How does the ‘Right to the City’ manifest within the context of Black urban agrarianism?

Keywords: Right to the City, Urban agriculture, Black urban agrarianism, food justice, urban geography, Black agrarianism
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

This presentation will focus on a developing book chapter that reassesses the ethos of Black Americans’ relationship to the land, their autonomy, urban space, and systemic inequality in the food system. As the title asserts, vacant land is compared to kryptonite, which also resembles the color of green, as an allegory that repels major development and destroys collaborative effort within majority-Black, urban neighborhoods, thus creating unhealthy food environments and an imbalance of power over one’s everyday surroundings. As a response, residents are exercising their “Right to the City,” a theory introduced by Henri Lefebvre (1968 & 1996), by creating a relatable food system, usually urban agriculture and co-ops, protected from white and/or government dominance and giving rise to the concept of Black urban agrarianism.

Highlighting action-oriented and collective pursuits in two Ohio cities, Toledo and Dayton, Black urban agrarianism is a product of blending both the ‘Right to the City’ in relation to food, as explained in “Cultivating food as a right to the city (2014)” by Purcell & Tyman, and that of Dr. Monica White's Collective Agency and Community Resilience (CACR) framework as introduced in her 2018 book, Freedom Farmers. This chapter begins the discourse of the question, “How does the ‘Right to the City’ manifest within the context of Black urban agrarianism?”