Urban gardening to foster community places on brownfields

Abstract

In the changing world, urbanised areas and their growing populations are finding it increasingly necessary to make greater use of degraded city sites. These underused or completely derelict spaces and buildings, known as brownfields, appeared as potential spaces to fill the gap for temporary functions of short-term initiatives. Various bottom-up movements used participatory tools for engaging local people in the neighbourhood community life in Bratislava, Slovakia. The aim was to bring short-term activities such as mobile urban gardening to these parts of the city. These initiatives tried to improve diversity and strengthen social responsibility of communities and individuals. This paper aims to discuss the potential of using the social capital of local communities for temporary urban gardening activities, which are inherently connected to the space and its quality, to foster local sustainability. Urban gardeners are focused on local production of food, largely for local consumption. However, this paper describes lessons learned from implementing urban gardening activities in Bratislava and attempts to extend prior research on urban gardening by examining possible innovative ways of using vacant and underused spaces, such as brownfields, for its implementation into the planning practice.