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Same, Same but Different? The ‘Right’ Kind of Gardening and the Negotiation of Neoliberal Urban Governance in the Post-socialist City

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Whose Green City?

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Abstract

This chapter analyses the ways in which different urban gardening forms relate to neoliberalisation processes in the post-socialist city. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2020 including on-site observation and in-depth interviews with gardeners, activists and city officials in several Estonian cities, it seeks to understand the unequal treatment of community gardens and dacha allotment gardens. Despite equally fostering urban sustainability, dacha gardens are often negatively associated with a (post)socialist ‘survival strategy of the poor’ while community gardens are embraced for their transformative potential with regard to health, active citizenship, social cohesion, and environmental learning. Taking a critical approach to neoliberal urban governance, the study explores the adherence and/or resistance of both gardening forms to post-socialist urban neoliberalisation dynamics on three analytical levels: socio-spatial discourses, spatial materialities and cultivated subjectivities. As a result, the chapter conveys that dacha gardens rather ‘quietly’ maintain the system, while community gardens contribute to its thriving process, by being visible, actively engaging with, and being supported by, the neoliberal urban governance. This preferential treatment, however, comes at a price of higher vulnerability to co-optation attempts and neoliberal control of space, to which dacha gardens have hitherto resisted.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dacha—a Russian term for a relatively small plot of land, often with a seasonal allotment house, mostly used for food production.

  2. 2.

    We use urban gardening to denote all gardening practises located in (peri)urban spaces. As an umbrella term, urban gardening refers to different gardening spaces, practises and foci: from ‘urban agriculture’ (Lohrberg et al. 2016) and ‘urban farming’ (Miazzo and Minkjan 2013) striving for food justice towards urban gardening practises focusing on edible and decorative plants; from individual gardening plots in allotment gardens and (semi)public community gardens to the temporary spatialities of guerrilla gardening (Barron 2016).

  3. 3.

    See for example: Tallinn-Soodevahe [https://www.annikahaas.com/planewatchers/] and [https://www.timo.ee/soodevahe/], Tartu-Hiinalinn [https://ajakirimaja.ee/maria-kilk-fotoseeria-tartu-hiinalinna-aedadest/].

  4. 4.

    Garrett 2014 [https://www.featureshoot.com/2014/10/the-last-remaining-residents-of-an-estonian-shanty-town/].

  5. 5.

    See: https://tedxlasnamae.org/et/.

  6. 6.

    See: https://heakodanik.ee/vabatahtlikud/.

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Acknowledgements

This study was carried out within the Junior Research Group Mentalities in Flux (flumen), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and based at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. In addition, the research presented here was supported by the Tallinn University Research Fund (TF519), as part of the research group on Human-nature Interactions in the City, and the European Union’s Central Baltic Interreg Program Visionary, Participatory Planning and Integrated Management for Resilient Cities. We would like to thank the book editors, the anonymous reviewers, the student assistant at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Lara Gerlach, as well as the interview respondents for sharing their insights and experiences. Without them, this study would not have been possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sociology, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Jena, Germany

    Lilian Pungas

  2. International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Hague, The Netherlands

    Lilian Pungas

  3. School of Economics and Business Administration, School of Natural Sciences and Health, University of Tartu, Tallinn University, Tartu, Estonia

    Bianka Plüschke-Altof

  4. School of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

    Anni Müüripeal

  5. Rector’s office, School of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn Technical University, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

    Helen Sooväli-Sepping

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    Bianka Plüschke-Altof

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    Helen Sooväli-Sepping

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Pungas, L., Plüschke-Altof, B., Müüripeal, A., Sooväli-Sepping, H. (2022). Same, Same but Different? The ‘Right’ Kind of Gardening and the Negotiation of Neoliberal Urban Governance in the Post-socialist City. In: Plüschke-Altof, B., Sooväli-Sepping, H. (eds) Whose Green City? . Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04636-0_7

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