ABSTRACT
There is a rich history of food cultivation in the city. Urban agriculture, community and school gardens, edible landscaping, and guerrilla cultivation of food in parking strips, vacant lots, and other interstitial and unused urban spaces are all longstanding practices that can bring people together, help them define common goals, and engage them in the process of negotiating physical space with their neighbours. This chapter argues that growing food also has the potential to be a more radical intervention in urban life. Specifically, growing food in the city has the potential to challenge dominant regimes that structure how urban space is produced and used. In contemporary cities, that dominant regime is neoliberalism, which values space predominantly for its exchange value, and prioritizes private property rights over other claims. Under neoliberalism, the priorities of the state have been greatly reoriented away from the needs of citizens, inhabitants, and users, and toward the needs of the market.
