Alternative food and gentrification: Farmers’ markets, community gardens and the transformation of urban neighborhoods

Abstract

This chapter shows uneven urban food landscapes are intimately connected to processes of gentrification and shaped along lines of race and class by political decisions and capital flows. It discusses whether and green food initiatives have been hijacked from their original goals and co-opted to serve the urban elite and reproduce white privilege. The chapter provides evidence that the alternative food movement in San Diego is part of an urban renewal agenda in which cultural food practices are used and appropriated by urban managers and developers to support neighborhood change. It combines quantitative data from public sources with qualitative data gathered through participant observation and media content analysis. The chapter also shows that farmers' markets and community gardens are primarily located in affluent and gentrifying areas and have provided evidence of a growing appropriation of alternatives food spaces by urban developers and cultural elites.