Ten Steps to an Agricultural Revolution: Capturing Suburban Land for Agriculture through Social Decommodification

The anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai, argues that the process of commodification operates in two directions and that goods and services can become decommodified, partially decommodified, or their commodity value can be temporarily suspended. By projecting this idea to land, I imagined a new model of land tenure that would allow for the appropriation of land through social action.What is “weak” land tenure?“Weak” land tenure is both process and perception. As a process it is an act of appropriation that allows low income populations access to land’s use values without exchange values. As a perception, it is the status of land’s exchange value either diminished or suspended due to changes affected by time, circumstances, or through sheer social force (“weak” land tenure as verb). It is when use values become freely available to the public.I tested these ideas in a strategy to reintroduce agriculture in northern Orange County. I catalogued 25 different “weak” land tenure situations in this area (i.e. beach parking whose tenure “weakens” with changes in time of day and seasons, brownfields, concrete rivers, etc.) and charted when, where, and how much land would potentially be available for appropriation at any given time.

Following, I developed ten speculative design projects that capitalize on “weak” land tenure to demonstrate how food cultivation and distribution might be reintegrated into the daily lives of Orange County residents. These propose a range of possible types of new farms and new farmers markets inspired by existing organizations, individuals and projects devoted to urban agriculture and food provision and combine them with possible “weak” land tenure sites to suggest an almost infinite number of new agricultural possibilities that could, cumulatively, transform this area. They also demonstrate how such underused and often invisible sites can help address the problems that haunt urban areas: environmental degradation, hunger, unemployment, etc.

Takako Kaijima received a professional bachelor degree in architecture from Carnegie Mellon, a Master in Landscape Architecture and a Master in Urban Planning from the GSD. She worked for various firms in the US and Japan, and is a freelance landscape architect  consultant in LA. She is currently working on a publication of her research.