Gardening cyberspace Gardening cyberspace hybrid spaces, multifunctional urban land use social media in the creation of food citizenship in the Bristol city

region

Matt Reed, Nigel Curry, Dan Keech, James Kirwan and Damian MayeCountryside & Community Research Institutedkeech@glos.ac.uk

OutlineOutline

Part 1 - Brief overview of SUPURBfood (www.supurbfood.eu)

Part 2 - On-line politics & urban social/environmental movements

Part 3 – Multi-functionality and social innovation?

Backdrop to SUPURBBackdrop to SUPURB

Contemporary urban life reflects global food surplus with distant ecological costs

EU agri policy irrelevant to cities:

• too diffuse and marginal for pillar 1 (AFNs)

• no direct rural development contrib - pillar 2 (intensive, brownfield or vertical land use).

Yet urban food systems have social, health, innovation and environmental potential and food market infrastructures

1.3.0

SUPURBfood.eu

Short food supply chains advocated in city-regions

Key areas of interest • multi-functional land use• nutrient recyling• shortening food chains Focus on:• activists• governance• opportunities & blockages• accelerators Graffiti by Banksy –Park St, Bristol

DUBLIN

UNITEDKINGDOM

LONDON

PORTUGAL

LISBON

SPAIN

MADRID

FRANCE

ROME

ITALY

BELGIUM

NETH’LANDS

DENMARK

NORWAY

OSLO

SWEDEN

STOCKHOLM

FINLAND

I

ESTONIAT

RIGA LATVIA

LITHUANIA

POLAND

KIEV

MOLDOVA

ROMANIA

SWITZERLAND

ATHENS

GREECEALBANIA

SERBIA

The SUPURB City Regions

BristolGhentRigaRomeRotterdam VigoZurich

Diversity in EuropeDiversity in Europe

• geographic: landscapes, climates -

• governance styles and histories -

• very local specific contexts

• importance of (urban) agriculture -

• shopping habits -

• global flows – influential

• different interpretation of EU regs in nation-states

Key pointsKey pointsThe notion of a city-region links urban and peri-urban areas (and may cross council boundaries)

Debates about food miles: the project works on the basis that you also need shorter nutrient/water flows and carbon cycles if you want to improve environmental performance of SFSCs.

Funded through EC SME budgets, not agri-environment divisions. Objective to support SMEs.

Investigation: what are the drivers, opportunities, barriers, accelerators for performance improvements?

End of part 1End of part 1

Part 2 follows.

Will discuss the vibrancy of grassroots civic food networks in Bristol.

Bristol, April 2011Bristol, April 2011Series of riots around a Tesco Express store

in ‘The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft’

http://capturingbanksy.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/the-not-so-mild-mild-west/

Picture byAndy Webb in: Rice, L., Davies, J. and Cains, M (2011) Bristol Riots, Tangent Books, Bristol.

On-line media and On-line media and activismactivismRiot widely reported on social media -

streamed live on Internet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EAcK8elVM

Three public order incidents and the eventual opening of the Tesco store provide unusually violent backdrop to environmental activism through food.

More usually grassroots groups in the city try to create social change through community food project, motivated by environmental concerns and focused on city administration. (cf. Seyfang 2006!)

Changing urban spaceChanging urban space“In our society, the public space of the social movement is constructed as a hybrid space between the Internet social networks and the occupied urban space: connecting cyberspace and urban space in relentless interaction, constituting, technologically and culturally, instant communities of transformative practice.” (Castells 2012:11)

Urban & on-lineUrban & on-lineUrban institutions - “building society across lines of difference” (Marwell & McQuarrie 2013:127) – observation field dynamics rather than normative structures

Bennett (2012) - personalised politics (lifestyle, ‘decline of group loyalties’) and DNA (Digital Network Activism)

Kang – consumption boycott of Wholefoods: “the network holds potential for transforming politics, as a space in which competing views probe each other, collectively generate critical reflections on the ethics of a corporation and of public policy, and so rejuvenate the community (Kang 2012:574).

Capacity of on-line to shape and create a debate, to change the spaces of the city. www often localised.

Social food media - BristolSocial food media - Bristol

CCRI team - content analysis of social media data as part of our contribution to SUPURBfood

Objectives - to gauge how social media traffic shapes food spaces and practices in Bristol and Bath; what lessons for research and policy?

