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Social changes through urban gardening and farming
Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening in New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina. Yuki Kato highlights the impact urban gardens have on communities after disasters and the efforts of well-intended individuals envisioning alternative futures in the form of urban farming.
Drawing on repeated interviews with residents who began cultivation projects in New Orleans between 2005 and 2015, Kato explains how good intentions and grit were not enough to implement or sustain urban gardeners’ visions for the post-disaster city’s future. Coining the term “prefigurative urbanism,” Kato illustrates how individuals tried to realize alternative ways of living and working in the city through pragmatism and innovation. Gardens of Hope asks key questions about what inspires and enables individuals to pursue prefigurative urbanism and about the potential and limitations of this form of civic engagement to bring about short- and long-term changes in cities undergoing transformation, from gentrification, post-pandemic recovery, to climate change.
"Greening initiatives like urban gardens are often talked about as contributors to gentrification or places for organized political activism. In this excellent new book, Yuki Kato discovers how gardens are also places for urbanites to generate the hope that positive change in times of uncertainty is possible. With richness and depth, Gardens of Hope changes how we see civic action in cities."
"Gardens of Hope shares a fascinating story on the rise and fall of urban gardening and farming in the wake of disaster, and the few who were able to continue. Its focus is largely on why this movement into urban cultivation failed to materialize structural or significant change in a city undergoing considerable uncertainty as it recovered from a massive social and material disaster. Kato’s book provides valuable insight into the long-term wake of disaster, offering an important counter-narrative to the hopeful framework of resilience that followed from Hurricane Katrina."
"Offers a deeply intersectional account of the sometimes-surprising ways that relationships have been nurtured across difference, while also cognizant of how those with and without privileges must navigate very different socio-cultural landscapes."