ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies manifestations of an alternative political project through the examination of community gardens as heterotopias in the form of actually existing commons. By doing so it also revises and updates the notion of the commons in the modern urban space. Actually existing commons, just like actually existing neoliberalism, have multiple modalities, mechanisms of development, and diverse socio-political effects. The collective of gardeners perceive the material space as their own due to the strong psychological ownership that gardeners derive from the shared use of a common space. The lived facet of the space of community gardens has multiple expressions in images, memories, emotions, identity, and everyday practice. Representations of space are dependent on the frame of reference of the observer. Some of the new knowledge is produced by the various support organizations and set out top-down on the gardeners. There are also formal ways of producing practical knowledge which are orchestrated by gardeners in community gardens.
