Green Steps

Since their creation, cities have played a major role for protests and social debates. They are the places where people live together, share resources, communicate, exchanges goods and ideas. Cities are the center of production, exchanges, meetings and conflicts.

 

Social movements appeared those last years in metropolis to protest against public space privatization. Citizens claim the right to the city and question the modern way of making public space. In London, Business Improvement Districts (BID) are launched all around the city. They now also appear in Germany, where some parts of towns are managed by private companies. Public authorities see BIDs as a cheap and convenient way to equip, manage and maintain the neighborhood. Public space is then handed over by private developers; benches, pavement, trees are chosen to avoid what is considered "parasitic" : homeless people, bikes, unwanted parking or installations. Parks are mastered, and private individual greenspace decrease due to the high real-estate pressure. Cities centers look more and more like sterilized open-air malls.

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Movements against IKEA coming in the center of Hamburg, developing the Rote Flora or Gäengeviertel district, illustrate citizens' questions on urban democracy. In this highly financial city, how does the neighborhood transform itself, how can citizens express their opinions on its evolution? Do they have any power facing developers, city planners, public authorities ? Should the city be managed by public authorities, private companies, or can it be self-managed? How about the human scale compared to the big urban plannings?

WurzelWerk is an example of a 'parasitic' urban farm launched by students majoring geography and economics in Hamburg University. Between two buildings of the campus you can find this informal vegetable garden. We've met some of those students, comfortably sitting on chairs made from pallets.

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The garden is made by volunteers, and is opened to any student. It is located near a very busy path, and an information panel welcomes the shy visitors. It is a meeting space, where the neighbors from a very young age to a more older one sometimes come to give a hand, plant seeds, or play around. They also hold workshops to build a storage house for example with the university architects, or agricultural experiments.

The initiative is part of a larger movement of informal urban farming in Hamburg. It illustrates the growing need of appropriating public space, especially greenspace. Those gardens last for more or less time as they are mostly illegal, and located either on public space or wastelands. It raises some questions on urban gaps: should every plot be used? Can we let a land be unused, or self-managed by the neighborhood inhabitants?

WurzelWerk has to face hard reactions from the university, which reflect the questions at a city scale on the aesthetics, the noise, security, access... But it is also used positively by the campus website as an example of student's initiative. One can also see this ambiguity in Hamburg which claims to be a creative, open-minded and artistic city but where those common space decrease each year facing real-estate and financial pressure.

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Sources:

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Urbanisme néolibéral ou droit à la ville, Andrej Holm , Multitudes 43, hiver 2010, Majeure 43. Devenirs Métropole

Mainmise sur les villes, Claire Laborey

https://www2.uni-hamburg.de/presse/publikationen/19neunzehn/2-2016/mobile/index.html#p=21

https://www.facebook.com/wurzelwerkgarten/

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Other initiative: Gartendeck gartendeck.de

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Photo credits: Honorine van dne Broek & Camille Aubourg

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