Harvey claimed, “if the seeds of revolutionary transformation must be found in the present and if no society can launch upon a task of radical reorganization for which it is not at least partially prepared, then those internal contradictions provide raw material for growing an alternative” . To construct a utopian dialectics that engages concerns for both spatial form and social processes of alternatives requires “a dialectics that can operate in relation to both space and time” and requires a commitment to the political importance of closure, deciding on strategy and acting upon it . Harvey described praxis as engaging a dialectic of ‘either/or’ not ‘both/and’, in which actors must recognize that we exercise authority and create or destroy possibilities through the determination of spatial forms . When we decide on an alternative and build it through social processes into material reality, we both open space for potential and make a definitive decision that closes out other options. When a gardener chooses to occupy a vacant lot without landlord approval, this both creates a physical garden and relationship of gardeners and neighbors to this formerly vacant space,vertical tower for strawberries and closes out other possible uses for that lot or for relations to the landlord or neighbors.
This is nothing that should be shunned. It is a moment of seizing power as an agent of change. Gardeners, on the level of an individual organized garden project, make these decisions about closure and direction and articulate their relevance to social movement strategy. Yet when discussing land politics beyond their immediate projects, many gardeners in this study, both of and outside of the anti-authoritarian trend, would prefer a conceptual commitment to openness to using various forms of accessing land. Yet, gardeners’ focuses on their particular circumstances still may contribute to coordination and movement building. Harvey envisioned shifts in both thinking and action occurring in multiple communities, originating out of particular circumstances and struggles, and building to broad-based political movements . He labeled these individual communities’ struggles “militant particularisms.” Out of their work, Harvey theorized that many communities develop universal alternatives that they apply to global manifestations of their particular problems. Universality exists in dialectical relation to particularity. Instead of critiquing universalism, Harvey suggested we focus our attention on the mediating institutions that translate between militant particularisms and universality. It is the creative tension between the two that offers opportunity for utopian architects to “force mediating institutions and spatial structures to be as open as possible” . This moment of translation constitutes a key departure point towards emancipatory or repressive possibilities.
It is through translation, choosing to express a universal as politically necessary, that we commit to a judgment and decision, a ‘material praxis’ in that moment . It is in this moment of political judgment that this dissertation turns to the actor, the gardener engaged in what builds to a broader movement for urban agriculture, for critical analysis. These moments of judgment, choices in practice, discourse, lease agreements or occupations, demonstrate the ‘material praxis’ of the urban utopian imaginary of gardeners. In the coming chapters I describe how gardeners frame and enact politics of possibility. Rather than simply conclude that urban gardening as a regional movement is creating a sweeping break from oppressive social relations, or that gardeners, like other food activists, have accepted a limited ‘politics of the possible’, I document the multiple, sometimes contradictory meanings in the politics and practices of gardeners. In this analysis my argument builds upon a contradiction of seeing gardening as being both emancipatory and continuation of oppressive social relations. I go beyond reiterating this contradiction to argue the constellation of organized garden projects engaged in the Bay Area urban agriculture movement represent a diverse group of interests which have little coordination or communication across the projects on the question of social movement strategy with regards to land politics. Moments of closure, enacting gardens in a place are so particular to garden site or potentially to the network of gardeners in their municipality, that urban agriculturalists are not collectively engaged with the question of universal ideals for land tenure or urban governance.
This dissertation engages a regional analysis of activism in the San Francisco Bay Area, long known for its importance in the alternative agrifood movements of the last half-century and a focal point in the renaissance of urban agriculture since the 1990s. Today, hundreds of organized garden projects populate the landscape of major cities and smaller municipalities throughout the region at the same time investment in the built environment has continued to grow. The region of study includes the five southern Bay region counties including San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. I pay particular attention to the policy and legal frameworks developed by gardeners in the three largest municipalities in the region: San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. While the dissertation more uses a regional analysis, Chapter 5 engages a comparative framework drawing out differences from these three municipalities. In this introductory section, I frame the essential history of the region and these three municipalities and then build upon it in the coming chapters. For gardeners a notable element of the Bay Area’s geography is the Mediterranean climate which allows for year round production, something many other US metropolitan areas do not enjoy. The climate has been an important factor in the growth of agricultural industry in the Bay in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . But several other factors have also been important in building the rich social, political, and economic conditions in which organized garden projects in this region grow. Most notably the rise of the Silicon Valley has been a determining force in the economic landscape of the region, fueling the explosion of competitive land markets in three largest municipalities in the Bay. While all experiencing these effects, different histories in each municipality have created particular conditions leading to distinctive articulations and practices of urban agriculture across the region. To understand the struggles of land and property in which gardeners engage, one must frame the contemporary real estate markets and tax policy in the region in context of the economic and social history of the three largest municipalities. Oakland has been a bay area focal point for manufacturing and maritime industries since the early 1900s, and with significant growth in these sectors during WWII, Oakland began attracting many African American migrants from the south. While redevelopment projects in 1950s and 60s displaced many African American and Latino residents, the city’s non-white populations continued to grow in the industrial flat lands of North, West, and East Oakland. Oakland became a minority majority city, peaking with almost 50% of the population of African descent in the 1980s. Today, that progression is reversing as a consequence of socio-economic trends described below. San Francisco also experienced growth as a Naval port city during WWII and began massive redevelopment projects in the 1950s and 60s. Resistance to redevelopment grew quickly and contributed to the development of city politics focused on preservation of city neighborhoods from the violent impacts of capitalist growth politics . Amidst a wash of progressive social movements for environmental protection, gay rights, and civil rights,container vertical farming activists imposed limits on capital, winning many major victories against redevelopment and displacement from the 1950s to early 2000s, and yet the activists were not able politically defeat the growth coalition which has increasingly gained ground since . Investment stemming from growth in the tech industry has had an increasing impact in San Francisco growth politics, a force our southern most bay area municipality has been shaped by for a half century. San Jose’s economic history has been dominated by the development of the technology manufacturing and related industries, and since the 1970s the city and county has looked to tech industry as both the top employer and source of charitable giving.
