Ownership and Membership: Practices and Experiences of Neighbourhood Residents in the Wijsgeren Community Garden in Amsterdam

Abstract

City governments worldwide have embraced urban agriculture, including community gardening, for the multiple societal benefits which they promise. Many academic studies have also emphasised and celebrated the benefits of community gardening but the debate surrounding it increasingly takes a more critical stance by also paying attention to the societal drawbacks. This paper aims to further enrich this more critical debate by analysing processes of social inclusion and social exclusion in and around the community garden in the Wijsgeren neighbourhood of Amsterdam. By looking at the practices and experiences of both gardeners and non-gardeners, processes of inclusion and exclusion are unravelled in terms of ownership and membership of the community garden. In so doing, exclusionary barriers based on non-ownership and non-membership are pinpointed in particular.