Urban Gardens as Meeting Places in Göteborg, Budapest and Bucharest: Building Collaborative Capacity for Sustainability in Different Socio-economic Contexts
Short description
This project explores how diverse forms of urban gardening contribute to social and environmental sustainability, and what the limitations to such effects are in different contexts. From this we will learn how the planning and design of gardens, as green infrastructure and meeting places in the city, can promote social and environmental sustainability. We contribute a comparative study and case choice that represents cities of different global positions and urban governance regimes (Göteborg, Bucharest, Budapest), and gardening cases in each city that represent different participants across social divisions.
We employ a bottom-up research approach, attuned to the processes through which gardening practices can, or fail to, construct connections and collective capacities across social divides. Moreover, we keep a strong focus on the contextual factors that shape (and limit) the different development of the cases. To this goal, our research questions are:
1) How do social connections developed through gardening enable ecological lifestyles and food resilience?
2) How does gardening promote social sustainability through creating meeting spaces, shared knowledges, and capacity for collaboration across social divides?
3) How do broader social, economic and political factors shape the development of our cases, and how can policy and design strengthen their sustainability aspect in the different contexts?
Project participants: Prof. Kerstin Jacobsson (PI), dr. Ioana Florea, dr. Agnes Gagyi and dr. Ylva Wallinder.
PUBLICATIONS
Editorship of special issue
Florea, I., Gagyi, A. & Jacobsson, K. Guest editors of special issue on ”Assembling social conditions of sustainability through urban gardening: policy, infrastructure and social relationships”, Environmental Sociology, 11(4) 2025. [includes 7 articles]
Peer reveiw articles
Jehlicka, P. & K. Jacobsson (2021) The importance of recognizing difference: Rethinking Central and East European environmentalism, Political Geography, 87, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102379
Wallinder, Y. (2024) Urban gardens as inclusive green living rooms? Gardening activities in Gothenburg, across and within social divides, Journal of Organizational Ethnography. Vol. 13 No. 3, 410-426. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-10-2023-0057
Florea, I. (2025) Commoning and just sustainability across time, space and class: Lessons from terminated urban gardening projects in Bucharest, Environmental Sociology, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2025.2454037
Gagyi, A. (2025) “Planting flowers into potholes”: Urban community gardens as symptoms of institutional shortfall?. Local Environment, https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2025.2533144
Gagyi, A., & Vigvári, A. (2025) Limits and openings for peri-urban gardening in the context of post-socialist extended urbanization: a case from Budapest. Environmental Sociology, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2025.2465097
Oreskovic, N. & K. Jacobsson (2025) Postapocalyptic community gardening: cultivating the gray zone between autonomy and co-optation, Environmental Sociology, DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2025.2491996.
Florea, I., Gagyi, A. & Jacobsson, K. (2025) Assembling social conditions of sustainability through urban gardening: policy, infrastructure and social relationships, Environmental Sociology, 11(4), 510-516.
Wallinder, Y. & Langa, M. (2025) From communal urban gardens to profitable businesses: green rationalization in Swedish local sustainability policy, Environmental Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2025.2524910
Wallinder, Y. (2025). Commodification of urban sustainability projects: urban gardening in Gothenburg as a collaborative practice or a risky and individualised career opportunity. Local Environment, 1-17.
Book chapters
Florea, I. (November 2025) The political ecology of collective urban gardening – transmutations across space, time and class. In Hope, J., Apostolopoulou, E. & Collins, A. (eds.) The New Routledge Handbook on Political Ecology. Routledge.
Jacobsson, K. & Wallinder, Y. Stadsodling och social kontroll (English translation: Urban gardening and social control). In: Odling, makt och genus [Gardening, power and gender], edited by Emelie Pilflod Larsson & Katarina Girtli-Nygren, Mid Sweden University. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?aq2=%5B%5B%5D%5D&c=60&af=%5B%5D&searchType=LIST_LATEST&sortOrder2=title_sort_asc&language=sv&pid=diva2%3A2033516&aq=%5B%5B%5D%5D&sf=all&aqe=%5B%5D&sortOrder=author_sort_asc&onlyFullText=false&noOfRows=50&dswid=3243
Popular publications
Florea, I. (ed.) (2025) Grădinăritul în București [Gardening in Bucharest (popular publication)]. Quantic Association.
In process
Jacobsson, K & Wallinder, Y (under review) Enacting Tacit Agreements: Conditions for Organizational Harmony and Rhythm in Urban Gardening Associations.