Mobilizing 'impermaculture

Temporary urban agriculture and the sustainability fix

Bibliographic Data

ID4464446
AuthorsErin Mccann (0000-0002-6219-0693, Simon Fraser University), Eugene Mccann, Nathan Mcclintock (0000-0002-3634-3799, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, corresponding author), Christiana Miewald (Simon Fraser University)
Year2023
Volume6
Issue2
Pages952-975
Publication date2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486221115950
OpenAlexW4288042818
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited65

This paper addresses the alliance between some urban agriculturalists, developers, and the local state in promoting a certain type of 'green urbanism' through what we call 'impermaculture'. Impermaculture is a model of urban agriculture whereby some urban farmers approach their impermanence - the possibility of their operations being replaced by higher value developments - less as a threat to be avoided, as traditionally understood in the literature, and more as an intended modus operandi to which they are committed. We discuss how they use lightweight and portable growing containers, planter beds, greenhouses, and livestock pens to operate within and enhance contemporary regimes of development in global North cities. We identify a spatio-temporal impermanence that stands in contrast to classic understandings of sustainability fixes as either a form of greenwashing or as spatial fixes involving the sinking of capital into construction of a 'greener' built environment. In what follows, we develop a conceptual framework that will facilitate these contributions and provide a language for discussing cases of impermaculture in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia. We discuss how urban agriculture is mobilized as part of the sustainability fix in the two cities. We first demonstrate how impermaculture emerges as a means of stabilizing the fix which is always prone to coming apart, or fracturing. We then draw on two examples - goat husbandry in Portland and temporary gardens in Vancouver - to demonstrate how urban agriculturalists are embracing and leveraging impermanence. This 'impermaculture by design' not only marks a new form of urban agriculture in the neoliberal city but shores up and temporally rescales the sustainability fix while providing urban agriculture initiatives stability

Agriculture · Archaeology · Cityscape · Civil engineering · Environmental planning · Geography · Impermanence · Sustainability · Urban agriculture · Urban planning · Urban sprawl · Urbanism · Engineering · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Urban Agriculture and Sustainability · Urban Green Space and Health · Architecture · Ecology

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