“It’s Not Only Our Task”

Urban Farm DB summary

This article explores the "operational space" of urban community gardening (CG) from the viewpoint of city officials in Tampere, Finland. Two rounds of interviews with eight officials and discourse analysis were used, and the operational space, shaped by administrative policies and practices, was found to be rather rigid and narrow. Five main discourses aimed to enable urban gardening but were restricted to strategic, limited, and instrumental levels, as political-strategic aims contradicted administrative practices, and cautiousness and unclarity in the administrative-political culture led to institutional ambiguity.