Urban green commons: Insights on urban common property systems

Colding, Johan; Barthel, Stephan; Bendt, Pim; Snep, R.P.H.; Knaap, W. van der; Ernstson, Henrik

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.05.006

Cited by 130 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The public urban green is an essential element in the life quality of urban dwellers as it serves various functions: aesthetic, recreational, social, ecological, and educational [21][22][23]. At the same time, its management can become problematic whenever public governments must deal with limited funds for their maintenance [24]. Many city administrations see vacancy as synonymous with urban problems and decline (i.e., high maintenance costs, no tax-revenue for abandoned areas, loss of value of municipal properties, social tension and violence), without recognizing lots as sites for innovation in public policy, and an opportunity for communities to "regenerate" their neighbourhoods while bringing together different cultures and marginalized people.…”

Section: Defining Vacant Lands In the Urban Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2016

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Abstract:In recent years, urban agriculture has been asserting its relevance as part of a vibrant and diverse food system due to its small scale, its focus on nutrition, its contribution to food security, its employment opportunities, and its role in community building and social mobility. Urban agriculture may also be a tool to re-appropriate a range of abandoned or unused irregular spaces within the city, including flowerbeds, roundabouts, terraces, balconies and rooftops. Consistently, all spaces that present a lack of identity may be converted to urban agriculture areas and, more specifically, to urban horticulture as a way to strengthen resilience and sustainability. The goal of this paper is to analyse current practices in the requalification of vacant areas as urban gardens with the aim of building communities and improving landscapes and life quality. To do so, the city of Bologna (Italy) was used as a case study. Four types of vacant areas were identified as places for implementing urban gardens: flowerbeds along streets and squares, balconies and rooftops, abandoned buildings and abandoned neighbourhoods. Six case studies representing this variety of vacant areas were identified and evaluated by collecting primary data (i.e., field work, participant observations and interviews) and performing a SWOT analysis. For most cases, urban horticulture improved the image and quality of the areas as well as bringing numerous social benefits in terms of life quality, food access and social interaction among participants. Strong differences in some aspects were found between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, being the later preferable for the engagement of citizens. Policy-making might focus on participatory and transparent planning, long-term actions, food safety and economic development.

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Section: Defining Vacant Lands In the Urban Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2016

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“…In addition, these regimes have a low priority towards local socialenvironmental preservation compared to the economic goal; that is, they may rather choose to neglect or underfund the green POS maintenance as it is not economically profitable or non-revenue generating (Colding et al 2013) compared to other public amenities, such as road maintenance. Thus, public space management takes little precedence (Carr et al 1992 (Bromley and Cernae 1989, p. 25).…”

Section: Background and Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of strengths and desired results were observed (Ostrom 1990;Agrawal 2001), particularly on POS (Chen and Webster 2006;Lee and Webster 2006;Colding et al 2013) in the case of common property regime or selforganisation collective action (e.g. via committee associations on resource governance).…”

Section: Background and Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After all, only the management and control rights, regardless of any regime, matter most in sustaining the POS, despite the unrestrained access and appropriation of consumers. One cannot blame people for being 'naturally' opportunistic or selfish; instead, one should be more insightful that governance is vital in regulating them (Ostrom 2005;Colding et al 2013; see also Hobbes (1996) on self-interestedness philosophy).…”

Section: Background and Definitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the perennial issues of POS governance, especially with regards to rampant overexploitation and mismanagement, are still growing that consequently result in POS externalities and market failures (Colding et al 2013;Ling et al 2014a). How can this status quo be explained?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do institutions matter in neighbourhood commons governance? A two-stage relationship between diverse property-rights structure and residential public open space (POS) quality: Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, Malaysia

Ling

Siong

Mohd.

et al. 2016

International Journal of the Commons

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Despite the existing literature regarding institutional influence on traditional commons, there is still a comparative dearth of research that theorises property-rights structure and its impact on contemporary commons. This is particularly true for public open space (POS) governance: its management and utilisation and hence its quality, of which underinvestment and overexploitation leads to increasingly negative externalities and outcomes. An interdisciplinary study is employed here to depict the relationships of diverse property-rights structure attributes -POS title existence, community existence, POS title Do institutions matter in neighbourhood commons governance? 295 transfer and POS site handing-over period to local government -with quality of residential POS. A cross-sectional survey via direct structured observation with a POS quality audit tool was conducted to collect a randomly stratified sample of 155 Country Lease (CL) POS and entire 22 Native Title (NT) POS, from the districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, respectively. Archival search and document analysis on data of property-rights attributes were executed as well. Next, 2-stage Pearson's Chi-Square ( c 2 ) and Lambda (λ) with Proportional Reduction Error feature analyses were performed. Results showed that only these three property-rights attributes -title deed existence, community existence and POS site handing-over period to local government-are significantly associated with POS quality at significance level (p≤0.05). It is found that, although POS with title deed and community's involvement might not contribute to good quality, these attributes were likely to provide better quality. On the other hand, it is found that the more recent the POS site handing over to government, the higher the likelihood of good POS quality and vice versa. Such empirical findings prima facie infer that: (i) current local property-rights structure does matter in contributing to POS condition, particularly the effective management right which likely leads to better POS quality; (ii) the present state-property regime in POS governance is adversarial; and (iii) the importance of an interim privatisation and communal regimes leads to a better POS. Thus, these may provide policy insights by encouraging public officials to consider reengineering the POS market via an adaptive property-rights re-alignment paradigm in the interest of addressing POS quality and sustainability issues, which warrant further research.Keywords: Governance, institutions, neighbourhood residential commons, property-rights structure, public open space (POS), quality, two-stage associations Acknowledgement: The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.

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Co-ownership/Collective Ownership

Pesci¹

2020

Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

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Urban green commons: Insights on urban common property systems

Cited by 130 publications

References 34 publications

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

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

Do institutions matter in neighbourhood commons governance? A two-stage relationship between diverse property-rights structure and residential public open space (POS) quality: Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, Malaysia

Co-ownership/Collective Ownership

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