DISCUSSION

In studying a community garden in a perse and gentrifying urban neighbor- hood, I found conviviality, formation of ties across difference, and significant con- flict over the very definition and meaning of this tightly packed urban space. The differences in gardening practices were not simply part of a horizontal multicultural mosaic to be celebrated as part of the popular everyday persity discourse (Bell  and Hartmann 2007). Instead, they connected to social hierarchies being repro- duced within this public space. In the conflicts over what the garden should look  like and how people should act in it, those who wanted the garden to be a lush, green, orderly space were supported in implementing their vision by its resonance with the aesthetic preferences of high-end developers and affluent residents. These aesthetic preferences were legitimized by institutional support of the Parks Depart- ment and the philanthropic organizations that manage many of the other commu- nity gardens in the city. Judgments of beauty or its lack, order and  disorder,  worked to naturalize this vision of public space, reproducing the hierarchies in the larger society that privilege place-making of more affluent white urban residents (Zukin 1995, 2010). These gardeners drew on their economic, social, and cultural capital to push through their agenda, at the expense of other ways of seeing the gar- den. They had the knowledge and skills to leverage support from powerful players such as city agencies and local politicians. Attempts by less privileged gardeners to do the same backfired, as when Maral enlisted a government official’s help, and he turned against her, backing garden leaders who pushed the green vision of the gar- den. The same leaders advocated on behalf of another gardener whose structures violated garden rules, in part because his plot conformed to the aesthetic vision of ordered green lushness.

Rather than serving as a space of civil cosmopolitanism and fleeting encounter, the common focus of the gardeners resulted in deep engagement with difference, much of it conflictual and messy. However, this messy conflict was valuable for bringing deliberation, uncovering unarticulated stances, and for occasionally desta- bilizing established and intertwined cultural and socioeconomic hierarchies (Amin 2002). The tensions and confrontations go against our ideals of harmonious com- munity (Young 1986); yet, they are not only inevitable when perse people truly engage with each other over a shared space and project, but can be more valuable than passing conviviality and cosmopolitanism. There was room for lived experi- ence of persity in this public space to lead to deliberation, meaningful engagement with difference, disruption of hierarchies, and cultural destabilization (Amin 2002). The friendships and allegiances went beyond fleeting encounters and could be mar- shaled when resisting the power structures that characterized the garden and its context. The engagement of gardeners with each other across gulfs of class, ethno- racial, and immigration differences opened up spaces for resistance that could bene- fit those with less power through formation of enduring ties. That partly explains how Tai, described above, was able to avoid the forced destruction of her plot struc- tures, while Maral was not successful.

The garden was embedded in powerful institutional hierarchies characterizing the neoliberal city, and as many urban gardens, it faced challenges to its future exis- tence. I show that the internal dynamics of this space were a microcosm in which the struggles over gentrification and attendant changes in cultural norms and socio- economic landscape played out among an extremely perse group of gardeners. Although developed in a specific community garden, my typology of visions can be applicable elsewhere, particularly in public spaces that, like the garden, are charac- terized by significant user control and selective exclusion (Shepard and Smithsimon 2011). For instance, one can easily envision a similar configuration of visions in parks, plazas, green spaces, and sidewalks. Even in libraries, which are usually more directly controlled, there are disagreements between those who emphasize an aes- thetically pleasing experience more on par with a bookstore caf´e, those for whom library collections are most important, and those who see local libraries as commu- nity centers and resources. Similar dynamics may be applicable to private spaces, such common areas in co-op buildings.