Introduction and Research Questions
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is known as the garden capital of the United States, with around 470 known active garden locations throughout the city (Bouffard, 2017). Many of the gardens that make up the network are established by communities of varying cultural identities, and are managed and tended on land that is not owned by the community and therefore subject to development pressures (Cahn & Segal, 2016). Community gardens also represent an important front to mitigating climate change in cities through participation in local, sustainable food systems that reduce dependency on traditional methods of industrial agriculture, by acting as permeable, green surfaces that prevent storm water runoff and reduce the impacts of urban heat islands, and by providing spaces for community members to engage with nature and become climate advocates (Vitiello, 2011).
In light of the benefits that community gardens provide in terms of climate change, as well as the development pressures and power struggles that community groups face in keeping these gardens, I became curious about how the gardens organize to share information about sustainable practices and opportunities for advocacy. I wondered whether platforms existed for this type of collaboration, and how cultural dynamics and historical power imbalances play into such interactions between organizations. Thus, the research question that I am setting out to answer with my final project is, “How do community gardens (specifically in West Philadelphia) use physical and virtual platforms to collaborate and share information with other gardens and organizations on sustainable practices and policies?” I am also interested in exploring the further probing questions of what types of expertise the collaborating organizations represent, and how the cultural identities of communities and organizations influence the way that they interact in collaborative settings.
Better understanding the way that community gardens collaborate and share information, as well as how expertise and cultural identity play into these collaborations will be helpful in understanding climate change for a number of reasons. First, understanding the collaborative platforms and strategies used to specifically share technical practices and policy advocacy information will help identify what is being done well, and ways that collaboration could be improved upon to disseminate climate-friendly gardening practices and organize around land conservation efforts. Examining the cultural identity piece will provide a better understanding of the potential barriers to collaboration based on differing perspectives and power imbalances. Finally, examining the expertise of partners will help determine motives for participation and what sort of information is being shared.
Coursework Influence
My interest in examining collaboration in common spaces stemmed from some of the artifacts that were gathered during the collaborative assignment. Since my group’s district was Lower South, there was a very small residential presence in the district. For the community, this meant fewer public amenities that could serve as community centers (Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 2013). In many of the public comment documents and articles written about community participation, residents expressed a need for these kinds of spaces, and a desire for more accessibility of these places from their relatively isolated neighborhoods (Gates, 2011; Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation & Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 2012). Although this is likely a result of the character of the district and the prioritization of economic development over civic spaces, it sparked many thoughts about the social and environmental benefits of public green space as community centers.
Through following the coverage on the potential buy-out of the Wiota Street Community Garden, I became interested in how the garden and the network of community garden advocates organized to fight the development (Update: Redevelopment Authority saves Wiota Street Community Garden, 2017). Since the garden is located near my neighborhood and near both Drexel and Penn’s campuses, I became curious about other community gardens in West Philadelphia fighting similar development interests, whether they were collaborating and organizing on any public platforms, and simply how they are sharing information about their everyday practices in sustainable agriculture and advocacy. Upon researching this, I found many advocacy groups and technical assistance groups, all with a range of stated interests, expertise areas, and cultural identities (Philly Grounded, 2016; Pearsall et al., 2016). Further research uncovered historical land struggles tied to cultural identity of the ownership and maintenance of the gardens and erasure of these groups’ interests by political disempowerment (Cahn & Segal, 2016). Thus, I became interested in how cultural identity influences the way that these groups collaborate with one another and interact with the political system.
The readings that we have had in this class have also influenced my interest in examining collaboration and community garden spaces. Upon reading the article by Puig de la Bellacasa (2015) and thinking about the productionist ethos that seem to pervade our everyday experiences, I reflected on whether people in urban environments ever find spaces to exist without this pressure. Although community gardens surely don’t escape the reach of capitalist influences, and they often feel the pressure of such motives in efforts to redevelop land used for community gardens (Cahn & Segal, 2016), they are places where care time and reverence for interactions with the natural environment and other community members could likely be found (Vitiello, 2011).
The article on new collaborative practices and the matsutake mushroom by the Matsutake World Research Group (MWRG) (2009) was also a reading that guided my interest in community gardens. Gardens, like the mushrooms, represent nodes of connection between different systems, and therefore serve as a point of collaboration. Also, gardens may be valued differently by different actors (MWRG, 2009). The matsutake article also discussed how non-academics might absorb or conceptualize technical information (MWRG, 2009). The points in this article reinforced my curiosity in examining how the different identities of groups may influence the way that they collaborate on policy advocacy issues and obtain and share information.
Collaborative Dynamics Influence
The collaborative dynamics of this course have shaped the development of my final project in a number of ways, from experiences interacting with group members to navigating the Asthma Files platform and the information housed there.
