Reflections on the production of space and justice: A study of everyday life of the SuoJincun's guerrilla gardeners
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: As a country that legally grants equal ownership of public space to all residents, China's community gardening practices still face spatial justice dilemmas. Focusing on two vivid accounts of community guerrilla gardening in Nanjing, this article examines the green actions of residents in their neighborhoods through an ethnographic research method. The results show that: gardening has an irreplaceable social acquisition value as the production of real matter, is a material carrier and bond of place attachment, and contains the potential for creative gardening methods; it is an important node of access to nature and culture for groups with limited mobility; and guerrilla gardening is the recycling of collective space by residents in the form of private appropriation. The discussion session analyzes the positive side of the phenomenon of residents' privatization of common public space from the perspectives of social change, the value of use of public space, and spatial justice. The concludes by moving away from the discussion of public and private space towards an everyday, use-value-driven, locally creative initiative for a new aesthetics of collective space.
Source: Cities
Authors: Shuyue He, Ming Li, Yuhang Zheng, Xin Gao, Ruixia Wang
Institution: Nanjing Forestry University
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,000
OpenAlex ID: W4401689669