Urban Agriculture for Future Worlds? Just Imagine! A Study of Transformation Looking at Auckland’s Alternative Food

To respond to climate change, scholars argue society needs to be transformed. However, efforts to convey this need have failed to encourage sufficient action – driving calls for more imagination, and more detailed explorations of what transformation actually means. Focusing on Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, and adopting a multi-levelled understanding of transformation, this thesis combines critical qualitative perspectives with action research to consider the various roles urban agriculture might play; a celebrated but marginal ‘alternative’ to the dominant (and much critiqued) industrial food system. Drawing on two years of intensive researcher participation and 20 interviews with urban agriculturalists, I first consider change at the ideological level, outlining detail-rich future visions of Auckland changing through urban-grown food, spanning physical, economic and cultural realms. I then draw on the same interviews to explore the institutional level, describing the collective processes of change that might realise these visions: a narrative where grassroots groups collaborate in various ways, increasing their power and impact, and raising a number of tensions about where those involved are best to work. Lastly, I consider the individual level, drawing on autoethnographic data collected while establishing an urban forest garden; combining critique of the modern-colonial habit-of-being with psychological research on cognitive frames, and describing seven tentative cognitive shifts facilitated my agroecological practice. The thesis concludes with a broad synthesis, reflecting on my method and defining important aspects of transformation raised throughout, including how urban agriculture can and cannot support this work, and what framing imagination as a key limitation means for practice today.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Kelly, Daniel Clifford

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Harré, Niki
• Groot, Shiloh

• climate action
• decolonisation
• agroecology
• food system change
• urban agriculture
• imagination
• social change
• community psychology
• liberation psychology

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/75267

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/75267