ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the politics of urban community gardening and its ambiguous positioning between the poles of neoliberal and austerity urbanism on the one hand and progressive urban politics on the other. It argues that urban community gardening can never be understood as either a sole expression of neoliberal urbanism nor of pure resistance. The chapter shows that the roots of community gardens in urban counter-cultural movements of the 1970s. It discusses the urban gardening in the context and as part of neoliberal urban governance in the new millennium. The continuous emphasis on self-help in regard to urban green spaces becomes even more problematic when civic engagement is exclusively focused on certain groups and values. The chapter discusses the contradictory politics of urban community gardening. It identifies three ways of how community gardening may reinforce neoliberal urbanism: land use struggles and gentrification, the role of volunteering within neoliberal urban governance, and governing through community and technologies of the self.
