Geography
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Households and community organizations are involved in the creation, use, care, and management of urban spaces, including through food practices such as planting, foraging, harvesting, weeding and pruning at the ambiguous edges of public and private property. Drawing on case studies in Boston, Massachusetts, we examine how commons are articulated through these practices, particularly in relation to multiple dimensions of property rights. Specifically, we ask how food practices can open urban spaces to negotiations around access, responsibility, care, and ownership, especially when (property) ownership is not an end-goal, but a circumstance shaping other practices. Using interviews and participant observation of individuals and organizations involved in urban food provisioning, we explore how households and community organizations are interrupting fixed notions of property ownership, by practicing urban commons. These practices and negotiations demonstrate ongoing shifts in the meanings of urban space with flexible understandings of property and ownership.
Publication Title
Urban Geography
Publication Date
2019
Volume
40
Issue
10
First Page
1485
Last Page
1505
ISSN
0272-3638
DOI
10.1080/02723638.2019.1615819
Keywords
Boston, Commons, Massachusetts, ownership, property, urban homesteading
Repository Citation
Morrow, Oona and Martin, Deborah, "Unbundling property in Boston’s urban food commons" (2019). Geography. 334.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/334
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.