5 Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’
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Nathan McClintock
Abstract
Among the brick warehouses and new-build condos of Montreal’s hip Mile-Ex neighbourhood, a group of musicians leads a parade a few dozen strong. The intergenerational crowd comes to a stop and circles together in a gravel-covered vacant lot, chattering happily and bouncing in time to the bass drum and snare, while the band’s clarinets, accordion, cello and tuba crank out a lively tune. A mother flanked by her two young children scrapes away some of the gravel and begins digging holes in the clay beneath. Another woman places a basil plant in one of the holes and pats some soil back around its base. Someone else empties a basketful of ‘seed bombs’ on the ground and calls out for people to come and grab some. A young girl picks up one of the small balls of clay packed with herb and wildflower seeds, walks a few feet, cranks her arm back, and hurls it as if it were a Molotov cocktail, the first of many thrown in this battle, in the words of the event’s organisers, to approprier la ville (‘reclaim the city’).
In Montreal, as in cities across North America, it is often not long before some group or other replaces the gravel, asphalt or weeds of a vacant lot with something more verdant: beds of rich soil and compost giving life to leafy vegetables, vines, fruits and flowers. Indeed, the relationship between vacancy and urban agriculture is arguably as old as urban food production itself; city dwellers have always opportunistically gardened or grazed animals on the grass and weeds growing in the ‘wastelands’, those interstitial spaces between and within residential and commercial lots, markets, streets and sidewalks (Vitiello and Brinkley, 2014).
Abstract
Among the brick warehouses and new-build condos of Montreal’s hip Mile-Ex neighbourhood, a group of musicians leads a parade a few dozen strong. The intergenerational crowd comes to a stop and circles together in a gravel-covered vacant lot, chattering happily and bouncing in time to the bass drum and snare, while the band’s clarinets, accordion, cello and tuba crank out a lively tune. A mother flanked by her two young children scrapes away some of the gravel and begins digging holes in the clay beneath. Another woman places a basil plant in one of the holes and pats some soil back around its base. Someone else empties a basketful of ‘seed bombs’ on the ground and calls out for people to come and grab some. A young girl picks up one of the small balls of clay packed with herb and wildflower seeds, walks a few feet, cranks her arm back, and hurls it as if it were a Molotov cocktail, the first of many thrown in this battle, in the words of the event’s organisers, to approprier la ville (‘reclaim the city’).
In Montreal, as in cities across North America, it is often not long before some group or other replaces the gravel, asphalt or weeds of a vacant lot with something more verdant: beds of rich soil and compost giving life to leafy vegetables, vines, fruits and flowers. Indeed, the relationship between vacancy and urban agriculture is arguably as old as urban food production itself; city dwellers have always opportunistically gardened or grazed animals on the grass and weeds growing in the ‘wastelands’, those interstitial spaces between and within residential and commercial lots, markets, streets and sidewalks (Vitiello and Brinkley, 2014).
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
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Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
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The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
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Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
-
The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
-
Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
