Paper short abstract:

Living a rural life is a commonly held ideal in Latvian society. This study of the informal dwellers of Lucavsala island in Riga shows the adaptation of this ideal to an urban environment. Their choice is a legally unstable, but economically and environmentally sustainable housing solution.

Paper long abstract:

Lucavsala is an island in Riga, the capital of Latvia. Despite its proximity to the city centre, this territory of 150 hectares is mostly underdeveloped and covered by cultivated and abandoned allotment gardens. Lucavsala has gained media attention in recent years because of the tensions between professional urban developers and the gardeners and many cases of gardener houses suspiciously burned down. The focus of this study is the informal dwellers of the island who live there permanently and seasonally. This study contributes to other recent scholarly discussions on informal dwellings in Europe (Gagyi, Vigvári 2018, Hilbrandt 2021). The Lucavsala dwellers’ motivation to live on the island often corresponds to the ideal of a rural and nature-based lifestyle that is generally admired in the Latvian society. The inhabited garden houses are small-size, mostly DIY folk architecture examples created using recycled materials. Modern technologies, alternate power sources and simple communal organisational solutions deal with the lack of electricity, water pipes, sufficient waste disposal, and security system. This type of housing is both low-cost and exclusive, considering the closeness both to the urban centre and the natural landscape and resources. The gardening allotments rely on short-term one-year contracts which contradicts the economically and environmentally sustainable living solutions of the dwellers.