Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Ecological Economics
j ourna l homepage: www.e lsev ie r .com/ locate /eco lecon
Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
The potential of ‘Urban Green Commons’ in the resilience building of cities
Johan Colding a,b,⁎, Stephan Barthel a,b,c
a The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Box 50005, Swedenb Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Kräftriket 2B, Stockholm, Swedenc Department of History, Stockholm University, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden
⁎ Corresponding author at: The Beijer Institute of EcoloAcademy of Sciences, Stockholm, Box 50005, Sweden. T8 152464.
Article history:Received 30 November 2011Received in revised form 4 October 2012Accepted 21 October 2012Available online 23 December 2012
Keywords:Cultural diversityCognitive resilience buildingCommon property systemsEcosystem servicesSocial–ecological memoryUrban systems
While cultural diversity is increasing in cities at a global level as a result of urbanization, biodiversity isdecreasing with a subsequent loss of ecosystem services. It is clear that diversity plays a pivotal role inthe resilience building of ecosystems; however, it is less clear what role cultural diversity plays in the resil-ience building of urban systems. In this paper we provide innovative insights on how common property sys-tems could contribute to urban resilience building. Through a review of recent findings on urban commonproperty systems and the relevant literature, we deal with urban green commons (UGCs) and discuss theirpotential to manage cultural and biological diversity in cities. We describe three examples of UGCs, i.e. col-lectively managed parks, community gardens, and allotment areas, with a focus on their institutionalcharacteristics, their role in promoting diverse learning streams, environmental stewardship, and social–ecological memory. We discuss how UGCs can facilitate cultural integration through civic participation inurban land-management, conditions for the emergence of UGCs, the importance of cognitive resiliencebuilding, and what role property-rights diversity plays in urban settings. We conclude by elucidatingsome key insights on how UGCs can promote urban resilience building.
It is often argued that there is a positive link between cultural andbiological diversity, and that reduced diversity makes the world andits inhabitants increasingly vulnerable to natural and human-inducedchanges (Maffi and Woodley, 2010; UNESCO, 2008). While urbanscholars claim that urbanization leads tomore diverse citieswith higherlevels of cultural diversity (Zanoni and Janssens, 2009), the movementof people to cities generally leads to a reduction in biodiversity andecosystems (MA, 2005; Sala et al., 2000). This mismatch between cul-tural and biological diversity in cities can largely be attributed to thehigh concentration of humans, infrastructures and buildings in tiny geo-graphic locations. However, as argued herein, it can also be attributed toa lack of sufficient institutions for managing cultural and biologicaldiversity.
Urban areas cover less than 3% of the Earth's terrestrial surface,posing strong impacts on ecosystem services both in the local vicin-ity and at considerable distances from cities. Urban inhabitants affectdistant ecosystems through trade and consumption, with citiesclaiming ecosystem support (including waste absorption) thatsometimes is 500–1000 times larger than their own area (Folke et
gical Economics, Royal Swedishel.: +46 8 6739500; fax: +46
rights reserved.
al., 1997). Moreover, some 78% of all carbon emissions, 60% of resi-dential water use, and 76% of wood for industrial purposes havebeen accredited to cities (Grimm et al., 2008). Likewise, urban devel-opment often occurs in biodiversity-rich areas (Ricketts and Imhoff,2003), with cities tending to emerge in areas with high ecosystemproductivity like landscapes suitable for agriculture and/or in coastalareas or river systems with high levels of biodiversity (Hansen et al.,2004; Ljungqvist et al., 2010).
It is often proposed that dense urban settlement is less environ-mentally burdensome than urban and suburban sprawl (MA, 2005).Although this proposition needs further scientific scrutiny (Colding,2011a), the movement of people into more densely built urbanareas can lessen pressure on more remotely located ecosystems. Notincluded in such analyses, however, is that the urban space itself islikely to influence cognitive aspects related to environmental valuesof urban populations (Miller, 2005; Tidball et al., 2010). Also, urbanstudies reveal that biodiversity usually peaks at the level of suburbs(Blair, 2001; McKinney, 2002). Suburban parts hold more natural andsemi-natural land (Sukopp et al., 1979), with a progressive increase ofnatural lands towards the semi-rural urban fringe (Colding et al., 2006).With this outward progression from city centers generally follows an in-crease in the proportion of per capita land ownership (Colding, 2011b),associated with a number of property rights bundles (Ostrom andSchlager, 1996).
