Urban gardening as a risk-reduction strategy – an intersectional analysis of top-down gardening initiatives

Emelie Larsson and Katarina Giritli Nygren

Journal of Risk Research, 2024, vol. 27, issue 9, 1095-1105

Abstract: In cities around the world, urban gardening is increasingly used as a municipal strategy to tackle both environmental and social risks. In this study we draw on critical and intersectional studies of risk to analyse municipalities’ framing of urban gardening as a way to illuminate how it is entangled with contemporary structures of power. The material consists of strategy documents and information on the municipalities’ websites, and the texts were analysed using critical discourse analysis, which enabled us to integrate a sociocultural, an intersectional and an ecopolitical theoretical approach to risk. We identified two discourses: an eco(no)logical risk discourse where ecological risks were addressed within a capitalist market logic, and a social risk discourse, where focus was on gardening as work training and integration. We found that within these discourses, several gardening subjects appeared, and these could be positioned as either capable of solving and/or mitigating risks, or as at risk and in need of intervention. The results show how the top-down initiating of urban gardens display contemporary inequalities in urban spaces, which are crucial to identify in order to create city spaces that are safe, inclusive and enjoyable for all citizens.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2023.2288001 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:27:y:2024:i:9:p:1095-1105

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2023.2288001

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().