For more than 10 years I worked on urban gardening (including allotments, community/collective gardens, guerrilla gardening and street gardening) to establish that (1) even though urban gardens has been seen from some academia as a pimp-your-neighbourhood activity, it actually addresses and affects some of the most striking issues of our time, such as the social and spatial injustice conditions, marginalisation and deprivation; and (2) urban gardening is a first and foremost a socio-political gesture that that is performed via the mobilisation of biological material and the activation of material-semiotic networks in the space of the polis.
On this research line see, for instance:
Certomà, M. Sonderman and S. Noori (2019) Urban Gardening and the Struggles of Social and Spatial Justice, Manchester University Press;
C. Tornaghi and Certomà (2018) Urban Gardening as Politics, Routledge, London;
C.Certomà and F. Martellozzo (2019) “Cultivating justice? A critical analysis of the correlation between Critical Gardening and Spatial Injustice in Rome”, Applied Geography, 106 p. 60-70;
C.Certomà, Sonderman and S. Noori (2019) “Urban gardening and the quest for just uses of space in Europe” in C.Certomà, M. Sonderman and S. Noori (eds) “Urban Gardening and the Struggles of Social and Spatial Justice”, Manchester University Press, p 1-20
C.Certomà and C. Tornaghi (2018) “Politics and the contested terrain of urban gardening in the neoliberal city” in C. Tornaghi and C.Certomà (2018) “Urban Gardening as Politics”, Routledge, London, p 1-11
C. Certomà (2018) “A practice-based approach to political gardening. Materiality, performativity and post-environmentalism” in C. Tornaghi and C.Certomà (2018) “Urban Gardening as Politics”, Routledge, London, p. 35-45
C. Tornaghi and C.Certomà (2018) “Political gardening, equity and justice: a research agenda” in C. Tornaghi and C.Certomà (2018) “Urban Gardening as Politics”, Routledge, London, p 209-215
C.Certomà (2011) “Critical Urban Gardening as Post-Environmentalist practice”, Local Environment, 16/1;
C.Certomà and C.Tornaghi (2015) “Political gardening. Transforming cities and political agency”, Local Environment 20/10
Chiara Certomà 