the light of a poor result for the Cambodian People’s Party in the 2013 elections, and the subsequent banning of the main opposition party, before the 2018 elections. Expanding internet use in rural areas has linked relatively quiescent rural Cambodians for the first time to networks of information about militant urban movements of the poor. Rural Cambodians are responding to this opportunity through strategies of quiet encroachment in cyberspace. This has had real effects on the nature of the relationship between the dominant party and the rural population and suggests the declining utility of the election-winning strategy used by the party since 1993. However, the extent of this virtual information revolution is limited, since neither the urban nor rural poor are mapping out new online political strategies, agendas or identities that can push Cambodia’s sclerotic politics in new directions.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08643
Notes:
Located in Review of Extension Studies, volumes for 1946-1956, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., Summary of thesis research for the master of science degree, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, College Station. 45 pages.
National Association of Farm Broadcasters Archives, University of Illinois. NAFB Publications Series No. 8/3/90. Box No. 13. Contact http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/ or Documentation Center, Agricultural Publications, 1985-88, 1993-96
