Reflexions on Urban Gardening in Germany
Journal Title: Challenges in Sustainability - Year 2016, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
This article reflects on traditional and contemporary gardening movements in Germany. The focus is on forms of gardening, that take place in spaces subject to land lease agreements and similar forms of tenancy or of illegal land take or squatting. The author examines various definitions taking into account the variety of practices, the development of urban gardening over time, and the respective backgrounds or values that users relate to such gardening activities. The examination of definitions led to the drawing up of a timeline of traditional and contemporary gardening movements in Germany and to the tentative approaching of this issue from a semantic perspective. The latter is due to the usage of many different terms mostly as yet undefined in a legal sense. Translation into English or, most likely, to any other language, further blurs the common understanding of the terms used. The author concludes with some considerations on these gardening movements in relation to urban sustainable developments. A presentation at the 5<sub>th</sub> Rencontres Internationals de Reims on Sustainability Studies, dedicated to Urban Agriculture – Fostering the Urban-Rural Continuum, which took place in October 2015 in Reims/France was the starting point of this article. The basis of this article is a literature review, nourished to a certain extent by observations randomly made over many years and complemented through talks with competent young colleagues. Special thanks go to Martin Sondermann, Leibniz University Hannover, who shared his research experience in various discussions with the author, as well as to Friederike Stelter, internship student at the author’s place of work, who gave highly appreciated support to the preparation of the presentation.
Authors and Affiliations
Evelyn Gustedt
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP196688
- DOI 10.12924/cis2016.04010063
- Views 169
- Downloads 0
Sustainable Development within Planetary Boundaries: A Functional Revision of the Definition Based on the Thermodynamics of Complex Social-Ecological Systems
The dominant paradigm of sustainable development (SD) where the environment is just the third pillar of SD has proven inadequate to keep humanity within the safe operational space determined by biophysical planetary boun...
An Economic Simulation of the Path to Sustainable Energy: A Dynamic Analysis
The existing economics literature neglects the important role of capacity in the production of renewable energy. To fill this gap, we construct a model in which renewable energy production is tied to renewable energy cap...
Urban Agriculture: Fostering the Urban-Rural Continuum
Urban agricultural projects have been mushrooming since the end of the twentieth century, reshaping urban landscapes and even the whole urban fabric, experimenting with alternatives to the traditional urban life, sometim...
Reversing the Trend of Large Scale and Centralization in Manufacturing: The Case of Distributed Manufacturing of Customizable 3-D-Printable Self-Adjustable Glasses
Although the trend in manufacturing has been towards centralization to leverage economies of scale, the recent rapid technical development of open-source 3-D printers enables low-cost distributed bespoke production. This...
Time for Decarbonization of Conservation and Development Projects? The Political Ecology of Carbon Projects
The globe's first carbon projects were designed and implemented approximately 20 years ago following scientific insights that emissions of greenhouse gases needed to be mitigated. Visible in some of these early projects...