In this paper we discuss how common property rights systems andtheir associated bundles of entitlements hold potential for a closer
157J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
linkage of cultural and biological diversity in urban areas. Propertyrights represent key institutions1 that link people with nature (Hannaet al., 1996). Still, there exist few analyses of property rights linked tomanagement of ecosystems and their services in cities. This is surprisingconsidering that changes in property-rights regimes may explain muchof the land-use dynamics going on in contemporary cities. The shift toprivate property rights is so pervasive in cities today that institutionalscholars regard it is a global phenomenon (Barzel, 1997; Lee andWebster, 2006; Webster, 2002). As a result lands held in the publicdomain increasingly become privately enclosed, with considerablyfewer examples of lands being managed as common property systems,propelling alienating processes between urban populations and localecosystems (Colding, 2011b; Ollman, 1971).
In this paper we provide innovative insights on urban commonproperty systems and discuss their potential in contributing to urbanresilience building, dealing specifically with cases of urban green com-mons (UGCs). Common property systems comprise systems of socialarrangements that regulate the maintenance and consumption of natu-ral resources. Control and management rights to resources are in thehands of an identifiable community or group of users that may crafttheir own institutions in resource management (Berkes and Folke,1998; Berkes et al., 2003; Ostrom, 1990). Users in such systemsmanageresources collectively by way of a wide array of rules-in use, self-imposed norms and social mechanisms (Berkes et al., 2000, 2003;Colding and Folke, 2001; Ostrom, 1990). We have elsewhere analyzedcases of such systems in urban settings from a property rights perspec-tive (i.e. Colding, 2011b) and their role for ecological learning andsocial–ecological memory (i.e. Barthel et al., 2010a,b,c; Bendt, 2010;Bendt et al., in press; Colding, 2011a). Here we draw on these studiesand other literature findings, providing examples of what we hererefer to as urban green commons (UGCs), representing urban ecosystemsof diverse ownership that depend on collective organization andmanagement.
We begin this paper by elaborating upon the notion of cultural andbiological diversity linked to cities andwhat role diversity plays in resil-ience management. We proceed by describing three examples of urbangreen commons (UGCs), i.e. collectively managed parks, communitygardens, and allotment areas, elucidating key institutional characteris-tics and their role in promoting diverse learning streams, environmentalstewardship, and social–ecological memory in urban systems. Wediscuss how UGCs can facilitate cultural integration in cities throughcivic participation in urban land-management by offering an institution-al base for groups and individuals to meet and interact. We also discusssome key conditions for the emergence of UGCs, the importance of ‘cog-nitive resilience building’, and the role of institutional diversity for resil-ient urban development. We conclude by summarizing the majorinsights conveyed herein.
2. Diversity and Resilience
2.1. Cities and Cultural Diversity
History reveals that cities in most part of the world have emergedand continue to grow over landscapes that have been domesticatedby humans for centuries, and sometimes millennia (Crumley, 2000;Sinclair et al., 2010). These cultural landscapes in which cities areembedded are sometimes rich in species and habitats (Barthel etal., 2005; Emanuelsson, 2010) and may even provide refuge for spe-cies that have become rare in other settings (Colding et al., 2006,
1 By institutions is here meant the rules and conventions of society that facilitate co-ordination among people (North, 1990), made up of formal institutions (rules, laws,constitutions), informal institutions (norms of behavior, conventions, and self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics (Colding et al.,2003a; North, 1990).
2009). In fact, parts of the world's biological diversity have comeabout as a result of co-evolution between human cultural practices(i.e. land-use and management) and natural systems (Barthel et al.,2005; Rindos, 1980), with domesticated landscapes making up thema-jority of terrestrial space on Earth (Baleé, 1993; Crumley, 1994;McIntosh, 2000; Scarborough, 2008).
It is often argued that cultural diversity plays amajor role in creatingmechanisms for innovation, providing new ways to adapt to change,and generating knowledge and institutions to deal with the challenges,opportunities and threats generated by change (UNESCO, 2008). Theterm cultural diversity2 as used in this paper encompasses a diversityof social relations among people of different ethnic background, age,or gender, and less visible attributes such as education, technical abili-ties, socioeconomic background, personality characteristics, or values(Milliken and Martins, 1996). By culture we use Geertz definition ofculture as a system that gives meaning and significance (Geertz, 1993).
