Podcast #70 – The Social Life of Yards with Ursula Lang

Talking plants

One of Ursula Lang’s yard visits.

The podcast this week is a conversation with Ursula Lang, a PhD candidate in geography at the University of Minnesota who is just completing her dissertation on the social life of yards; I know Ursula through my experience in the same Geography Department. I sat down with her the other day at Cahoots Coffee Shop in Saint Paul to talk bout her research, in which she interviewed and studied people who “practice their yards” in three different neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Ursula explained to me about the history of yards as an idea and a physical space, how people view and experience yards differently, and why thinking about yards might reveal something important about the value of overlooked aspects of everyday life.

The link to the audio is here!