It is to the genesis of the tech industry that we first turn. Starting in the 1970s in San Jose, Chicanos and other ethnically marginalized communities experienced the social consequences of economic development putting the south bay on map: the rise of the tech industry. By the late 1970s through the leadership of Stanford University and funded by national defense contracts, Santa Clara County was well under way in its transformation to Silicon Valley . Tech’s early promise of economic development and environmental benefits only came true for a segment of the population. For employees and largely Latino, Chinese, Vietnamese and non-white communities in the Valley it resulted in low-wage employment, toxic working conditions, and high environmental costs . In the 1980s a coalition of tech workers, community members, and environmentalists fought a landmark environmental justice battle to contest groundwater contamination caused by leakage of underground tanks holding toxic byproducts from computer chip production. In response the California legislator passed policy to begin cleaning up and regulating Silicon Valley’s environmental impact, as the tech industry continued to grow.As the first tech industry explosion was occurring, in 1979 CA passed proposition 13 severely limiting property tax revenues and causing the state to favor commercial development over residential for potential tax earnings . Simultaneously, regional municipalities embraced the economic promise of Silicon Valley. To attract development cities have offered incentives to tech industries, including low annual business taxes . While in the 1970s- 80s, Florida and Kenney found the Silicon Valley rich with venture capital and tech innovation, by 2013 Florida was asking ‘is San Francisco the new Silicon Valley’. Today, a regional housing crisis is underway as middle class San Franciscans and Silicon Valley tech workers spill into surrounding communities . At the same time tech-centered Peninsula towns have resisted creating large company housing developments, such as Mountain View’s 2012 rejection of including housing developments near Google, refusing the idea of creating or becoming a company town . Extreme housing prices have contributed to a widening wealth gap, which in San Francisco is growing faster than any other city in the nation . Between 2007 and 2012, the 20th percentile of earners in the city lost $4309 of household annual income while the 95th percentile gained $27,815 . The wealth gap is contributing to an uneven landscape of food security with significant problems with food insecurity in communities like East San Jose, Bayview-Hunters Point, West Oakland, East Palo Alto, and other communities.The crisis of affordable housing, the housing market crash, and predatory, race-based lending practices have caused a wave of rapid gentrification in communities in San Francisco and Oakland. Nationally, as a result of the 2008 housing crisis it is estimated that African Americans lost $71 to $93 billion in assets . Oakland lost over 40% of their African American residents between 1990 and 2011, with a drastic speed up since the housing crisis . There were over 10,000 foreclosures between 2007-2011, 93% of which occurred in predominately African American and Latino flat lands communities. These Oakland residents are increasingly moving to surrounding suburbs in search of more affordable housing . At the same time residents were priced out of San Francisco and new tech employees were looking for housing in the increasingly popular flat land communities. In 2014 Google tested ferry services to transport Oakland workers to Silicon Valley, in addition to running an alternative ground transportation infrastructure, the “Google buses”, throughout the region. Lively protests, direct action, and public debate over Airbnb, evictions and tenant rights, and the “Google buses” have gained national attention. On September 25, 2014 a Facebook video went viral of white Dropbox and Airbnb employees repeatedly asking Latino youth to leave a public soccer field in the Mission because they had reserved the site online . When the youth and an African American young adult advocate suggested the white men join their game but that because the field was public they wouldn’t leave, the men were incredulous, insisting they had paid the $27/hour fee for the reservation and should be able to use the field. The video spread quickly with vitriol filled comments about the racism of gentrification in San Francisco, leading to apologies from at least one of the white players involved, and more significantly a reversal of the “Pay to Play” reservation system the Recreation and Parks Department had instituted. The policy still stands at several other San Francisco fields. Today’s debates over urban space have reached electric levels and are reflected in the debates of urban gardeners, as we will see in the coming chapters.