Cultivating thirdspace: Community, conflict and place in small-city urban gardens

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, there has been an increased interest in urban gardening. Queues for getting a gardening spot have grown, as many urban citizens seek a spot to cultivate vegetables, and studies have stressed how urban gardens can be one ingredient in creating more sustainable cities. Following the work of urban theorists Henry Lefebvre and Edward Soja, this study explores urban gardens as thirdspaces. Interviewing allotment gardeners and community gardeners in small Swedish cities, we explore allotments as ‘lived places’, where experiences, meanings and a sense of place are developed. Thirdspace suggests us to think beyond binary constructions of space and analysing narratives of urban gardening through that lens shows that allotment spots can be understood as places where certain dualisms have, if not a transgressed, at least a more flexible and expansive logic. The result illuminates how allotment gardens are a kind of nature-human crossing point and a practice connecting city residents with countryside life and non-landowners with the land.