Foreword

Abstract

Worldwide cities have to meet challenges arising from growing societal, economic and environmental inequalities that affect the urban system as a whole and threaten common practices in urban development, urban planning and everyday life. Urban gardening as a new or re-invented form of green infrastructure is increasingly recognised for offering opportunities to meet these challenges. The growing of crops and ornamental plants for food and other uses in (semi-)public spaces within and around cities has received increasing attention over the last decades as a practice with multiple benefits (Van Veenhuizen, 2006). Ecological functions of urban gardening in general and in particular for improving biodiversity are acknowledged (Andersson et al., 2007); however, its potential to contribute to broader food security is a subject of debate, e.g. major challenges for growing food within cities seem to derive from the exposure to pollutants (Hursthouse and Leitão, 2016). From an economic perspective urban gardening supports local identity-and place-making (Been and Voicu, 2006), although its contributions to saving household income or reducing public maintenance costs seem to be limited (CoDyre et al., 2015). Despite these constraints, urban gardening and -on a larger scale -urban agriculture remains one of the few alternatives to the predominant, resource-intensive agro-food system, which relies on long supply chains and large-scale distribution and retail companies. The benefits of urban gardening for social cohesion, interaction and community-building are highly valued (Guitart et al., 2012). Participating in an urban gardening project is supposed to contribute to an active, healthy lifestyle, especially for older people (Van den Berg et al., 2010); however, it can be questioned who benefits from these initiatives in the long term and who is excluded.Urban gardening and the struggle for social and spatial justice offers a well-balanced overview of the correlation between urban gardening practices and spatial justice, questioning the effectiveness of urban gardening in addressing the current social and spatial injustices in cities. Can urban gardens be a remedy against inequality in society? Or can they -at a smaller scale -counteract inequalities in urban