Presentation by Dan Keech - to staff and students at University of East Anglia Environmental Science Department. Part of the SUPURBFOOD project

1. Gardening cyberspaceGardening cyberspace
hybrid spaces, multifunctional urban land
use social media in the creation of food
citizenship in the Bristol city region
Matt Reed, Nigel Curry, Dan Keech, James
Kirwan and Damian Maye
Countryside & Community Research Institute
dkeech@glos.ac.uk

2. OutlineOutline
Part 1 - Brief overview of SUPURBfood
(www.supurbfood.eu)
Part 2 - On-line politics & urban
social/environmental movements
Part 3 – Multi-functionality and social
innovation?

3. Backdrop to SUPURBBackdrop to SUPURB
Contemporary urban life reflects global food surplus
with distant ecological costs
EU agri policy irrelevant to cities:
• too diffuse and marginal for pillar 1 (AFNs)
• no direct rural development contrib - pillar 2
(intensive, brownfield or vertical land use).
Yet urban food systems have social, health,
innovation and environmental potential and food
market infrastructures

4. 1.3.0
SUPURBfood.eu
Short food supply chains
advocated in city-regions
Key areas of interest
• multi-functional land use
• nutrient recyling
• shortening food chains
Focus on:
• activists
• governance
• opportunities & blockages
• accelerators
Graffiti by Banksy –Park St, Bristol

5. DUBLIN
UNITED
KINGDOM
LONDON
PORTUGAL
LISBON
SPAIN
MADRID
FRANCE
ROME
ITALY
BELGIUM
NETH’LANDS
DENMARK
NORWAY
OSLO
SWEDEN
STOCKHOLM
FINLAND
I
ESTONIA
T
RIGA LATVIA
LITHUANIA
POLAND
KIEV
MOLDOVA
ROMANIA
SWITZERLAND
ATHENS
GREECE
ALBANIA
SERBIA
The SUPURB City Regions
Bristol
Ghent
Riga
Rome
Rotterdam
Vigo
Zurich

6. Diversity in EuropeDiversity in Europe
• geographic: landscapes, climates -
• governance styles and histories -
• very local specific contexts
• importance of (urban) agriculture -
• shopping habits -
• global flows – influential
• different interpretation of EU regs in nation-states

7. Key pointsKey points
The notion of a city-region links urban and peri-urban
areas (and may cross council boundaries)
Debates about food miles: the project works on the
basis that you also need shorter nutrient/water flows
and carbon cycles if you want to improve
environmental performance of SFSCs.
Funded through EC SME budgets, not agri-
environment divisions. Objective to support SMEs.
Investigation: what are the drivers, opportunities,
barriers, accelerators for performance improvements?

8. End of part 1End of part 1
Part 2 follows.
Will discuss the vibrancy of grassroots civic food
networks in Bristol.

9. Bristol, April 2011Bristol, April 2011
Series of riots around a Tesco Express store
in ‘The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft’
http://capturingbanksy.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/the-not-so-mild-mild-west/
Picture byAndy Webb in: Rice, L., Davies, J. and Cains, M
(2011) Bristol Riots, Tangent Books, Bristol.

10. On-line media and activismOn-line media and activism
Riot widely reported on social media - streamed live
on Internet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EAcK8elVM
Three public order incidents and the eventual
opening of the Tesco store provide unusually violent
backdrop to environmental activism through food.
More usually grassroots groups in the city try to
create social change through community food
project, motivated by environmental concerns and
focused on city administration. (cf. Seyfang 2006!)

11. Changing urban spaceChanging urban space
“In our society, the public space of the social
movement is constructed as a hybrid
space between the Internet social networks
and the occupied urban space: connecting
cyberspace and urban space in relentless
interaction, constituting, technologically and
culturally, instant communities of
transformative practice.” (Castells 2012:11)

12. Urban & on-lineUrban & on-line
Urban institutions - “building society across lines of
difference” (Marwell & McQuarrie 2013:127) –
observation field dynamics rather than normative
structures
Bennett (2012) - personalised politics (lifestyle, ‘decline of
group loyalties’) and DNA (Digital Network Activism)
Kang – consumption boycott of Wholefoods: “the network
holds potential for transforming politics, as a space in
which competing views probe each other, collectively
generate critical reflections on the ethics of a corporation
and of public policy, and so rejuvenate the community
(Kang 2012:574).
Capacity of on-line to shape and create a debate, to
change the spaces of the city. www often localised.

13. Social food media - BristolSocial food media - Bristol
CCRI team - content analysis of social media data as
part of our contribution to SUPURBfood
Objectives - to gauge how social media traffic shapes
food spaces and practices in Bristol and Bath; what
lessons for research and policy?

