Urban Gardening as a New Form of Activism in the Post-Political Era

Spaces aren’t just the block of space we inhabit, the concept extends beyond the physical reality of length times width times height, it’s an amalgamation of reality, subjectivity, and its existence within cultural context. Sometimes that botch of land we call garden, isn’t just a patch of anthropogenic greenery. Anthropogenic as in, cultivated by humans, as means to, reactions to, or an aspiration towards. This reading borrows Lefebvre’s triad of space to secrete a critical understanding on Urban Gardening. It offers a unique perspective on the relationship between space, society, and politics in this post-political era.

With the rise of neoliberal governmentality, citizens were pushed to survive whilst pitted against rising budget cuts in welfare programs, commodification of space, and the looming threat of food scarcity. Urban Gardening is seen as an ailment for the people and their means to express disagreement and dissent especially in the Global North. In the US, community gardening do not only help the individual participants but also strengthens the community. The space associated with the gardening was also reported to be patches of land with low market value. In the UK, the movement was led by the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens (FCFCG)and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), and it’s reported to have worked on disadvantaged urban neighbourhood.

This phenomenon proves that Our perception of space, especially in relation to how we think people use them are often times incomplete or missing some of its nuances. The fact that a seemingly worthless patch of land can be transformed into a source of sustenance by the disadvantaged collective pushed over by capitalism encapsulates Lefebvre’s triad. It is proven that our perception of space changes according to how it is perceived, and how it is lived.