ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book provides insights and examples of how urban space is being negotiated. It describes urban gardens as ‘lived places’, where social relations, meanings, and a sense of place are developed and visualized; they allow community building and identification. To trigger social benefits it seems essential that the sites fulfil more functions than just being a space for food growing and spending leisure time. The way urban gardens are developed points to the changing role of urban designers, who will have to deal more with the process of co-design of these new gardens as facilitators or advisors than designing them as experts. Horticultural practices such as using pesticides or fertilizers have a strong influence on the ecological impact of urban gardening, although due to training programmes awareness among gardeners has been raised in recent decades.
