Varieties of green: On aesthetic contestations over urban sustainability pathways in a Copenhagen community garden
Jakob Laage‐Thomsen, Anders Blok
Environment and Planning E Nature and Space
Urban Farm DB summary
Drawing on a case study of a civic-driven permaculture garden in Copenhagen, Denmark, this article develops an analytical grid for the imaginative and material domain of public aesthetic norms that shapes tensions over interventions in, and valuations of, the city's multiform green spaces. It models this domain along two axes — "orderliness" versus "wildness," and "pastoral nature" versus city-nature "imbrication" — and uses the grid to make sense of internal debates and external criticisms surrounding the Copenhagen permaculture garden. It explains how and why the garden struggled to secure a legitimate place in a city otherwise committed to urban nature, and argues that attention to variable aesthetic commitments around urban greenery helps recast questions of urban sustainability politics.