Cultivating Just Planning and Legal Institutions: a Critical Assessment of the South Central Farm Struggle in Los Angeles

The South Central Farm (SCF) in Los Angeles was a 14-acre urban farm in one of the highest concentrations of impoverished residents in the county. It was destroyed in July 2006. This article analyzes its epic as a landscape of resistance to discriminatory legal and planning practices. It then presents its creation and maintenance as an issue of environmental justice, and argues that there was a substantive rationale on the basis of environmental justice and planning ethics that should have provided sufficient grounds for the city to prevent its dismantling. Based on qualitative case study methodology, the study contributes to the formulation of creation and preservation rationales for community gardens and other “commons” threatened by eventual dismantlement in capitalist societies. “Ah, mi’jita,” she says at last. Her eyes are shining. “You have found out the secret of our journeys.” “What secret, Tı́a?” “Que las flores siempre ganan. The flowers always win.” Patricia Preciado Martin, “The Journey” (1980).1 The South Central Farm (SCF) in South Los Angeles (LA),2 California, was a 14-acre urban farm divided into over 350 family-maintained plots that grew an extensive variety of produce and medicinal plants unique to the region. The families, mainly Latina/o and many unauthorized immigrants, were originally allotted these “survival gardens” by the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, and had incomes no greater than 150% of the poverty level in the region.3 Most used the food and medicinal plants to augment their dietary and health care needs, and it is estimated that some 2,000 people directly benefited from the farm, as each plot was managed by a family of four members or more. Bound by industrial areas to the north, east, and south, the Direct Correspondence to: Clara Irazábal, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, 1172 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: [email protected]. JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 31, Number 1, pages 1–23. Copyright C © 2009 Urban Affairs Association All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0735-2166. 2 II JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS II Vol. 31/No. 1/2009