Urban Gardening as a Way To Catalyze Urban Commons in Brussels
* Master Thesis: The commons in Brussels: urban gardening as a way to catalyze active citizenship and environmental stewardship. By Eva Breuer. Social Sciences & Solvay Business School , 2018.
Abstract
"This research wants to develop an understanding of the relationship between an alternative economic framework, i.e. the commons, and an alternative citizenship framework, i.e. ecological citizenship. We explore whether practices of commoning catalyze the development of ecological citizenship. Through an explorative qualitative research involving participant observation and semi-structured interviews with twelve urban gardeners, we study urban gardens in Brussels as a concrete example of the commons. The thematic analysis reveals four practices of commoning that are present in almost all the gardens: collective decision-making; practicing inclusiveness and solidarity; defending and re-commoning public space; and re-establishing a link between the economy and ecology. These last two practices exemplify a relationship with ecological citizenship, which is defined by us as a configuration of active citizenship and ecological stewardship. Concerning active citizenship, most respondents are active citizens on a personal, social, public and political level. A quarter of the respondents is a-political. There seems to be a link between the degree of common management and decision-making in the gardens and the growth of civic competence. This could be further explored in future research. Concerning ecological stewardship, most respondents see humans as stewards of nature; they care for the land and think our lifestyle generally should be more respectful of nature; they feel responsible for society, next generations, the earth, and people in other countries; and they are aware of the global nature of ecological problems. In answer to our research questions we can conclude that urban gardens can be considered as examples of commons, that there exists a relationship between the commons and ecological citizenship, and that urban gardening is a way to catalyze active citizenship and environmental stewardship."
Excerpts
Community Gardens as Commons
Eva Breuer:
"Community gardens can be considered as an example of urban commons, often reclaiming urban space for food production (McLaren & Agyeman, 2015). The gardens are not only a political defense of public space for its use toward the common good, but they also reflect a shared aspiration of a green city for all and a post-fossil-fuel urban society. With the overuse and destruction of the global commons in mind, the local commons are managed as a place where one can show that there are alternatives to a society based on consumption, industrial production and the externalization of costs. The idea of homo economicus is replaced by the image of humans integrated in life cycles and communities. Open source, knowledge sharing and the participation of the neighbourhood are essential principles (Müller, 2012). The re-commoning of the city and its food production can thus be part of a politics of empowerment (Tornaghi, 2016). All in all, urban gardens can be seen as a prototypical example of small scale commoning of urban spaces."
The Context in Brussels
"Brussels is an interesting context, due to the existence of almost 300 urban gardens of which many community gardens (Cultivons la ville, n.d.-a) and a citizen-network for the development of urban commons (BRAL, 2014). There are several institutions supporting urban gardens in Brussels. Brussels Environment, the administration of environment and energy of the Brussels-Capital Region (bruxelles environnement. brussels, 2018a), leads project calls for citizens making their neighbourhood more sustainable, such as installing a collective urban garden or a collective compost (bruxelles environnement. brussels, 2018b,c). They also support the GoodFood Strategy, which has the goal of creating a sustainable food system in the Brussels-Capital Region (bruxelles environnement. brussels, 2017;GoodFood, n.d.-b). The non-profit association ‘Le Début des Haricots’ , which is among others supported by Brussels Environment, helps citizens in the creation of collective urban gardens (Le début des haricots, 2018; GoodFood, n.d.-a). To this purpose, they also manage the network of collective urban gardens in Brussels (Cultivons la ville, n.d.-b; Potage-Toit, n.d.). On their website we can find a map of all urban gardens in Brussels, which we included to give the reader a visual perspective (Cultivons la ville,n .d.-a). One can see that throughout the whole Brussels region there are urban gardens. These are quite evenly spread over the different neighbourhoods, although the city centre is a bit underrepresented. This is reflected in our interviews, where the urban gardeners from the city centre felt their neighbourhoods are especially void of nature and need more urban gardens."
