ABSTRACT
Collective urban gardening projects are especially suitable for exploring the contradictory outcomes of environmental activism and praxis: on the one hand, they represent forms of resistance against market-based food systems, against the precarization of urban natures and the dominance of the real estate market in the cities, for closer interactions between human and non-human natures; on the other hand, the everyday practices of collective gardening in urban contexts often fail to deliver on such ideals and intentions, generating incomplete, contradictory, or temporary results. This chapter proposes a heuristic frame for reviewing previous research on urban gardening in a way that can further the project of political ecology, by revealing connections between aspects of space, time, and class. Space is vital for the materiality of gardening, time is ingrained into plant growing, and class differences condition gardeners’ access to and actions in space and time. This heuristic frame helps to trace the contradictions embedded in urban gardening (and within which urban gardening is embedded), while also supporting radical action and praxis, towards the materialization of new visions for better cities against capitalist development, which lies at the core of political ecology's intellectual project.
