Abstract
In this article I explore how the possibilities for commoning and conviviality through small-scale urban farming initiatives intertwine with neoliberal trends. I do this by recounting the trajectory of a small rooftop garden in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. Drawing on ethnographic research in and around this garden, I show how such communal, anti-capitalist, eco-social endeavors are thoroughly entangled in the city's neoliberal turn over recent decades. Various manifestations of neoliberalism, ranging from formalization processes to austerity pressures, articulate with convivial urban farming initiatives in contradictory and recursive relationships that both nurture and endanger these local initiatives. I describe for example how formalization engenders legitimacy but also homogenization and how green initiatives are celebrated while undermined by austerity measures. This happens within a broader context of neoliberal labor, food systems, and housing policies and politics that subvert convivial urban farming efforts in multiple and often unacknowledged ways. Finally, I forward the view that attending to such contradictory and complex realities of and surrounding urban farming is essential to illuminating the iterative relations between context and practice, and the actions required at multiple scales to nurture and expand the possibilities for urban commoning and conviviality, including through farming.Key words: the commons, urban farming, neoliberalism, Copenhagen
Highlights
A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. – Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013: 155)It's hard to keep voluntary projects alive without life in the space. (...) When there's no life, there's only responsibility left. – A longtime activist on a neighborhood walking tour of struggles over green spaces in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, 2019TOP2 is a little rooftop garden started in 2010 in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Nørrebro
In this article I draw on urban political ecology
Structural elements feature prominently in, for instance, the work of geographer David Harvey, who viewed neoliberalism as a distinct form of capitalism aimed at 'accumulation by dispossession.' This entails an array of largely state-enabled mechanisms including privatization as well as austerity politics and strategic regulation and deregulation (Harvey 2007a)
Summary
A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. – Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013: 155). Five formal, semi-structured, transcribed interviews with 'key' respondents provide most of the material quoted in the article: one of the association's founders, one previously on the association board, and three from public/municipal institutions that have been deeply engaged in supporting urban greening and farming in the neighborhood These are the neighborhood 'Local Committee' (constituted by elected local association representatives and political parties, serving as the "link between residents and the Citizen Representation at City Hall", see Nørrebro Lokaludvalg 2019), the city's Technical and Environment Administration, and the neighborhood Area Renewal (existing within the Technical and Environment Administration, with responsibility to "lift the neighborhood physically, socially, and culturally" over the period 2014-2019; see Områdefornyelsen Nørrebro 2014).. These are the neighborhood 'Local Committee' (constituted by elected local association representatives and political parties, serving as the "link between residents and the Citizen Representation at City Hall", see Nørrebro Lokaludvalg 2019), the city's Technical and Environment Administration, and the neighborhood Area Renewal (existing within the Technical and Environment Administration, with responsibility to "lift the neighborhood physically, socially, and culturally" over the period 2014-2019; see Områdefornyelsen Nørrebro 2014). I reviewed media coverage, other academic inquiries into urban farming in Copenhagen, and relevant official documents (public policies, reports, etc.), translating into English where required
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