Paper short abstract:

This presentation focusses on how the socio-spatial segregation in the Gothenburg area shapes and forms gardening members’ understandings and views of the urban common, and how their gardening impacts social connections, collaborations and sustainability practices.

Paper long abstract:

During the past decade, urban gardening in the Gothenburg area has become a popular activity supported and promoted by institutional actors such as municipalities, the Swedish Union of Tenants, the Swedish Church and public housing associations. This type of gardening on municipality owned land is often conditioned: the land is leased for free, but the gardeners need to be members of an association with a membership fee and specific enactments that members abide to. Nevertheless, the actual gardening can be organized in different ways; either as a shared gardening activity where everything is grown and harvested collectively or as a more individual activity where the gardening area is divided in different slots, planting and harvesting is individually prepared and performed. Another difference between gardening projects lies in their socio-spatial location, seen that gardening associations are located in more or less gentrified, socioeconomic and/or ethnically mixed areas.

The aim with this presentation is to explore how urban gardening activities in the Gothenburg area shape social sustainability practices and collaboration across social/socioeconomic and ethnical divides. Based on ethnographic field work and interviews, the study compares and explores gardening activities in different socio-spatial locations during and after the Swedish Covid19 restrictions. Empirically, we followed four different urban gardening associations and interviewed different members. The analyses focus on how the socio-spatial segregation shapes and forms gardening members’ understandings and views of the urban common, and how their gardening impact social connections, collaborations and sustainability practices.