14. 4 YouTube Videos
Mostly through Twitter
links.
34 Cases
Methods & Materials
Individuals,
businesses
and
organisations
-websites and
linked social
media
8Twitter accounts
Over 15,000
tweets
1 Facebook
Group
Materials
collected Dec
2012 - April
2013
Analyzed
using Nvivo 10

15. KeywordsKeywords
Analysis using
Nvivo 10
Word frequencies
used as initial
coding key
Importance
location, positive
tone and the
immediate
Discourses after
Dryzek

16. Ecosystems and resources, People, Cities
Mutual enterprises
Popular mobilization – volunteers,
professionals and shoppers
Environmental Citizenship
Contingency of natural systems
Agents & their motives
Transition and collapse
Power of positive choices
Local action
GREEN URBANISM
Basic Entities Recognised
Exploitation, Co-operation
Assumptions about natural relationships
Metaphors & rhetorical devices

17. CIVIC ENVIRONMENTALISM
Basic Entities Recognized
Ecosystems, Regulations and Resources
Businesses, households and the State
Assumptions about natural relationships
Regulated competition
Agents & their motives
Consumers
Corporations
Enlightened self-interest
Key metaphors & rhetorical devices
Cycles – natural and of mutual benefit
Service provision
Technological/logistical solutions
Efficiency

18. Personal agencyPersonal agency
• ‘Great to see @GeorgeFergusonx supporting
#goodfood at the fantastic @LoveFoodFest … &
endorsing @TCF lovely vegboxes’
• ‘We can and do make Bristol a healthier and happier
place in which to live’ @GeorgeFergusonx
• Critique of corporations impersonal and reflective.
• The two discourses – GU & CE – overlap: BFPC a
bridge btwn the City Council and activists, with
results in official attitudes towards retail and
procurement.

19. Part 2 summaryPart 2 summary
An alliance within the city - limited & negotiated
Social media - maintaining and perpetuating alliance
- not creating
Combination of on-line and off-line
Re-shaping of the space of city around food
Inclusion and exclusion (Bristol-centric?)
Limitations of the local state but growing expectation
of change within the Bristol city-region.

20. Part 3Part 3
• SME collaboration
• Limitations of EU food policy in supporting food
SMEs and multi-functionality emerging from urban
agriculture

21. The Community Farm (1)The Community Farm (1)
• CBS financed by 500
investors £180k (£50 - £20k)
• Dispersed community of
democratic ownership
• Whole farm owned by one of
the directors; CF is tenant
• Non-profit

22. The Community Farm (2)The Community Farm (2)
• 22 acres of 250 acre
holding, possibility to extend
• Grants, free business advice
and donations for dev’l post
• Landholder receives agri-
payments for org livestock
• Multiple ‘social’ functions
• Veg boxes
• (classic SE juggle?)

23. CF as multi-functionalCF as multi-functional
(urban) service?(urban) service?
• Increasing access to local/org veg in city-region (FPC)
• Providing formal environmental education for schools
and linked to public procurement (seasonal probs)
• Supporting social services via drug rehab training
• Enhancing wildlife conservation
• Grant-dependent for social functions
• BUT unsubsided farm business

24. CCRI collaborationCCRI collaboration
SUPURBfood provides a small investment to CF to
collaborate as Bristol city-regional partner.
•How can planning regs better accommodate the multi-
functionality of the CF? – Dutch barn/yurt!
•What governance structures and business models are more
conducive to multi-functionality?
•How essential is multi-functionality to sustainable
development?
•How can CF become an a registered agricultural holding
when its Grade 1 land costs £20k an acre.
•What potential for urban agriculture within reformed CAP?

26. Networks and functions:
•Informal (organic and no
discreet function)
•Formal (can be changed in
relation to functions)
•May not be co-terminous

27. End of part 3End of part 3
•Multi-functionality is an important outcome of many urban
food networks but there are complications
•Food policies are designed for rural situations
•Dependence on volunteers to reduce operational costs
•Social functions are grant dependent - opening up
/burdening project staff (CF) with new interfaces
•Meanwhile social/environmental functions must be
accommodated behind commercial necessity
•

28. • SUPURBfood brings into focus the unhelpful division
between urban and rural space, and social and
economic functions in agri-policy. These divisions may
stifle social innovation
• Bristol reveals vibrant grass-roots activism creates new
communities of interest and friendships with roads into
city policy.
• However, national and EU policy remain the main
technical drivers of practice change (esp. for nutrients
and planning) and further embed dominant food culture –
Bristol supermarkets
• Multi-functionality offers new potentials for community
food analysis
The very end…

29. How d’ya like them apples?How d’ya like them apples?
Photo: Common Ground