Tending Cultural Landscapes and Food Citizenship in Toronto's Community Gardens*

Scattered throughout the city of Toronto are more than no community gardens, sites of place‐based politics connected to the community food‐security movement. The gardens, spaces where passions for plants and food are shared, reflect the city's shifting cultural landscape and represent an everyday activity that is imbued with multiple meanings. Toronto's community food‐security movement uses gardens as one strategy to regenerate the local food system and provide access to healthy, affordable food. Three garden case studies expand on the complexities of “food citizenship,” illustrating the importance of that concept to notions of food security. The gardens reveal the role gardeners play in transforming urban spaces, the complex network of organizations working cooperatively and in partnership to implement these projects, and the way in which social and cultural pluralism are shaping the urban landscape.

[1]  J. Johnston,et al.  Eating Outside the Box: FoodShare’s Good Food Box and the Challenge of Scale , 2005 .

[2]  G. Wekerle Food Justice Movements , 2004 .

[3]  H. Kurtz,et al.  Community Gardens and Politics of Scale in New York City* , 2003 .

[4]  L. B. Delind Place, work, and civic agriculture: Common fields for cultivation , 2002 .

[5]  Charles Derber,et al.  Naming the Enemy : Anti-corporate movements confront globalization , 2001 .

[6]  Hilda E. Kurtz,et al.  DIFFERENTIATING MULTIPLE MEANINGS OF GARDEN AND COMMUNITY , 2001 .

[7]  Peter van Ham,et al.  Interview with the Author , 2001 .

[8]  Cindi Katz,et al.  Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction , 2001 .

[9]  A. Escobar Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization , 2001 .

[10]  G. Esteva,et al.  Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures , 1999 .

[11]  May Joseph Nomadic Identities: The Performance Of Citizenship , 1999 .

[12]  Kim M. Peters,et al.  Community gardens and sustainable land use planning: A case‐study of the Alex Wilson community garden , 1999 .

[13]  Annika Carlsson-Kanyama,et al.  Weighted average source points and distances for consumption origin-tools for environmental impact analysis? , 1997 .

[14]  K. Schmelzkopf,et al.  Urban Community Gardens as Contested Space , 1995 .

[15]  Anthony Winson The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada , 1995 .

[16]  Joe Nasr,et al.  Urban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources , 1992 .

[17]  R. Short The Growing Season , 1991, Acta paediatrica Scandinavica. Supplement.

[18]  D. Blair,et al.  A dietary, social and economic evaluation of the Philadelphia Urban Gardening Project , 1991 .

[19]  J. McKendry,et al.  A Rich Harvest , 1968 .

[20]  Neva Hassanein,et al.  Practicing food democracy:a pragmatic politics of transformation , 2003 .

[21]  C. Hinrichs The practice and politics of food system localization , 2003 .

[22]  Patricia Allen,et al.  Shifting plates in the agrifood landscape: the tectonics of alternative agrifood initiatives in California , 2003 .

[23]  M. Koc,et al.  A nonprofit system for fresh-produce distribution: the case of Toronto, Canada. , 1999 .

[24]  M. Koc,et al.  For self-reliant cities: urban food production in a globalizing South. , 1999 .

[25]  Rod MacRae,et al.  Food Citizenship and Community Food Security: Lessons from Toronto, Canada , 1998 .

[26]  C. Airriess,et al.  Vietnamese Market Gardens in New Orleans , 1994 .