Land inventories document open spaces within cities where gardening could occur. Inventories were used during the Potato Patch and Depression Relief periods and recently been readopted as an urban planning tool useful for gardening advocates . Land inventories or audits have been used in several bay area cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and San Jose, to assess available space for urban gardens in addition to mapping existing projects. These inventories have been authored by and inspired from a variety of sources including municipal offices, local non-profits, and academic researchers with connections to local food movements . Each has used spatial data to create maps with which particular criteria can be used to identify potential land for gardening. Criteria vary between the inventories but each analysis generally seeks vacant lands with appropriate environmental conditions for cultivation . The targeted land of these inventories can be categorized as either all vacant or public vacant land. The difference is important. Mapping can be used as a tool of future making as well as making legible the importance of contemporary spatial practices. Maps facilitate discourses of possibility, hope, and politics. These land inventories are just that. For McClintock and Cooper their inventory “is one of many new steps in an ongoing movement to develop a more resilient, sustainable,drainage planter pot and just food system in Oakland” and “a crucial first step in developing policy and action related to developing a robust food system for low-income food deserts in the flat lands” . Two of the more prominent inventory authors focused on public land with an explicit commitment expressed in that choice. In “Cultivating the Commons”, a nationally recognized report and assessment, McClintock and Cooper claimed that land owned by public agencies in Oakland is a public resource and a part of the “commons” .
The authors intended the assessment to be used as a tool to increase use and management of public spaces by local residents. SPUR researcher, Eli Zigas concurred with the recommendation to deploy land inventories of public land . Through identifying vacant public land and working with policy makers, he hoped more residents could engage in urban gardening in San Francisco public spaces. For Zigas, private land, while a good option in some cases, did not have the same potential as the use of public lands. In their 2012 report, SPUR argued “even with a lease, land tenure for gardeners and farmers is often tenuous. Privately owned vacant land has a very high value because of its development potential. Urban agriculture projects, which can rarely pay much rent, have difficulty securing the long-term leases that are often essential to their success“ . When asked about SPUR’s focus on public land, Zigas stated “Personally I think I’m more interested in putting time into something so it can stick around for a long time” . Gardening on public land is understood to have greater tenure security as well as the benefit of community members managing a public resource or commons. Other inventory authors stress the opportunities on both public and private land. In his urban planning masters thesis, Lewis noted that while it may seem practical to use city-owned vacant land in San Jose, due to budget shortfalls, the city’s interest in selling land for revenue generation and a relative lack of open public spaces, secure public land might not be easy to come by . Lewis, now the executive director of an urban gardening non-profit called Garden to Table, suggests assessing private land for potential urban agriculture projects that have defined time limits can create win-win situations for gardeners and owners interested in future development. For Kevin Bayuk, a long-time San Francisco permaculturalist and author of a 2010 inventory later used by the SPUR 2012 inventory, has indicated that public and private categories do not necessarily get gardeners sufficient information on “available and appropriate” spaces .
While Bayuk, cofounder of the Urban Permaculture Institute, advocates for the use of both public and private land, he sees backyards as an important area to prioritize for urban agriculture advocates interested in maximizing food production because of their environmental, energy and water saving potentials . The inventories take a variety of approaches to addressing the question of appropriate land for gardening. Questions of use history, environmental quality, travel time to site, and importance of ownership are considered. Two reports that have received significant attention in the local and nation urban agriculture communities and publications, the SPUR and Cultivating the Commons reports, clearly advocate for the use and revitalization of public land. The authors contend that the state is responsible for providing access to public lands for community purposes. They argue that through policy change and the support of local public officials, the new garden spaces can be tenure secure in the long run. For others, like Bayuk, the insecurity of land tenure in the competitive land markets of the Bay Area means assessing both public and private land will lead to a greater number of beneficial land arrangements. Across the Bay Area gardeners have partnered with public agencies to gain access to land for gardening. Traditional plot community gardens have been popular in the region over the last several decades. In addition to these community gardens, urban agriculturalists are increasingly partnering with city agencies to develop partnerships for projects outside of the plot model. In an era of shifting neoliberal governance, some gardeners have expressed concerns that these partnerships can result in uneven allocation of resources. Traditional community garden programs run by municipal parks and recreation departments continue to exist throughout the Bay.
