Urban Farm DB
Research catalogue
Database research record2020·United States

Memory, waterways, and ecocultural identity

Jeffrey Alan Hoffmann

Urban Farm DB summary

Hoffmann examined oral histories and interviews (1995-1996, 2014, 2017) with elders of multiple ethnicities in a working-class urban agricultural neighborhood in the U.S. Southwest. The study found that while ecocultural memory fosters trust in shared water relationships, historical anxieties stemming from urban development violence can impede communities' ability to organize to protect and restore ancestral waterways.