Short description
(English)
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Allotment gardens have been scarcely addressed by planning actors. This has recently changed due to the reorganisation of cities as places to live, work, and invest. The corresponding urban growth has led to urban densification and discussions of economically low-value utilisation of urban space. Simultaneously, because of new urban life-styles other forms of urban gardening and leisure interests have arisen and questions concerning the future of allotment gardens have been embedded in considerations of the appropriate supply of open space. As a result, in many Swiss cities conflicts have emerged which also found expression in plebiscites. They often concluded in unsatisfactory solutions for planning departments and civil society. Thus, approaches to allotment gardens and its conditions for transformation have become a central question of urban development policy. The research project addresses this question by elaborating discourses on the meaning of allotment gardens and other forms of urban gardening in the context of urban densification and open space policy. Planning practices will be collaboratively analysed in order to develop future scenarios in densely-developed areas. This study will adopt an hermeneutic approach and apply a discourse analytical perspective. The results will be delivered to actors in planning and civil society through the implementation of workshops. The outcomes will enrich the discussion in COST Action WG1 of which the main applicant is co-leader.
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Abstract
(English)
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The emergence of allotment gardens is strongly linked to the industrialisation and its economic, political and social implications. Since then, meanings and functions of allotment gardens and their role within the urban fabric have been subject to continuous change. Recently, they have regained interest: 1) Swiss cities are engaging in a strategy of expansion and are strongly marked by the planning paradigm of densification. 2) meanings and functions of green space in Swiss cities are undergoing changes. On the one side, green space becomes increasingly important in the context of global city competition. On the other side, the needs and demands of urban residents for green space become more fragmented and diverse. It is a main challenge for cities to offer green space which satisfy a variety of stakeholders and interests. Furthermore, the development of new urban lifestyles linked to a societal reorientation towards sustainable living practices finds expression in urban gardening. This leads to an increasing demand for open and green space in urban areas. In this context, meanings, functions and design of open green spaces are a subject of negotiation. Questions concerning the future of allotment gardens have aroused and approaches to urban allotment gardens and its conditions for transformations have become a question of urban development policy. Based on document analysis and qualitative interviews, this discourse theoretical project addressed this question by, firstly, exploring discursive practices in processes of negotiation of urban gardening from a comparative perspective in four Swiss cities (Basle, Berne, Geneva, Zurich). Secondly, by analysing how hegemonic discursive practices become stabilised through current planning concepts and how urban allotment gardens are being shaped by them. The results show that urban growth strategies within the frame of the compact and green city are rationalizing current transformation processes of urban gardening. Understandings of public green space as public good fostering the common welfare make the contestation of urban allotment gardens to appear as natural consequence. While so-called traditional forms of urban gardening are closed down, displaced to locations with less significance for urban development plans or transformed in spatial and functional terms, new forms of urban gardening, that commensurate with actual ideals of urban landscapes, emerge in the inner-city areas. Thus, dominant discursive practices produce particular hegemonic spatial practices reframing urban gardening within the rationalities of the emerging power-knowledge regime and making the transformation of urban allotment gardens a required condition to enable urban development. In the last phase of the project, workshops with stakeholders were conducted to develop future scenarios of urban gardening and to create concepts enabling practitioners to facilitate the provision of urban allotment gardens as part of the urban green infrastructure.
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