Fences, seeds and bees: The more-than-human politics of community gardening in Rotterdam

Urban Farm DB summary

A study of the Gandhi-garden, a community garden in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that is part of the global Transition Towns movement, drawing on participatory ethnography, interviews, and online documents. Challenging the anthropocentrism common in research on urban sustainability and resilience, the paper analyses everyday acts such as weeding and permacultural planting as "more-than-human assemblage" place-making practices involving insects, plants, soil, and fences that challenge urban neoliberalism. It also examines expressions of solidarity with Palestine through olive trees and non-violence thinking, alongside tensions between humans and non-humans over dog waste and birds that take harvested produce.