ABSTRACT
In recent years, neighbourhood-based gardens, local food collectives, tree-planting campaigns, and kindred civic environmental initiatives have taken root in cities across the world. Such initiatives are often (self-)described in the language of ‘community’, or fællesskab in Danish, thereby also evoking a contested term from the social sciences. To better conceptualise such ‘urban green communities’, as we call them, this chapter synthesises three main approaches found in the literature. These approaches deal with attachments to one's neighbourhood or place of residence, how volunteers are enrolled into neo-liberal governance, and imagined communities of civic solidarity. We illustrate these senses of community by drawing on the empirical case of a transition town-affiliated civic gardening initiative in a mid-sized Danish city. In particular, we show how pragmatic sociologist Laurent Thévenot's notion of ‘commonality in the plural’ and his distinction of familiar, planned, and justifiable engagements, allow us to bring together these otherwise divergent senses of community into a comprehensive analytical framework. Drawing on the empirical case, we argue that Thévenot's framework provides an empirically sensitive grasp on how groups compose their civic practices vis-à-vis urban–environmental issues as one key component in collective aspirations for more sustainable cities.
