Gardens of Hope

Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City

Yuki Kato

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781479827404
• eBook ISBN: 9781479827411
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Biological Sciences

Social changes through urban gardening and farming

Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening in New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina. Yuki Kato highlights the impact urban gardens have on communities after disasters and the efforts of well-intended individuals envisioning alternative futures in the form of urban farming.

Drawing on repeated interviews with residents who began cultivation projects in New Orleans between 2005 and 2015, Kato explains how good intentions and grit were not enough to implement or sustain urban gardeners' visions for the post-disaster city's future. Coining the term "prefigurative urbanism," Kato illustrates how individuals tried to realize alternative ways of living and working in the city through pragmatism and innovation. Gardens of Hope asks key questions about what inspires and enables individuals to pursue prefigurative urbanism and about the potential and limitations of this form of civic engagement to bring about short- and long-term changes in cities undergoing transformation, from gentrification, post-pandemic recovery, to climate change.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. After the Rain: The Rise of Urban Cultivation in Post-Katrina New Orleans
• 2. Seeds of Hope: Imagining Alternative Ways of Living, Working, and Provisioning
• 3. Breaking Ground: Manifesting the Alternative in the Existing Social System
• 4. Growing Changes in a Growing City: Forms and Characteristics of Prefigurative Actions
• 5. When the Garden Goes Fallow: Trajectories of Prefigurative Urbanism
• 6. Cultivating Hope in a Post-Disaster City: Immediate Changes, Variable Outcomes, and Uncertain Futures
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Methodological Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author