Contribution short abstract:

In Milan, dominant narratives frame urban greening as an environmental compensation strategy, neglecting issues of care, distribution and accessibility of green spaces. In contrast, IPV’s guerrilla community garden builds on these aspects, offering an alternative experience of nature in the city.

Contribution long abstract:

The growing interest of policymakers in urban greening, forestry and re-naturalization is setting political agendas and driving investment in the global city market, making it imperative for scholars to adopt a critical perspective. Current dominant policy narratives frame urban greening as an environmental compensation strategy producing widespread benefits for all. Overlooking possible unjust outcomes of greening interventions, and neglecting issues of accessibility, use, property and distribution, this a-critical and consensual approach seems to focus more on the aesthetic and moral power of “greening” as a symbol than on its actual contribution to urban livability and sustainability. Moreover, by pursuing automation, performance efficiency and process control, thus promoting an engineered, universal and de-spatialized image of urban greening, immune to the socio-cultural specificities of the user community, they mislead the relational and ecological dimensions of plants and trees. Conversely, insurgent greening experiences arise from the recognition of the agency of urban nature in the (personal and collective) experience of the city. Embodying the concepts of collective care, cohabitation and inclusion, guerrilla practices drive counter-narratives that shift the focus to human-nature relations and truly incorporate the scientific literature on biophilia and the benefits of nature. By comparing the experiences, perceptions and uses of two green spaces in Isola, a gentrified Milan neighborhood –the Library of Trees, the eco-symbol of the large real estate operation “Porta Nuova”, and the guerrilla community garden Isola Pepe Verde, this paper shows how guerrilla narratives open up new equitable and community-based pathways for the renaturalization of cities.