‘A New Season for Planning’: Urban Gardening as Informal Planning in Rome

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between urban gardening and planning by building upon the results of field research on gardening initiatives in the city of Rome, Italy. The work is aimed at suggesting that, while often associated in geography and planning literature with urban informality practices (e.g. accidental city or self‐made urbanism), urban gardening actually presents the character of a distinctive form of people's interaction with urban space, here defined as “informal planning”. This includes practices that are intentionally put forward by local dwellers with the intention of urban space planning and organizing public life in the absence of legal definition, guidance and funds provided by public authorities or the private sector. Urban gardening cases in Rome exemplify the emergence of informal planning and show how, by questioning the counterplanning tradition that understands urban gardening as an antagonist spatial practice opposing institutional planning, informal planning can open up collaborative possibilities. A new mode of interaction between citizens' agency and the formal planning initiatives of local administration can lead to creative solutions to address some of the problems associated with the neoliberal transformation of the city space, most notably the decrease in public space and its deterioration.

GOVERNING URBAN AGRICULTURE: Formalization, Resistance and Re‐visioning in Two ‘Green’ Cities

“…Viewing urban agricultural governance as braided in this way is useful for a number of reasons. First, for scholars of urban agriculture such a heuristic incorporating the formal and the everyday lends itself to ongoing efforts to push beyond dichotomous readings of urban agriculture as, for example, radical or neoliberal, formal or informal, emancipatory or post-political (McClintock, 2014;Certomà, 2016;Hammelman, 2019). Second, for urban political ecologists and other critical urbanists it underscores the co-constitutive role of multiple forms of governance in producing urban nature and urban space more broadly (Schindler, 2014;Cornea et al, 2017).…”

“…Such 'guerrilla gardens' may be planted and governed informally by the gardeners themselves 'under the radar', explicitly challenging formal property claims, but they may also be subject to the same sorts of periodic complaints and bylaw enforcement as backyard gardens. In time, they may be formally recognized by city governments and become subject to more codified sets of regulations (Adams and Hardman, 2014;Certomà, 2016). This increased regulation comes in tandem with the provision by the city of services and materials such as water, fencing, compost or tool sheds.…”

The Political Potential of Urban Informality in the Global North: A Rancièrian Perspective

“…Devlin (2019, p. 138), who refers to Bayat’s work in the Middle East to understand informality in the USA argues, “these actions, though primarily pragmatic and practical, can turn into a more recognizable progressive urban politics.” This potential political impact is what we see in many analyses of informality in northern cities. Informal practices, in such an understanding, may serve as a corrective to formal planning and its neglect of, or failure to recognise, bottom-up planning desires (Certomà, 2016; Meijer & Ernste, 2019). As a consequence, individuals are considered to informally organise themselves to meet their needs or desires by taking matters into their own hands, as well as by collaborating with formal planning institutions.…”

Gardening the City: Addressing Sustainability and Adapting to Global Warming through Urban Agriculture

“…Urban gardeners and cultural associations transformed a derelict park into garden lots through an innovative governance process that helped to create an ecosystem service in the very center of Rome (resulting in cleaner air, a lower UHI, green amenities, fresh food), which succeeded in enhancing the social and urban fabric [80]. These cases illustrate how urban agriculture is prone to foster agreements for the co-management of green areas, where gardeners, neighbors, or citywide associations-such as the Libere Rape Metropolitane (Free Metropolitan Beetroots) in Milan [81]-provide practical support to local authorities and obtain in return decision-making power on urban affairs [82,83].…”