Infrastructuring Gardens

The Material Politics of Outdoor Water Conservation in Los Angeles

Bibliographic Data

ID3122876
AuthorsValentin Meilinger (0000-0003-2398-9870, Utrecht University), Jochen Monstadt (0000-0001-9146-1571, Utrecht University)
Year2023
Volume113
Issue1
Pages206-224
Publication date2023-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the American Association of Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2469-4452 • E-ISSN: 2469-4460
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/24694452.2022.2085655
OpenAlexW4289711133
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited51

Historically, urban developers, politicians, and public water utilities have invented Los Angeles as a semitropical oasis in a dry climate. During the California drought of 2011 through 2016, however, the city’s residential gardens became a new frontier of water conservation policy. Water agencies started to subsidize the replacement of lushly irrigated lawns with California Friendly® landscapes, thereby endorsing a technology-centered “infrastructuring” of gardens to increase water conservation. This approach contrasts with California native plant gardening promoted by nature conservationists, which uses vernacular horticultural techniques to restore native plant biodiversity and reduce irrigation. The article shows that each approach has important political implications for urban space and water use, the value accorded to nature and gardening work, and relations between citizens and experts. Analyzing the differences between these approaches, we critically interrogate Los Angeles’s modern infrastructure regime that shapes water conservation policy. Particular attention is paid to how new material objects, knowledges, and practices in gardening recompose relationships between water, plants, technology, humans, and urban space. We argue that the notion of infrastructuring gardens offers a fruitful lens for ascertaining how expert cultures shape urban environmental change and how alternative gardening practices (re)produce urban nature differently

Agriculture · Archaeology · Biodiversity · Civil engineering · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental planning · Environmental resource management · Geography · Irrigation · Lawn · Political science · Politics · Recreation · Subsidy · Urban agriculture · Urban planning · Urban sprawl · Urbanization · Vernacular · Water conservation · Engineering · Environmental Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Urban Green Space and Health · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

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