Strategies of self-organising communities in a gentrifying city

Abstract

While commonly pitched as potential spaces for the empowerment of marginalised minority groups, self-organised projects such as community gardens are also susceptible to neoliberal discourses and governance mechanisms. While relationships between community gardening and gentrification are now well established, less is known about the grassroots strategies of garden groups in the context of such conditions and the ways in which gentrification changes the community gardening movement itself. This paper combines conceptual approaches to community gardens as shaping citizen-subjectivities and as projects positioned in networks to offer detailed insight into strategic responses of community gardeners to a gentrifying environment. The paper highlights how demographic change, neighbourhood densification and changes in the attitude of local government shape three community gardens in Sydney, Australia. The paper reveals that, more than government policy, changes that gardeners observe in the neighbourhood and their perceptions of local government’s attitude towards different community gardens in the vicinity, shape how they manage community gardens. Interactions and responses of garden groups to perceived threats, as well as changes in the projects’ social composition, can lead to the emergence of conflict and competition. As it becomes increasingly clear that inequalities in the surrounding urban environment manifest as part of the social fabric of community spaces, the paper demonstrates that communities are differently positioned to articulate strategies in response to perceived precarity and that these strategies can amplify unequal opportunities for distinct garden groups to persist into the future.