Urban agriculture as activism: common practices and discourses in different contexts

Abstract

The present paper addresses the relationship between urban agricul-ture, activism and the right to the city in three different contexts: São Paulo (Bra-zil), Paris (France), and Lausanne (Switzerland). Largely based on qualitative research performed between 2016 and 2022 in the three aforementioned cities, relying on a critical approach and field work (participant and non-participant ob-servation), the study has found a convergence between discourse and practice when it comes to intraurban horticulture, with emphasis on issues such as citi-zen’s (re)appropriation of public spaces, strengthening of social bonds, promo-tion of urban biodiversity, and a new political and cultural contribution to the city-nature relationship. Although each of those cities’ institutions respond to ur-ban horticulture in a different manner, with local governments playing a more or less active role in the everyday life of community gardens, such gardens become public space activity hubs of collective experience and prove to be, both materi-ally and symbolically, in all three contexts, a criticism to contemporary cities and an alternative to urban life.