Community Gardens and Politics of Scale in New York City^*

* The authors would like to thank Katherine Hankins, Robert Yarbrough, Joshua Inwood, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Abstract

New York City community gardens have been the subject of political contestation over the course of their thirty‐year existence. In 1999, 114 gardens were slated for public auction and redevelopment. This article examines the controversy over the garden auction as a politics of scale in which garden advocates successively raised the scope of the controversy beyond the scale of individual gardens, and ultimately beyond that of the city. Analysis of this land‐use conflict highlights the significance of politics of scale for grassroots organizations within a market‐centric, neoliberal economic framework.

• community gardens
• grassroots activism
• neoliberalism
• New York City
• politics of scale

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher M. Smith

Mr. Smith is a doctoral candidate in geography at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602,

Hilda E. Kurtz

Dr. Kurtz is an assistant professor of geography.