Urban gardening is the new form of gardening in the city. Together with neighbors and friends between houses, cars and vacant lots in Berlin, New York and Havana, they grow their own plants. Young city dwellers in particular are active in urban gardens. And it's much more than just a nice way to pass the time: it's the peaceful rebellion of city children!
Urban gardening seems harmless and is often a full-blown protest movement. Around the world, young city dwellers in particular want to set an example by growing crops independently and gradually reclaiming abandoned, gray concrete patches. They want to decide for themselves what their city will look like in the future; they want to have a say in what goes on their plates; they want to find ways to address climate protection problems in the long term.
Plants are grown in old boxes, shopping carts and tetra packs. Fancy pots and utensils are avoided because the idea is to use what is already there and no longer needed. Sustainability and conscious consumption are the keywords that the modern rebels have taken up: sustainable food production, sustainable use of raw materials, sustainable climate protection. Urban gardeners as the dropouts of the 21st century.
What started out as an intelligent answer to social problems is becoming more and more popular.
The topic is gradually being adopted at universities and in research. In their seminars, architecture and spatial planning students develop ideas about what the green city of tomorrow could look like. And that in turn rubs off on city planning and politics. The Hanseatic city of Hamburg, for example, wants to make the Wilhelmsburg district climate-neutral and self-sufficient, and the metropolis of New York, a metropolis of millions, has also adopted an official concept that envisages the long-term greening of the city.
Christa Müller is a sociologist and has been observing the phenomenon of urban gardening since the late 1990s. Your foundation community 'anstiftung & ertomis' promotes and researches urban gardens, open workshops and repair cafés. She notices that a change in thinking is slowly occurring. Because many cities continue to grow and if they do not become greener, not only the air quality but also the quality of life of the residents suffers.
The researcher says that in the future it will be about making the city more people- and nature-friendly again - with the active participation of the population, as a peaceful rebellion by the city children!
Interview
Christa Müller
The sociologist in an interview with Uniglobale
UNIGLOBALE: What is the difference between urban gardening and allotment gardens?
Ch. M.: Many allotment gardens see themselves as a refuge away from the hustle and bustle of big cities. Urban gardening activists, on the other hand, want to communicate directly with the city and its planners and help shape the city. They want to be able to plant plants in the places where they live and get to know the neighborhood. Their understanding of urbanity undermines the separation between nature and society; they bring together what they think makes sense for a life worth living in the city: people with plants and animals, children with the elderly, immigrants with long-time residents. Urban gardening is also about experimenting with existing materials, converting Euro pallets into beds, looking around at what is there and transforming what is there into something new. So upcycle instead of buying everything new and thereby exacerbating the problems of consumer society. The aim is to set ecological impulses with the new community gardens – and to share the joy of making things yourself and experimenting with others.
UNIGLOBALE: What is Guerrilla Gardening?
Ch. M.: Guerrilla gardening is a specific form of urban gardening. They are often temporary actions, displays in public spaces, interventions. For example, you throw seed bombs and address city planning by saying: “The city could look different. Where you only planned gray concrete, we let flowers bloom." And this is a friendly, peaceful intervention that shows that the growing generation has a new understanding of politics that is no longer so strongly based on confrontation but rather on undermining it. Rather, you appropriate spaces and then transform them according to your own ideas into beautiful places for everyone (and that includes non-human beings).
UNIGLOBALE: Is urban gardening only available in Germany?
Ch. M.: No, urban gardening is a global phenomenon; food is grown in cities all over the world. Urban gardening, as we know it from Germany, is a phenomenon of prosperity; in the so-called Third World, urban gardening is necessary for survival and has a long tradition. For example, in Cuba it is an economic necessity, especially in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the island was suddenly cut off from Soviet oil supplies. Industrial agriculture is completely dependent on petroleum and is unthinkable without this input.
UNIGLOBALE: Is urban gardening an alternative to industrial agriculture?
Ch. M.: No, and it shouldn't be. The aim of growing vegetables in the city is to address the global scarcity of resources, the destruction of nature and the distortions of industrial agriculture. You experiment with the qualities and diversity that regional and seasonal cultivation and food offers. This then leads to sensitized consumption, at least that is the assumption.
UNIGLOBALE: How did urban gardening come about in Germany?
Ch. M.: It started in the mid-1990s with the Intercultural Gardens. During the Bosnian War, refugee women in Göttingen expressed the desire to grow vegetables themselves. In their homeland they had large gardens that fed entire families and in Germany they were dependent on food parcels. An international group of asylum seekers then came together. At the beginning of the 00s there was a boom in intercultural gardens, which was supported and supported by our foundation.
Towards the mid-00s, other new forms emerged, such as the Rosa Rose community garden in Berlin-Friedrichshain - where neighbors cleaned up a littered wasteland between two houses and planted them together. In 2009, the Princess Garden was created, an explicitly “nomadic”, i.e. mobile, community garden. Each of the projects inspires others, and today they can be found in all major German cities.
UNIGLOBALE: Where can I find out more?
Ch. M.: There are various interconnected websites: www.stadtacker.net or www.urbane-landwirtschaft.de
You can also find an overview of all urban gardens in Germany on our foundation website: http://anstiftung-ertomis.de/urbane-gaerten
The foundation community anstiftung & ertomis from Munich networks, promotes and researches urban gardens, open workshops and repair cafés. www.anstiftung-ertomis.de
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Urban gardening is the new form of gardening in the city. Together with neighbors and friends between houses, cars and vacant lots in Berlin, New York and Havana, they grow their own plants. Young city dwellers in particular are active in urban gardens. And it's much more than just a nice way to pass the time: it