The San Jose and Oakland programs began in the 1970s during the last wave of popularization of urban gardening. The San Francisco program, while initially started in the 1970s, experienced a significant pause in operations in the 1980s and 1990s but is functioning again today. Many of today’s community gardens have long waiting lists due to both popularity and infrequent turn-over of gardeners. For example, San Jose’s Wallenberg Community Garden has over 120 individuals on their waitlist. In San Francisco, when a resident inquired about getting a plot in the Dearborn Community Garden in 2012 she was told there was a 22-year waitlist . While not all gardens have extensive waitlists, most do. New urban agriculture projects frequently run on a model based on education, community building, or job training that uses a collective growing model rather than individual plots. This model is not new, nor is the attempt to secure public land for these projects. The Farm, developed in the 1970s in San Francisco, is a prominent example of an early community-led urban agriculture project that eventually obtained city approval, was externally funded, and collectively operated on public land. SLUG, in San Francisco, operated collective garden projects on city land, such as the Saint Mary’s Farm and obtained contracts for tens of thousands of dollars with the city for many years. Today in Oakland, these public-private partnerships are flourishing and urban agriculture on public land is not coordinated by one larger private agency,plant pot with drainage unlike the partnership between San Francisco and SLUG from the 1980s to early 2000s. Various non-profits are partnering with the City of Oakland Office of Parks and Recreation to use and manage currently existing park space . In 2011, community members began organizing the Edible Parks Taskforce, a coalition of organizations including Phat Beets, PUEBLO, City Slicker Farms, Acta Non Verba, the Victory Gardens Foundation, Planting Justice, and many others. They joined together to propose an Edible Parks Community Stewardship Program, which would promote the use of public space for edible landscaping for community self determination. The program is inspired by Oakland’s Adopt-a-Spot program, where individuals, groups, and businesses can volunteer to manage pieces of public land and help reduce city costs. The Taskforce wants the city to standardize and clarify the process for use of public land. Some feel the process for accessing parkland for gardening has varied based on the political support of different organizations . Despite conversations for over a year and the presentation of a concrete proposal with support from three city council members, the city has been slow to engage with the task force and has yet to offer support. In an East Bay Express article published June 2014, Stephanie Benavidez of the Office of Parks and Recreation disagreed the city had been slow to respond and that said, “We have different goals and objectives. It’s about finding common ground” . The city has received many requests for expansion of gardening in parks and on other public land and claims the need to balance the needs of the community at large with those of the growing urban agriculture movements.
Both city officials and some neighbors worry this interest in urban gardening is only held by a small subsector of the population, questioning the amount of space that should be managed by these private sector organizations. There is concern that they may intentionally or unintentionally exclude certain people or practices from the area they garden or the projects may be adopted then discarded creating more work for city employees. In February 2013, City Slickers Farms broke ground on a new park and farm project in Oakland, the West Oakland Farm and Park, which has received significant public support. The area is being built to include vegetable beds, a fruit orchard, and urban livestock, a large lawn area for recreation and a dog run. Barbara Finnin, a former City Slicker Farms Executive Director, wants to create a “space for people tohang out and meet and recreate and have fun… It’s about community gathering spaces that people feel safe in” . The plans were developed through a three-month planning process, engaging neighbors to identify what they would like to see in a community park. The process was similar to the process that the Alameda Parks and Recreation Department recently facilitated to determine the future of a large swath of recently acquired land to become the Jean Sweeny Open Space Park. The difference being that West Oakland Farm and Park will not be a public park in management or ownership. In 2010, the organization received a $4 million grant from funding from Proposition 84 to buy the land and build the Farm and Park on a vacant lot; the organization will have to raise funds for operating costs. Proposition 84, The Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006, fund a variety of environmental improvement projects, the vast majority of which run through municipal and state departments. To improve sustainability and livability of California communities, the state allocated $580,000,000 to urban greening and the development and support of parks . The City Slickers grant, one of the largest funded, was chosen in part because of the organization’s 10-year history in the community and community engagement in the envisioning process . Many welcome the development of the new Farm and Park. Yet for some others, the project calls into question the significant public funding of a project that will ultimately not be owned or operated as a public park. Occupations and squatting have been used by gardens as a strategy to gain access to space, engage neighbors in considering urban land use priorities, and gain public attention for the work of their organizations or groups. Squatting, or using land without the permission of the landlord, has been a popular strategy for politically motivated gardeners since the 1970s. The term “guerilla gardening” was coined in the early seventies by Liz Christy of New York’s Green Guerillas, a non-profit still supporting community gardening today. The Green Guerillas “threw ‘seed greenaids’ over the fences of vacant lots. They planted sunflower seeds in the center meridians of busy New York City streets. They put flower boxes on the window ledges of abandoned buildings” . Soon they turned to reclaiming urban lots and creating community gardens in these vacant spaces. Today, many activists and gardeners are inspired by these strategies. The relationship between urban garden activism and the use of vacant land without permission has shifted since the rise of the Occupy Movement in fall of 2013.