That idle land is to be put to productive use is a longstanding property mantra. While this has too often been put to violent and exclusionary ends, Nate Ela’s Cultivating the City uncovers a different path, revealing a long history of attempts by social reformers to let people in need use idle urban land to grow food.  In that property is fundamental to social possibility and constraint, urban agriculture offers vital lessons regarding the potential for cultivating new forms of urban life.

Nicholas Blomley, author of 'Unsettling the City: Urban Land and the Politics of Property'