MOVING TOWARDS A GREEN TOMORROW: URBAN ALLOTMENT GARDENS AND THE “NEW GREEN CITY”

Nicola Thomas

Nicola Thomas University of Copenhagen and HafenCity University, Hamburg [DE]

Resumo

This article will present empirical results from an ethnographic research project looking into the transformation of the Pergolenviertel allotment garden site in Hamburg, Germany. Due to a new housing policy coming into action in 2011, the site was to be closed down and the land used for a new large scale housing project. A group of the affected plot holders however protested against the intended plan by starting a local initiative and filing a law suit against the plan. As a result, the original development plan was changed to allow for approx. 150 of the original 330 urban allotment gardens to remain on the housing development site, together with the new buildings. This was a decision that planners from the district planning department called a pioneering moment for Hamburg’s urban development. Based on interviews with key stakeholders, the article will retrace the transformation process and ask how in the process different, often conflicting visions of the future land use were articulated and negotiated, and whether the compromise can be considered as a pathway towards a new, green city of tomorrow.

Urban allotment gardens, urban planning, green activism, future, case study research

Biografia Autor

Nicola Thomas, University of Copenhagen and HafenCity University, Hamburg [DE]

Nicola Thomas is a researcher and visiting Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, where her stay is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She received a Master degree in Urban Studies and Sociology from Vienna University, and worked as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts in Basel, Switzerland, in the field of urban development. Currently she is finishing her Ph.D. at the HafenCity University in Hamburg, which looks into Urban Allotment Gardens in the context of entrepreneurial city policies. Her fields of specialization and interests are urban sociology, green urbanism, community activism and urban ethnographic research.