Collective Gardening: New Ways to Live the City and Contribution to Urban Planning

Frederic Bally (University Savoie Mont-Blanc)
Today, more than 50% of the mondial population live in cities, as they concentrate the cultural, economic and politic power of each territory. The 20th century has been marked by a neoliberal urban development to respond to a fast growth population (Peck & Tickell, 2002)with a focus made on the development of consuming places (Parham, 2015). This urban organization is today contested because it causes pollution, sadness, lack of social link and of residents participation to the city's management. In response, few citizens and political actors put back nature and environmental topics in the center of cities, with the practice of gardening.

The citizen’s will to see more nature in city will be translated by collective gardens: specific spaces that are not public neither private gardens, but shared by a group that garden and own by the city. Those collective gardens will take two forms: shared gardens that are quite similar to community gardens (Baudry, 2012), specific spaces that citizens can cultivate within an association, and street gardens, small plots planned by residents within street. We argue that these collective gardens are a way to contribute to urban development and to the sustainable conversion of cities.

This research is based on a PHD thesis and on a qualitative methodology : 57 semi-directive interviews with gardeners, 9 interviews with political and city's actors and participant observation on 10 gardens on the territory of Lyon. We will propose, during this presentation : A definition of a sustainable city, an analysis on how gardeners build narratives on a new way to live in city, a reflexion on how an individual practice (gardening) became collective through these spaces, a gaze on how citizens use these gardens to take back public spaces and help authorities to build a city that will be more sustainable.