ABSTRACT
What is the broader impact of the production of such spaces, such associations, such actions and discourse on urban residents who participate in this sociospatial assemblage? Part I suggested that the different opportunities encompassed in this assemblage afford residents means to become more resilient, capable of dealing with the vagaries of urban life. Part II discussed the modifications and adjustments of community life that grow out of this socio-spatial assemblage. Participants reworked their living conditions to help compensate for the uneven distribution of urban resources and in the process became more significant social actors. But this assemblage of spatial practices, social structures, and collective wisdom is responsible for an additional contribution. It gives rise to a dialectical force in which the evolving institution of gardens serves as a breeding ground for personal political development and vice versa. This chapter alludes to the broader, self-generated relations between the institution of community gardens and opportunities to engage in political practices (in the broad sense of the word) as well as opportunities to take part in the process of production of space. The self-generative power (autopoiesis) of this assemblage endows it with a life of its own; this power promises a generation of new participants and sustainability of the institution in the long run. The development of political consciousness remakes participants as a different kind of urban resident; to paraphrase Gramsci, it produces organic residents.
