Gardens in a postsuburban region: Community garden governance and ethos in Orange County

Eiji Toda and Edward Lowe

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2022, vol. 11, issue 2

Abstract: Considerable research has examined the changing values and governing approaches of urban community gardens since the nineteenth century in the United States. However, few studies exist for com­munity gardens located in postsuburban contexts. This study reports the findings from six case studies of community gardens in southern Orange County, California, that asked, how are the themes of garden governance and an overarching garden ethos elaborated at community gardens? Our find­ings suggest that gardens manifest one of three governance approaches which we labeled anarchic, democratic, and corporate. In addition, we found two values frameworks or garden ethoses among these gardens. One is a community ethos oriented toward realizing values promoting greater commu­nity engagement, and the other is an individualistic ethos oriented toward promoting the value of gardening as an independent activity for each gardener in their plot. We argue that just as gardens in the inner city have been sites to address urban prob­lems, gardens in postsuburban environments might also address perceived shortcomings in postsubur­ban regions. Our findings also suggest that com­munity gardens, particularly in newer suburban developments, reflect a shift in the utopian visions of postsuburban planning away from a consumerist lifestyle to a newer one that enables access to nature and sustained social connections among residents. Read the press release for this article.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/359335/files/1022.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:joafsc:359335

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development from Center for Transformative Action, Cornell University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().