3. Urbanization, as
cited by Baudrillard in his precession of simulacra, has unfortunately only aided in the degradation of rurality and nature. Therefore urban ‘farms’ are a reproduction of land use based on a dichotomous relationship that is dependent upon the population embracing an idealized, surface rurality. Farmers and consumers still actively participate—rather than resist. The capitalist cycle contributes to food insecurity and manifests a false sense of community. Bastardized urban agriculture refuses to get its hands dirty when it comes down to what is required to truly feed and house the urbanized masses. 4. Yet, the
“civilizing” attributes of urbanizing processes attempt to sanitize rural attributes found in the city. The more common process of othering—that of the subordinate rural lies within the urban center—an urban core that relies on its scattered pockets of peripheral rurality for labor and raw materials. Not only for day-to-day sustenance through food and clothing, but also through the creation and maintenance of its built environment—which actually exists as a site of resistance and newly defined rural. Brooklyn Grange in the Brooklyn Navy Yard provides a healthy local alternative to restaurants and those that can afford the luxury of paying for and accessing food in New York City. The DEP’s Green Infrastructure Grant Program helped finance the takeover of an ‘abandoned’ rooftop. 592,730 dollars. Praise from Mayor Bloomberg for the future of urban agriculture and its contribution to PlaNYC goals—as long as it doesn’t compete with developers. 5.
6. The
city bases use of space on economic / real estate values. Gardens and farms at ground level spring up in abandoned lots that are still categorized as ‘open lots’ by the city. The city owns those lots, and that demonstrates to developers that those spaces are not being commercially used and therefore up for grabs. Community gardens do not create as much value as the continual spread of built environment and destruction of remaining rurality. Farming on a neglected plot of land transforms that
95