Reading Lawson's chapter on the emergence of the contemporary urban gardening movement raises many issues for the current state of community gardening in urban spaces.
Since community gardening rose during a period of national urban deterioration, the challenge today is that urban areas have been transformed into playgrounds of real estate developers. If gardens are such vital resources to poor and delapitated areas where youth can get out of the daily drama of poverty and violence, then what does the current trends of gentrification mean for the youth of today?
If there are no more vacant lots, and those that do exist are being coveted for the right moment to construct a new loft for the young urban professional, than how do we push to transform the ecology of the city with the grassroots community gardening of the past?
Maybe the fight has moved out of the inner city and to the exurbs where the urban poor are now moving. Maybe the farmers who are losing their land to the development of strip malls are the natural allies of the exurban poor who have become alienated by the lack of community fostered by environments based on private vehicular transportation.
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