IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v58y2021i14p2901-2919.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Growing public spaces in the city: Community gardening and the making of new urban environments of publicness

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Milbourne

Abstract

The demise of public space in cities across the Global North has received considerable scrutiny from urban scholars in recent years, with accounts of the loss, privatisation and increased regulation of public space prevalent within the academic literature. This paper seeks to complicate these dominant narratives of public space transformation by exploring the complexities of existing public spaces and the emergence of new spaces of publicness in the city. It uses a case study of community gardening in mundane and everyday neighbourhood spaces to provide a more nuanced and progressive reading of the relations between publicness and space in the city. Drawing on empirical materials from recent research on community gardening projects in 15 cities in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA, the paper highlights how community gardening is creating new environments of publicness across public, private and in-between spaces that complicate both the end of public space discourse and conventional understandings of public space within urban studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Milbourne, 2021. "Growing public spaces in the city: Community gardening and the making of new urban environments of publicness," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(14), pages 2901-2919, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:14:p:2901-2919
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098020972281
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098020972281
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098020972281?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sarah Dooling, 2009. "Ecological Gentrification: A Research Agenda Exploring Justice in the City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 621-639, September.
    2. Soyoung Han & Joong Won Kim & Yoonku Kwon, 2019. "Contemporary Spatial Publicness: Its New Characteristics and Democratic Possibilities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-18, August.
    3. Judit Bodnar, 2015. "Reclaiming public space," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(12), pages 2090-2104, September.
    4. Florian Langstraat & Rianne Van Melik, 2013. "Challenging the 'End of Public Space': A Comparative Analysis of Publicness in British and Dutch Urban Spaces," Journal of Urban Design, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 429-448, August.
    5. Andy Pratt, 2017. "The rise of the quasi-public space and its consequences for cities and culture," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 3(1), pages 1-4, December.
    6. Mark Whitehead, 2009. "The Wood for the Trees: Ordinary Environmental Injustice and the Everyday Right to Urban Nature," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 662-681, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sandra Ricart & Carlo Berizzi & David Saurí & Gaia Nerea Terlicher, 2022. "The Social, Political, and Environmental Dimensions in Designing Urban Public Space from a Water Management Perspective: Testing European Experiences," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-24, September.
    2. Yi Hua & Zhi Qiu & Wenjing Luo & Yue Wang & Zhu Wang, 2021. "Correlation between Elderly Migrants’ Needs and Environmental Adaptability: A Discussion Based on Human Urbanization Features," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-16, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karen Bickerstaff & Harriet Bulkeley & Joe Painter, 2009. "Justice, Nature and the City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 591-600, September.
    2. Yunjing Wu & Jing Wang & Sunnie Sing-Yeung Lau & Stephen Siu Yu Lau & Yijia Miao, 2022. "An Improved Publicness Assessment Tool Based on a Combined Spatial Model: Case Study of Guangzhou, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-27, November.
    3. Noman Sahito & Haoying Han & Thuy Van Thi Nguyen & Insin Kim & Jinsoo Hwang & Arif Jameel, 2020. "Examining the Quasi-Public Spaces in Commercial Complexes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-16, February.
    4. Tali Hatuka & Eran Toch, 2017. "Being visible in public space: The normalisation of asymmetrical visibility," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(4), pages 984-998, March.
    5. Gössling, Stefan, 2016. "Urban transport justice," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-9.
    6. A. Haven Kiers & Billy Krimmel & Caroline Larsen-Bircher & Kate Hayes & Ash Zemenick & Julia Michaels, 2022. "Different Jargon, Same Goals: Collaborations between Landscape Architects and Ecologists to Maximize Biodiversity in Urban Lawn Conversions," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-18, September.
    7. Jessica Parish, 2023. "Fiduciary Activism From Below: Green Gentrification, Pension Finance, and the Possibility of Just Urban Futures," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 414-425.
    8. Xuefan Zhang, 2017. "Identifying consumerist privately owned public spaces: The ideal type of mass private property," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(15), pages 3464-3479, November.
    9. Kelsey Ryan-Simkins, 2021. "The intersection of food justice and religious values in secular spaces: insights from a nonprofit urban farm in Columbus, Ohio," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(3), pages 767-781, September.
    10. Zoé A Hamstead, 2024. "Thermal insecurity: Violence of heat and cold in the urban climate refuge," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(3), pages 531-548, February.
    11. Anthony McLean & Harriet Bulkeley & Mike Crang, 2016. "Negotiating the urban smart grid: Socio-technical experimentation in the city of Austin," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(15), pages 3246-3263, November.
    12. Byron Miller & Samuel Mössner, 2020. "Urban sustainability and counter-sustainability: Spatial contradictions and conflicts in policy and governance in the Freiburg and Calgary metropolitan regions," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(11), pages 2241-2262, August.
    13. Zhen Yang & Weijun Gao, 2022. "Evaluating the Coordinated Development between Urban Greening and Economic Growth in Chinese Cities during 2005 to 2019," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-25, August.
    14. Jean Hillier, 2009. "Assemblages of Justice: The ‘Ghost Ships’ of Graythorp," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 640-661, September.
    15. Chihsin Chiu, 2020. "Theorizing Public Participation and Local Governance in Urban Resilience: Reflections on the “Provincializing Urban Political Ecology” Thesis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-12, December.
    16. Dani Broitman, 2023. "“Passive” Ecological Gentrification Triggered by the Covid-19 Pandemic," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 312-321.
    17. Giannis Sotiriou & Chryssanthi (Christy) Petropoulou, 2022. "Socio-Spatial Inequalities, and Local Struggles for the Right to the City and to Nature—Cases of Urban Green Parks in Athens," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-23, October.
    18. Ilaria Marotta & Francesco Guarino & Sonia Longo & Maurizio Cellura, 2021. "Environmental Sustainability Approaches and Positive Energy Districts: A Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-45, November.
    19. Diana Dushkova & Dagmar Haase, 2020. "Not Simply Green: Nature-Based Solutions as a Concept and Practical Approach for Sustainability Studies and Planning Agendas in Cities," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-37, January.
    20. Paul Joseph Draus & Juliette Roddy & Anthony McDuffie, 2014. "‘We don’t have no neighbourhood’: Advanced marginality and urban agriculture in Detroit," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(12), pages 2523-2538, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:14:p:2901-2919. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.