Conclusion
Eva Breuer:
"In a world where climate change poses increasing challenges, sustainability is more relevant than ever. Limiting global warming will require ambitious action and changes inall aspects of society (IPCC, 2018b). Earlier research has shown that the commons canbe considered as a way to build a more sustainable society and to reinvigorate democracy (Bauwens & Onzia, 2017; Colding & Barthel, 2013; Helfrich et al, 2012; White & Standaert, 2016). Commoning can offer the possibility for the reconstitution of governance and citizenship (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012), involving citizens in local democratic practices and the managing together of the commons. This could lead to amore active citizenship and stewardship of the environment. The active involvement of ecological citizens in the building of a more sustainable society could lead to creative solutions and collaborations between citizens and politicians, which might be the key for building resilient, ‘future-proof’ cities (Colding & Barthel, 2013). For this, the reconnection of city residents to nature is crucial (Colding, 2011). However, increased densification and the general shift towards private property rights have led to fewer examples of lands being managed as commons and the alienation of urban populations from nature (Colding & Barthel, 2013). An important task is thus to bring nature back into the city and to localize food-production (Barthel, Parker & Ernstson, 2015). Urban green commons can make visible the dependence of humans on nature and increase ecological knowledge and environmental awareness (Colding & Barthel, 2013).Considering these challenges, this research has tried to develop an understanding of the relationship between an alternative economic framework, i.e. the commons, and an alternative citizenship framework, i.e. ecological citizenship. We have explored whether practices of commoning catalyze the development of an active citizenship and a sense of stewardship, and to this purpose we studied urban gardens in Brussels as a concrete example of the commons. Our analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with twelve urban gardeners in Brussels in which we’re looking for narratives and discourses, to understand the social world from the perspective of the respondents. Our findings show that the commons are seen by most respondents as a good solution for or complement to the current economy, which they are highly critical about. According to them, the commons would lead to more social behaviour, bonds between people, a focus on intrinsic instead of financial worth, and they would bring ecology back into the economy. The gardens can be considered as commons and are so by almost all respondents. We’ve discovered four practices of commoning that are present in almost all the gardens: collective decision-making; practicing inclusiveness and solidarity; defending and re-commoning public space; and re-establishing a link between the economy and ecology by reusing and reducing. These last two practices exemplify a relationship between the commons and the two elements of ecological citizenship: 1)active citizenship: common space is where participative democracy and active citizenship takes place; and 2) environmental stewardship: because of the common management, people feel responsible for and take care of the earth. Future research could further explore these relationships. Ecological citizenship is defined by us as a possible component of citizenship, which has the goal of including an ecological and transnational dimension in the cultivation of civic competence. It is a configuration of active citizenship and ecological stewardship. In our study we explored whether these two elements are present with the urban gardeners. Active citizenship can lead to lifestyle, public or political changes and involves active participation at some level of public affairs. Three gardeners are clearly a-political, the other nine see gardening as a political act and think it’s important to contribute to society.
What by traditional political science theory might be regarded as ‘merely’ personal behaviour, was by the gardeners often motivated from a political perspective. We can therefore say the narratives range from completely a-political, to active citizenship on a personal, social, public and political level. There seems to be a link between the degree of common management and decision-making in the gardens and the growth of civic competence; the participation in local small-scale democracy and the willingness to participate in democracy on a bigger level.
However, since we can’t disentangle cause and consequence, we can’t make this conclusion yet. This could be explored in a more systematic way in future research. To conclude, in the gardens that defend themselves against political decisions we can find the respondents that are active on the public and political level, but this does not classify the others as unengaged citizens. Most respondents carry active attitudes: they think we should all be invested in society and let our voices as citizens be heard, and see citizen initiatives, such as the urban gardens, as one of several ways to do politics and have an impact on our public life.
Ecological stewardship has several components. The first is an attitude change. Most respondents think the environment is important, they also tend to see humans as part of and stewards of nature, and they perceive the gardens as a means to reconnect city residents to nature and to each-other. The second is the act of caring for the land and protecting common natural resources. Most respondents think we should take care of nature, respect nature as much as possible, and heal the earth and the climate. Half of them think we should live differently and in harmony with nature. Here again we can note the importance of lifestyle and starting with ourselves if we want to make a change. This is mainly based on a vision of connectedness, in which local practices such as gardening will have an impact on a bigger level. The third component entails a feeling of responsibility and connectedness to sometimes distant others and to non-humans. In the responses of the gardeners, we can discern several elements: responsibility for the own group or community, the neighbourhood, and/or for society in general; for the next generations; for the earth; and for people in other countries. This brings us to the fourth component which is transnational. The feeling of responsibility for people in other countries has mainly to do with an awareness of globalisation and the global nature of ecological problems. In answer to our research questions we can conclude that urban gardens can be considered as examples of commons and that there exists a relationship between the commons and ecological citizenship, which is however not the same for all respondents.
We’ve discovered that urban gardens are, amongst others, places where people work together, learn to collaborate, share knowledge, learn each-other skills for acting as a citizen, become aware of the need to defend the commons, want to make politics more democratic, reconnect to nature and take care of nature, and share a feeling of connection with and responsibility for society, next generations, nature, and people in other countries. Urban gardening is thus a way to catalyze active citizenship and environmental stewardship. We want to note our research is restricted in several aspects: the number of respondents, the number of urban gardens being studied, and the time we could spend in the gardens. We’re aware that we made a selection of a very specific group that doesn’t necessarily reflects all commoners. However, we do think that this group is interesting enough since it reflects a variety of different narratives, related to the commons and ecological citizenship.
We’ve suggested some possible understandings of these differences. There seems to be a link between the degree of common management and decision-making in the gardens and the growth of civic competence; the participation in local small-scale democracy and the willingness to participate in democracy on a bigger level. The a-political attitudes shared by the three respondents with a Moroccan background could be grounded in negative experiences, which have resulted in an overall feeling of powerlessness and apathy towards politics. Their feelings of responsibility and loyalty towards the own group could possibly be explained by the Hofstede model of cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1980). However, given the limited nature of this research and our inability to disentangle cause and consequence, these conclusions are premature. Future research could explore these issues further."