In terms of the first collaborative composition, it was clear to the members of our group that our various academic backgrounds had influenced the topics that were of interest to us, as well as how we researched and understood those topics. For example, in approaching the climate narrative for our district of Lower South, we chose to initially divide topics up by relative expertise, as many of the assigned articles had suggested. Jason, who studied history, looked at the history of land use in the district. Alex, who works at the Philadelphia Water Department, chose to examine issues of flooding and water quality in the district. With my experience in transportation and public involvement, I decided to look at air quality and community issues in Lower South. When we came together again to discuss what we had found, it was clear that each of our disciplines had helped guide us to information that we would not have found individually without the help of the others.
Similarly, after the next phase in our collaborative research, we began to collaboratively review and pull themes out from the artifacts that we had gathered separately. There were some differences in how we conceptualized connections to climate change based on our respective disciplines, but allowing time to talk about each of the themes that we pulled out of the articles helped us to understand each person’s perspective and reasoning for the inclusion of that theme or element to climate change. Through this discussion, we were able to recognize connections between each of the focus areas and tie our narrative together.
Part of this collaboration also yielded reflection on what it was like to work with one another. We did not structure this time or plan to make space for it after reviewing the connections in our data. Instead, the reflection naturally flowed upon reaching the point of consensus on our themes. Unprovoked, we each began to remark on how valuable it was to have people with different academic and personal backgrounds looking at the same issue and the same data (once it had all been gathered). This led to discussions of our commonalities as well, in terms of one class that we had all taken, as well as our general interests and communication styles.
The research topics that we chose, the themes that we uncovered, and the reflection on and appreciation for one another’s differences and commonalities were all of tremendous benefit to the project. I felt that the quality of the work was better than I had produced in previous “collaborative” group projects, and that we left the project with a greater understanding and appreciation of each other’s perspectives and working styles. When I began thinking about a research question for my project, the positive impact of the collaborative composition experience was one of the reasons why I wanted to examine collaboration practices among community gardens. I felt that the information was much stronger than what I could have gathered alone, so I wondered whether community gardens were collaborating and sharing information in a way that would allow them to strengthen their agricultural and advocacy practices. Further, I was curious about how different types and cultural identities of institutions would influence such collaborations because of how much our differing backgrounds benefitted our composition experience. Finally, the appreciation for one another that we gained through reflecting on our collaboration allowed me to see benefits beyond the act of collaboration, and to wonder whether that sort of feeling could be produced through identifying ways that community gardens could collaborate.
Working with the Asthma Files has also influenced the development of my research. Although working with the platform was relatively frustrating to begin with, it was very helpful to be able to work separately from different places on the same project and to be able to review one another’s artifacts and comment through another collaborative medium (Google Drive). This sparked some thinking about the benefits of online platforms in general. Through some quick searching online, it became clear that a central place did not exist (whether on Facebook or a blog) specifically for community gardeners to share knowledge in an interactive way. Therefore, I wanted to ask what kinds of platforms community gardening organizations use to share information.
Some aspects of the collaborative work have also limited or hindered my progression on my final project. First, collaboration is very time-intensive. Whether it is the necessity of aligning many different schedules, or simply the difficulty of tying many separate pieces of information together, the process has been consuming and left less time for developing the final project. Further, the collaborative nature of the Asthma Files website and the clunky nature of it in its current state makes it seem less valuable for individual projects, so it has not come into play as much in the development of my individual research. Regardless, the collaborative elements of this course have been mostly positive and will continue to influence the questions that I ask about my research as I dive deeper into the process.
Bibliography
Bouffard, M. (2017, March). How a local data collaborative increases value of community gardens. Green Philly Blog. Retrieved on April 1, 2017 from http://www.greenphillyblog.com/philly/the-city-of-brotherly-love-and-urban-gardens/
Cahn, A. L., & Segal, P. Z. (2016, March). You can't common what you can't see: towards a restorative polycentrism in the governance of our cities. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 43(2), 195+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=drexel _main&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA481354721&sid=summon&asid=210676812a8569 167b056a4239d7bdae
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Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, Philadelphia City Planning Commission. (2012, January). Lower Schuylkill Master Plan Community Engagement Sessions – Round One. Retrieved from http://planphilly.com/sites/planphilly.com/files/Civic_Engagement_-_Round_1_- _Notes_from_Public_Workshops_0118_and_011912_-_Final_.pdf
Philadelphia City Planning Commission. (2012, March 20). Lower South District Plan. Retrieved from http://phila2035.org/home-page/district/lower-south/
Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2015). Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science, 45(5), 691-716. DOI: 10.1177/0306312715599851
Soil Generation! (n.d.) Grounded in Philly. Retrieved from http://groundedinphilly.org/HFGS- about/
Update: Redevelopment Authority saves Wiota Street Community Garden. (2017, April 13). West Philly Local. Retrieved from http://www.westphillylocal.com/2017/04/13/redevelopment-authority-meeting-today- could-be-end-for-wiota-street-community-garden/
Vitiello, D. (2011). Growing Edible Cities. In Birch, E. L., & Wachter, S. M. (Eds.), Growing Greener Cities : Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia, US: University of Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu
