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Remind: Call for contributions to edited book "Just Green: Urban Gardening and the Struggles of Social and Spatial Justice" Deadline 15th of February With the support of COST Action TU1201 “Urban Allotment Gardens in European Cities - Future, Challenges and Lessons Learned” (www.urbanallotments.eu) & in collaboration with the International Conference “Growing in cities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Gardening”, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, September 2016 (http://www.urbanallotments.eu/final-conference.html) Editors: Chiara Certomŕ, Susan Noori and Martin Sondermann Target publisher: Manchester University Press (http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/) Authors who already submitted or intend to submit an abstract to the forthcoming conference “Growing in cities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Gardening” are invited to submit their abstract also to the edited book project “Just Green: Urban Gardening and the Struggles of Social and Spatial Justice”. Please note that this edited book proposal is NOT intended as proceedings of the conference; proceedings of the conference will be separately issued by the organisers of the conference. Those who are not to take part in the conference are also invited to discuss their interest with the editors (addresses below) and to submit their abstract. Book topic description Urban gardening practices are broadly (re)emerging worldwide as new forms of bottom-up socio-political participation, addressing - together with environmental, planning and food questions- the most fundamental issues of spatial justice, social cohesion, inclusiveness, social innovations and equity in cities. Today, urban gardening has become a global movement aimed at engaging people to collectively design, organise, realise and take care of public green spaces in their cities, by transforming neglected spaces into pleasant, engaging and vibrant places. The forms and organisation of urban gardens are highly context-dependent, but in general, these encompass community gardens, guerrilla gardening or street gardening, and allotment gardens. These initiatives are in most cases intended for education, leisure and socialisation; contrasting food insecurity and social disadvantages; community-building; health promotion; engaging marginalised social groups in the city life; and advancing environmental-friendly lifestyles. However the relationship between urban gardening practices and spatial justice has been rarely discussed per se. The effectiveness of urban gardening in addressing the current social and spatial injustices in cities is the core interest of this book. The idea of spatial justice emerged from the apparent existence of a reciprocal relationship between spatial conditions and social disparities. By adopting a spatial consideration of justice, it becomes evident that the distribution of opportunities, material and non-material benefits, services and resources are not equally spread through the space, which overlaps with the unequal distribution of wealth and power occurring across the society. In many contemporary cities, the spatial arrangement produces peculiar forms of social organisation, and structures for inclusion and exclusion characterised by pervasive inequalities in the access to space, natural resources and services, as well as considerable disparities in living conditions. The physical arrangement of urban space determines and, at the same time, is determined by the existing spatial inequalities, and is mainly manifested in the marginal (and marginalised) areas where environmental problems are pervasive and severely affect the structure and functioning processes of urban agglomerations. Indeed, space is not only the location in which justice and injustice occur, but also the object of social justice claims; for example, the citizens’ request for available public spaces to be freely enjoyed in the cities. Space, use of urban space and spatial justice intersects directly with the issues of class, gender, race, religion and culture. Space is a vector for justice that makes it possible to articulate different forms of power, domination, resistance and alternative to the current shape of the cities. Since the 19th century, traditional allotment gardens have been established by local or central administrations almost everywhere in Europe as self-help tools for the poor and disadvantaged people. However, it is only with the rise of the social justice movement and the urban counterculture in the 1960– 1970s that they have been complemented or in some cases replaced by different forms of urban gardens with a clear socio-political and contestative motivation. Concurrently, the works of some social scholars such as Lefebvre, 1974; Harvey, 1990; and Soja, 1989 who demonstrated that the production of space impacts the social groups and their opportunities, accelerated the emergence of new bottom-up urban gardening projects as a manifestation of the “right to the city” (Purcell, 