Cultivating the Glocal Garden

Abstract

This paper addresses the question under which conditions small-scale urban agriculture (UA) initiatives can accelerate a sustainability transition of the global food system. It develops the notion of a glocal garden, a large number of likeminded local initiatives with a global impact and forms of worldwide collaboration. Taking a transition perspective, the glocal garden, producing vegetables and fruits, is a niche that has to overcome barriers to compete with the dominant food regime. Since a sustainability transition restructures (policy) sectors, institutional domains including knowledge systems, the paper explores which innovations are needed for the glocal garden to succeed. It discusses the glocal garden as an environmental, a social, an economic and a global project. As an environmental project, the glocal garden will link sustainable production of food with renewable energy production. As a social project, it will be organized into a consumers' cooperative. As an economic project, it will strive for profit, increasing the yield in a sustainable manner. As a global project, it will enhance collaboration between local cooperatives in the North and the South, as well as with rural agriculture. Under these conditions, the glocal garden can develop into a power, able to resist a possible future food regime that splits societies, in terms of quality standards and food products, into haves and have-nots.

Towards Regenerated and Productive Vacant Areas through Urban Horticulture: Lessons from Bologna, Italy

“…Hischemöller [62] outlined that gardening in public spaces may not be appreciated by urban residents who associate these practices with dirtiness and hard work, want to spend their time with friends and family doing activities other than gardening, or who do not care so much about new social relationships as they lack the time to maintain their current friendships. Furthermore, Specht et al [63] identified that urban gardens are sometimes perceived as a competitive use of urban land that can lead to conflicts.…”

“…Since urban agriculture is strongly linked to bottom-up processes rather than top-down urban planning schemes [106], local municipalities need to establish participatory and multi-stakeholder dialogues to integrate bottom-up perspectives and practices in urban planning, particularly regarding urban regeneration actions and plans. In particular, such action might avoid the social unacceptance of top-down urban gardens in areas where citizens are not interested or have other claims [62] and thus reject the garden, as happened to the case Orti della Fornace or in the start-up phase of GreenHousing rooftop garden.…”