Difference between revisions of "Vrtičkarstvo (Slovenia)"

Academic approaches to urban gardening and urban policies rarely see eye to eye. Researchers understand the practice as an indicator of broader trends and social issues, yet tend to disregard the multipurpose nature of urban gardening. Narrow [[Comparative Analyses|comparative analyses]] of local forms often fail to capture the social role of the practice. To illustrate, Alber and Kohler conclude, on the basis of the reported harvest-size alone, that the more productive gardeners in Eastern Europe grow vegetables out of poverty, while their Western European counterparts cultivate gardens as a hobby (2008). While surveys and (historical) aerial photography (Jamnik ''et al.'' 2009) are valuable for assessing the spread of the practice, figuring out the particular urban problems to which the practice responds is best achieved with (auto-)ethnography and life histories (Caldwell 2011; Smith and Jehlička 2013; Matijevic 2018). In contrast, local governments are more likely to treat urban gardening either as a problem in itself, or as a publicly-administered panacea that can ameliorate any formal deficiency. What such approaches have in common is that they overlook the ambivalence of urban gardening – it is as much an urban problem as it is a solution. The challenge for policy, then, is to recognise urban gardening as a shadow companion to urbanisation and modernity and thus as a factor to include in formal policy-thinking.  

Academic approaches to urban gardening and urban policies rarely see eye to eye. Researchers understand the practice as an indicator of broader trends and social issues, yet tend to disregard the multipurpose nature of urban gardening. Narrow [[Comparative Analyses|comparative analyses]] of local forms often fail to capture the social role of the practice. To illustrate, Alber and Kohler conclude, on the basis of the reported harvest-size alone, that the more productive gardeners in Eastern Europe grow vegetables out of poverty, while their Western European counterparts cultivate gardens as a hobby (2008). While surveys and (historical) aerial photography (Jamnik ''et al.'' 2009) are valuable for assessing the spread of the practice, figuring out the particular urban problems to which the practice responds is best achieved with (auto-)ethnography and life histories (Caldwell 2011; Smith and Jehlička 2013; Matijevic 2018). In contrast, local governments are more likely to treat urban gardening either as a problem in itself, or as a publicly-administered panacea that can ameliorate any formal deficiency. What such approaches have in common is that they overlook the ambivalence of urban gardening – it is as much an urban problem as it is a solution. The challenge for policy, then, is to recognise urban gardening as a shadow companion to urbanisation and modernity and thus as a factor to include in formal policy-thinking.  

==References==

==References==