2013). In fact, urban gardening initiatives became a symbol for contrasting the consequences of neoliberal governmentality, e.g. the erasure of public spaces, the decrease of social cohesion and solidarity links (Hou, 2010) and is therefore seen as part of the struggles for “right to space” (Schmelzkopf, 2002). Urban gardening initiatives can address a number of spatial inequalities while reducing disaffection toward places and social community, and increasing community confidence and cohesion. Despite most of the literature on urban gardening adopts an advocacy approach as forms of resistance initiatives contrasting rigid social doctrines (McKay, 2011) through political gestures (Certomŕ & Tornaghi, 2015), or even means for addressing social injustices (Reynolds, 2014), an opposite perspective describes it as a neoliberal manifestation of individual and quasi-autarkic citizens’ action (Pudup, 2008), able to determine controversies and injustices including new forms of enclosures or gentrification (Rosol 2012). In some cases, urban gardening initiatives are promoted by administrations themselves for stimulating dispossessed people to engage in the restoration of derelict urban spaces that are of no interest to private investors (Smith and Kurtz, 2003), or they are promoted by corporations as a greenwashing strategy. In addition, the attribution of urban gardens as common goods of general public interest needs to be questioned as they might be a selective or even exclusive good only. While it is true that in some circumstances the social-egalitarian aims of gardening have been initially advanced by educated and wealthy people (Schmelzkopf, 1995), on the other hand the interpretation of urban gardening as a neoliberal practice has been criticized for broadening the distance between subsistence gardening for poor people and leisure gardening for wealthy people (Quastel, 2009) as it flatters deprived people’s interests as only consume-increasing strategies, and denies their socio-environmental commitment (Flachs, 2010). Both perspectives are intended to be analysed in the present collection of contributions. Invited contributions We are interested to receive contributions that explore urban gardening as a form of democratic and participatory urban development able to tackle spatial justice, social cohesion, inclusiveness, social innovations and equity issues. Critical readings of these relationships are highly welcomed, focusing on the socio-political and ethical perspectives, and the structural and procedural dimension of the spatial justice and equality struggle. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are acceptable provided that they offer a theoretical perspective on the innovative strength of activists and community organisations’ agency. Case based and comparative pieces are highly encouraged. References: Certomŕ C and Tornaghi C (2015) "Political gardening.Transforming cities and political agency", Local Environment, 20 (10) Flachs A (2010) Food for thought: The social impact of community gardens in the greater Cleveland area. Electronic Green Journal 1(30): 1–9 Hou J (2010) Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Taylor & Francis. McKay G (2011) Radical Gardening. London: Frances Lincoln Limited Purcell M (2013) Possible worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the right to the city. Journal of Urban Affairs 36(1): 141–154. Pudup MB (2008) It takes a garden: Cultivating citizen-subjects in organized garden projects. Geoforum 39(3): 1228–1240. Quastel N (2009) Political ecologies of gentrification. Urban Geography 30(7): 694–725. Reynolds K (2014) Disparity despite diversity: Social injustice in New York City’s urban agriculture system. Antipode, 47 (1) Rosol M (2012) Community Volunteering as Neoliberal Strategy? Green Space Production in Berlin, Antipode, 44 (1) Schmelzkopf K (1995) Urban community gardens as contested space. Geographical Review 85: 364–381. Schmelzkopf K (2002) Incommensurability, Land Use, and the Right to Space: Community Gardens in New York City, Urban Geography, 23 (4) Smith C and Kurtz H (2003) Community gardens and politics of scale in New York City. Geographical Review 93(2): 193–212. Proposed contribution Author(s): Tentative title: Key words (max 5): Content (500-700 words): Please specify the content, argument, and sources (include key references). Explain how this contribution advances the current status of literature in the reference field, and describe the reasons for specific example(s) (if any) to be considered and for the adopted methodology. Number of line drawing and b/w photos: Have you submitted or do you intend to submit an abstract (and later a paper) to the “Growing in Cities” conference? If yes, what section? Author(s)’ Short Bio: Please return the format by 15th of February 2015 to [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask] Chiara Certomŕ Research Fellow, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa http://cdg-lab.dirpolis.sssup.it/en/staff/academic/chiara-certoma/ +39 338 3858424 (mobile); cccertoma (skype)