"Squatting" for Social Change

I must admit, it is a recurrent topic in my articles where I talk about community gardens and the many impacts in can have in neighborhoods and small regions of a city, but each time I find more important information to develop in regards to this urban feature. The Mendes et al. article quotes Glover et al. where research shows that social capital is produced, accessed, and used by a network of community gardeners, which can induce participation and further leading to civic democracy and engagement.

From Carpenter’s reading, she tells the story of the Ghost Town neighborhood and the impact her squatting began to do in the community, both by spreading the word and by curiosity from neighbors. The author’s actions mirror to those of Henry David Thoreau in Walden Pond, where he repurposes a piece of land and provides benefits for the soil, the plants, and the community. The act of squatting is certainly a civic act that seeks to enhance people’s livelihoods by planting food and consciousness. Whether it is a small garden of a cooperative scale, nourishing urban agricultural deals with land, housing, transportation, economics, and everything else. As Erika Allen from Growing Power proposes, it serves as a transformational tool.

In the Cobb article, the author mentions of other powerful examples to strengthen urban agriculture such as aquaponics, where closed systems feed both fish and water, recycling nutrients and providing economic relief on the fish market. Aquaponics is a more recent growing power, and it is reflected in several communities. For instance, Tallahassee aquaponics reflects a local example of works being done in Chicago and Milwaukee, providing vegetable and fish sales whilst educating people about aquaculture and raising chemical-free fishes. Plenty of potential can be extracted both from terrestrial and aquatic urban farming, especially in the context of sustainability and cost effectiveness, showing how urban agriculture can benefit not only the natural environment, but the social one as well.

In the process of squatting for a community, transparency may go a long way. When involving other people in the process, squatting turns into a democratic act, where anyone can participate and cultivate anything they desire. This may lead to solving issues such as economic racism and malnourishment, also developing relationships with its participants -as told in Carpenter’s article- and bring people from outside the community into it, revitalizing neglected areas within urban spaces. Urban agriculture is a gradual process, but it yields lasting results for everybody, from the words of Cobb “A connected and thriving community – or an effective community if you will – is the ultimate outcome for a successful urban farm.”