Manifestations of Access: The Carrot Bone’s Connected to the Council Bone…

Sustainability is interpreted in Chapter 1 as requiring the ability of individuals to act in an informed manner regarding the means of their own existence; this involves making informed choices and generating the spaces for deliberation, contestation, engagement and self determination. Such action therefore relies upon knowledge, which implies the necessity for access to information and relevant individuals. This highlights a number of relevant areas for discussion in this chapter. Firstly, the bodies encountered revealed multiple manifestations of concepts such as local embeddedness, place and community; hence, it is appropriate to explore these concepts in light of the ‘community/ies’ encountered.

Secondly, focussing on access leads to a consideration of the structures through which people engage; that is, the networks or webs through which people involved in inner city community gardening know each other. Information flows and networks can be assessed in light of permaculture theories of replication and function discussed in Chapter 2. Engagement with the networks involved, informed by such theories, reveals the potential of these theories for interpreting the concept and structures of urban community gardening. Consideration of the networks encountered also highlights the relevance of conceptual models found in current social theory attempting to address complexity, multiplicity and hybridity. Models seen as relevant include actor network theory (ANT) and Deleuze and Guattari’s model of the rhizome; it is therefore appropriate for the chapter to explore aspects of the networks encountered in light of these models. Thirdly, an engagement with access and networks requires assessment of the spaces for deliberation and engagement, or edges, as highlighted by the bodies consulted.

These issues are not intended as separate entities; any delineation is arbitrary and this interpretation represents but one way of navigating and conceptualising the issues at hand. Thus, rather than access, networks and engagement being distinct issues, access is contingent upon and manifest by negotiation of the spaces between various bodies, or edges, organised into networks of varying structure and composition. Ultimately, efforts to make the spaces of urban food production accessible involve opening up these networks or channels; as a mediator of access, such opening is hence a necessary condition for sustainability. The more open these spaces, the more this process of opening embodies, encourages and relies upon making such spaces "normal". Lastly, therefore, the processes encountered in the study will also be discussed in terms of widening the information flows and channels, so that binaries such as city/nature or city/rural are dissolved as food production becomes ‘normal’ or part of what cities do. This involves both an increase in the amount of food production occurring in cities and greater awareness of that production in ‘public’ realms, which involves a change from the current conceptualisation of this production as occurring in ‘private’, marginalised or invisible spaces.