Community gardening and governance over urban nature in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward

Abstract

Lefebvre's right to the city (RTTC) framework argues for a renewed politics of inhabitance in cities, which enfranchises urban residents to imagine and create urban space to meet their needs. Another theoretical framework, Urban Political Ecology (UPE) works to “untangle the interconnected economic, political, social, and ecological processes that go together to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes” (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003. Antipode, 35 (5): 898). In this paper, I draw connections between the RTTC framework and literature in Urban Political Ecology (UPE) to consider how their intersection can inform analysis of grassroots urban agriculture initiatives in the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood of New Orleans. I argue that community efforts to transform vacant lots into productive gardens and food forests constitute a specific form of claims on the right to the city, and on the right to alter and improve urban ecology. These claims play out at the scale of the neighborhood, rather than that of the city, and are manifested within specific urban sites managed by residents of a particular neighborhood. I characterize specific, neighborhood-scale urban greening efforts as “political moments” (Becher, 2012. Political moments with long-term consequences. In: Smith, Michael Peter, McQuarrie, Michael (Eds.), Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, pp. 203–220), which, despite their locational and topical specificity, offer profound potential for broader urban social change.