4 YouTube VideosMostly through Twitter links.

34 Cases

Methods & Materials

Individuals, businesses

and organisations -websites and linked

social media

8 Twitter accounts

Over 15,000 tweets

1 Facebook

Group

Materials collected

Dec 2012 - April 2013Analyzed

using Nvivo 10

KeywordKeywordss

Analysis using Nvivo 10

Word frequencies used as initial coding key

Importance location, positive tone and the immediate

Discourses after Dryzek

Ecosystems and resources, People, CitiesMutual enterprises

Popular mobilization – volunteers, professionals and shoppersEnvironmental CitizenshipContingency of natural systems

Agents & their motives

Transition and collapsePower of positive choicesLocal action

GREEN URBANISMBasic Entities Recognised

Exploitation, Co-operation

Assumptions about natural relationships

Metaphors & rhetorical devices

CIVIC ENVIRONMENTALISMCIVIC ENVIRONMENTALISM

Basic Entities RecognizedEcosystems, Regulations and ResourcesBusinesses, households and the State

Assumptions about natural relationshipsRegulated competition

Agents & their motivesConsumers CorporationsEnlightened self-interest

Key metaphors & rhetorical devices Cycles – natural and of mutual benefitService provisionTechnological/logistical solutions Efficiency

Personal agencyPersonal agency• ‘Great to see @GeorgeFergusonx supporting

#goodfood at the fantastic @LoveFoodFest … & endorsing @TCF lovely vegboxes’

• ‘We can and do make Bristol a healthier and happier place in which to live’ @GeorgeFergusonx

• Critique of corporations impersonal and reflective.

• The two discourses – GU & CE – overlap: BFPC a bridge btwn the City Council and activists, with results in official attitudes towards retail and procurement.

Part 2 summaryPart 2 summaryAn alliance within the city - limited & negotiated

Social media - maintaining and perpetuating alliance - not creating

Combination of on-line and off-line

Re-shaping of the space of city around food

Inclusion and exclusion (Bristol-centric?)

Limitations of the local state but growing expectation of change within the Bristol city-region.

Part 3Part 3

• SME collaboration

• Limitations of EU food policy in supporting food SMEs and multi-functionality emerging from urban agriculture

The Community Farm The Community Farm (1)(1)

• CBS financed by 500 investors £180k (£50 - £20k)

• Dispersed community of democratic ownership

• Whole farm owned by one of the directors; CF is tenant

• Non-profit

The Community Farm The Community Farm (2)(2)

• 22 acres of 250 acre holding, possibility to extend

• Grants, free business advice and donations for dev’l post

• Landholder receives agri-payments for org livestock

• Multiple ‘social’ functions

• Veg boxes

• (classic SE juggle?)

CF as multi-functional CF as multi-functional (urban) service?(urban) service?

• Increasing access to local/org veg in city-region (FPC)

• Providing formal environmental education for schools and linked to public procurement (seasonal probs)

• Supporting social services via drug rehab training

• Enhancing wildlife conservation

• Grant-dependent for social functions

• BUT unsubsided farm business

CCRI collaborationCCRI collaboration

SUPURBfood provides a small investment to CF to collaborate as Bristol city-regional partner.

•How can planning regs better accommodate the multi-functionality of the CF? – Dutch barn/yurt!

•What governance structures and business models are more conducive to multi-functionality?

•How essential is multi-functionality to sustainable development?

•How can CF become an a registered agricultural holding when its Grade 1 land costs £20k an acre.

•What potential for urban agriculture within reformed CAP?

Networks and functions:•Informal (organic and no discreet function)•Formal (can be changed in relation to functions)•May not be co-terminous

End of part 3End of part 3

•Multi-functionality is an important outcome of many urban food networks but there are complications

•Food policies are designed for rural situations

•Dependence on volunteers to reduce operational costs

•Social functions are grant dependent - opening up /burdening project staff (CF) with new interfaces

•Meanwhile social/environmental functions must be accommodated behind commercial necessity

•

• SUPURBfood brings into focus the unhelpful division between urban and rural space, and social and economic functions in agri-policy. These divisions may stifle social innovation

• Bristol reveals vibrant grass-roots activism creates new communities of interest and friendships with roads into city policy.

• However, national and EU policy remain the main technical drivers of practice change (esp. for nutrients and planning) and further embed dominant food culture – Bristol supermarkets

• Multi-functionality offers new potentials for community food analysis

The very end…

How d’ya like them apples?How d’ya like them apples?

Photo: Common Ground