In this journal, it has been suggested that citizens practising community gardening “can become complicit in the construction of neoliberal hegemony”. Such hegemony is maintained, it is argued, through the day‐to‐day work of neoliberal citizen‐subjects, which “alleviates the state from service provision”. In this paper we acknowledge that community gardens are vulnerable to neoliberal cooptation. But, even where neoliberal practices are evidenced, such practices do not define or foreclose other socio‐political subjectivities at work in the gardens. We contend that community gardens in Glasgow cultivate collective practices that offer us a glimpse of what a progressively transformative polity can achieve. Enabled by an interlocking process of community and spatial production, this form of citizen participation encourages us to reconsider our relationships with one another, our environment and what constitutes effective political practice. Inspired by a range of writings on citizenship formation we term this “Do‐It‐Yourself” (DIY) Citizenship.

The growth of community gardens has become the source of much academic debate regarding their role in community empowerment in the contemporary city. In this article, we focus upon the work being done in community gardens, using gardening in Glasgow as a case study. We argue that while community gardening cannot be divorced from more regressive underlying economic and social processes accompanying neoliberal austerity policies, it does provide space for important forms of work that address social needs and advance community empowerment. In developing this argument we use recent geographical scholarship concerning the generative role of place in bringing together individuals and communities in new collective forms of working. Community gardens are places that facilitate the recovery of individual agency, construction of new forms of knowledge and participation, and renewal of reflexive and proactive communities that provide broader lessons for building more progressive forms of work in cities.

This paper draws on a project ‘Banner Tales of Glasgow’, which is the result of an ongoing collaboration between geographers, museum staff and trade unionists. The paper draws on testimonies from workers involved in two labour disputes in the mid 1980s. We use these testimonies to think about the use of banners in the construction of working‐class solidarities. This discussion is used to illuminate the relations between the formation of a working‐class presence and the role of discourses of a moral economy in shaping particular community‐making practices. Through doing so, we use a focus on banners to illuminate different aspects of the spatial practices of labour organising and argue that the construction of a working‐class presence and articulations of a moral economy can be mutually reinforcing.

Tackling climate change requires a set of deeply intertwined geographical responsibilities whereby actors at and across different geographical scales are intimately connected. Creating effective strategies requires far more than an invocation for individual behavioural change in thinking globally and acting locally, but attention to the multi‐scalar conflicts, tensions and also opportunities to develop the most appropriate collective responses. In this paper, we use the example of community gardening initiatives in a large UK city to critically interrogate the problems facing groups at the local neighbourhood level in pursuing sustainability agendas. We focus on the organizational imperative to create a multi‐scalar food policy partnership at the city level as a way of confronting dominant global neoliberal urban competitiveness agendas. Our results emphasize the critical importance of scalar politics in enabling effective climate change strategies.

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This paper critically analyses the post-political thesis, highlighting its universalising and agency-grabbing tendencies. Drawing on my own family life, anarchist theory and long-standing traditions of "properly" political placemaking by past and present grassroots actors, the paper unsettles two interrelated claims on which the post-political thesis sits. First, that the political (le politique) is in retreat. Second, that "proper" politics constitutes a confrontational set of relations. Informed by empirical observations I present an existing form of rigorous political encounter enacted in anarchist-influenced social centres. The politics on offer here has a supportive pedagogical quality to it and, crucially, there are semblances of this pedagogical politics found in multiple sites. Focusing on the "micro-physics of power" at work in social centres, I show how such organisational practices counter the predetermined finalities of the post-political condition by enacting what I call "equality-as-tactic". Community here is not an empty vessel that can be easily filled with "empty signifiers". On the contrary, post-political practices tend to crack under the scrutiny of a pedagogical politics aimed at equalising participation in the decisionmaking process. K E Y W O R D S anarchism, democracy, equality, placemaking, post-politics, social centre The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

Prosumption encompasses acts of production and consumption, and studies on it have mostly taken a commercial focus, centred on the dominant individualistic narrative of ‘I’. This article seeks to extend debate regarding prosumption by exploring its possibilities for creating a new set of ‘we’ identities based around nature and community. It focuses on community gardens and how these places generate progressive forms of social relations that critique mainstream mass production and environmentally destructive food systems.

Drawing upon new approaches to thinking about care, as summarised in the above quote, this research set out to explore the inter-relationships between sustainability, health, well-being and the urban environment. Through actively engaging with existing grassroots projects involved in community gardening in Glasgow, the project goes beyond existing top-down public policy initiatives, to explore bottom-up and collaborative models of urban regeneration. The research project underpinning this report was designed in collaboration with grassroots community garden groups in the city. Bringing together the experiences and opinions of volunteers and staff working in these gardens and a number of experts and activists in the related areas of Urban Agriculture (UA) and urban green space use, the report identifies a number of ways in which gardens benefit communities. It also assesses a number of challenges faced by community groups as they try to construct a sustainable future for community gardening in Glasgow.After a brief introduction to community gardening in Glasgow, this report outlines a range of benefits accrued to individuals that participate in community garden activities and the wider communities that live in relative proximity to the gardens. The report then considers the main challenges faced by community garden groups in the city. Definition of Community GardensIn this study we employed a standard definition of community gardens -one that differentiates this form of organisation from allotments, which are frequently more formally organised and have greater ownership rights over their sites of activity."Community gardens are locally managed pieces of land that are developed in response to and reflect the needs of the communities in which they are based. They may be associated with other community resources such as community centres or schools, but often are 'stand-alone'. Not all community gardens are involved in growing -some are focused on amenity and recreation, others prioritise biodiversity or therapeutic gardening. Many include elements of fruit and vegetable growing within their activities and some focus strongly on these activities" (Greenspace Scotland 2011).