Reinventing public spaces in community garden projects in Berlin and Rotterdam

Urban Farm DB summary

An empirical, cross-context study of community engagement in public urban space examined community garden projects in Berlin, Germany, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as case studies. These projects — which typically upgrade empty, abandoned land into public or semi-public urban space and community access to nature — were studied to understand why people get involved in collective projects in public space, focusing on social and place-bound processes, with a central research question of which social processes and project features lead organizers, participants, and neighbors to understand community gardens as fostering place-making and social connectedness. The two case studies were selected as legally or formally recognized grassroots, self-organized initiatives combining individual and mainly collective gardening activities with semi-public or public access, and were analyzed for place characteristics, social and organizational features, partnerships with public institutions, degree of public accessibility, and collective versus individual gardening.