Public Participation in Post‐Fordist Urban Green Space Governance: The Case of Community Gardens in Berlin

Abstract

SummaryThis article examines citizen participation in the governance of contemporary urban green space. Rather than exploring normative questions of ideal forms of participatory democracy, it focuses on changing roles and relationships between local state and non-state actors in order to identify and explain the changing nature of participation. I argue that neoliberal urban restructuring has changed the conditions for participation and thus participation itself in fundamental ways and that we need an account of changes in statehood and governance in order to capture this conceptually. Based on the case of community gardens in Berlin, the article discusses the extent to which this changed relationship is expressed by current citizen participation as well as the potential and problems that result from it. My empirical results show the emergence of a new political acceptance of autonomously organized projects and active citizen participation in urban green space governance. The central argument of this article is that this new acceptance can be conceptualized as an expression of the neoliberalization of cities. Nevertheless, this neoliberal strategy at the same time leads to complex and contradictory outcomes and the resulting benefits are also acknowledged.

Contributing to food security in urban areas: differences between urban agriculture and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North

“…Patel 1996;Lovell 2010;Rosol 2010). Community gardens and allotments, school gardens and rooftop gardens in particular are operated by urban dwellers from the neighbourhood, so that proximity to housing areas is assumed.…”

Seeding Social Capital? Urban Community Gardening and Social Capital

“…A totality of nineteen studies involve research from the US [2], [3], [7], [8], [55], [57][58][59], [61][62][63][64], [66], [68][69][70][71][72][73][74], six studies from Europe (three from the UK [1], [12], [75], two from Germany (Berlin) [5], [76] and one from Croatia [77]), four from Canada [56], [57], [65], [78], and four from Australia [4], [10], [67], [79]. This confirms a general tendency of a disproportionate mass of research from the US on urban community gardening, compared to Europe and elsewhere.…”

“…This confirms a general tendency of a disproportionate mass of research from the US on urban community gardening, compared to Europe and elsewhere. Furthermore, 27 studies are qualitative studies [1][2][3][4][5], [7], [10], [18], [56], [58], [59], [61], [62], [65][66][67][68][69][70][71], [73], [76]- [79], five studies are mixed-methods research [12], [63], [64], [72], [75], while only three articles comprises of mainly or entirely quantitative data [8], [55], [57].…”

The ‘green’ and ‘self’ in green self-governance – a study of 264 green space initiatives by citizens

“…Many authorities recognize a potential for citizens to positively contribute to the governance and management of public green (Perkins, 2010;Rosol, 2010). Regularly, authorities actively aim to involve citizens in the delivery or co-production of green space management through co-governance or through supporting self-governance (Smith, Pereira, Hull, & Konijnendijk van den Bosch, 2014;Van der Jagt et al, 2016;Van Melik & Van Der Krabben, 2016).…”