Cities have been described as loci of cultural diversity par excellence(Zanoni and Janssens, 2009). One of the very foundational and distinctivecharacteristics of the city is thepresence of cultural differencewith the ‘di-versity of proximity’ being a distinctive feature of the urban environment(ibid). Proximity, referring to those different groups of people living closeenough to interact, facilitates face-to-face relationships that remain fun-damental in all spheres of social life. This is realized through urbanspace and social networks.
We are witnessing more diverse cities at a global level as the worldpopulation is growing and increasingly is moving into cities (Thorns,2002; Zanoni and Janssens, 2009). Whether cultural diversity is a“bad” or a “good” thing for a city has been debated for long in urban dis-course, with one side arguing that it stimulates creativity, innovation,production and providing economic advantages (Bellini et al., 2008;Florida, 2002; Jacobs, 1961; Ottaviano and Peri, 2006; Sassen, 1994);the other that it can produce conflict and disorder (e.g. Castells, 1989;Roszak, 1973) and has a negative effect on economic performance(Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003; Alesina and La Ferrara, 2005). Thesepolarized outcomes may in reality be subtler. For example, Collier(2001) contends that cultural diversity only has negative effects on eco-nomic growth in non-democratic countries, and Alesina and La Ferrara(2005) found that ethnic fragmentation has more negative effects onthe economy in countries with lower levels of income.
While cultural diversity can be both an asset and a liability for a city,or both at once, we agree with the view of Zanoni and Janssens (2009)that the challenge today is to make cities socially inclusive, to re-inventforms of interrelatedness that recognize diversity, and value it, and byso doing “channel its creative potential to make our cities sustainable”(ibid: 21). Accordingly, cultural diversity needs to be both governedand managed in cities in order to nurture it in productive ways.
2.2. The Role of Diversity in Resilience Management
Resilience, as applied to integrated systems of people and the natu-ral environment, has three interrelated characteristics: (1) the amountof change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls onfunction and structure; (2) the degree to which the system is capable ofself-organization; and (3) the ability to build and increase the capacityfor learning and adaptation (http://www.resalliance.org/).
In the resilience discourse, management of diversity per se is consid-ered to be a key attribute for building resilience in complex adaptivesystems (Berkes et al., 2003). Diversity spreads risks, creates buffers,and opens up for multiple strategies from which humans can learn in
2 According to UNESCO (2008: 20) there are different levels of cultural diversity, in-cluding linguistic diversity; namely intercultural diversity in the sense of differences be-tween two (or more) cultures, and intracultural diversity referring to the differencesbetween subcultures, or cultures of different sectors of a society (e.g. men/women, dif-ferent social classes) within a culture.
158 J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
situations when uncertainty is high. In addition to functioning as insur-ance, diversity also plays an important role in the reorganization andrenewal processes of disturbed systems (Colding et al., 2003b), or eventsthat require change in social–ecological systems by creating a frame forcreativity and adaptive capacity to deal with change in constructiveways (Berkes et al., 2003). Diversity is thus seen as key for dealing withdisturbance and change in productive ways, with self-organization andthe capacity for learning and adaptation constituting important resiliencecharacteristics (Fig. 1).
The critical role of diversity and redundancy has been examinedin many systems, e.g. genetic, human engineered, complex adaptive,ecological, agro-ecosystems and governance systems (Low et al., 2003;Maffi andWoodley, 2010). In biological systems diversity facilitates func-tional redundancy, i.e. if a species declines or is lost, other species provid-ing the same function in the system can continue providing this function.Hence, management of many species within a single functional grouppromotes resilience by reducing the risk of a specific ecosystem functionbeing entirely lost in a biological community or ecosystem (Elmqvist etal., 2003). Moreover, diversity in ecosystems promotes ‘response diversi-ty’. This capacity is mainly related to the diversity of ‘functional groups’ ofspecies in a system, like organisms that pollinate, graze, predate, fixnitrogen, spread seeds, decompose, generate soils, modify water flows,open up patches for reorganization, and contribute to the colonizationof such patches (Elmqvist et al., 2004). Response diversity means thatdifferent organisms within a functional group respond differently todiverse types and frequencies of disturbance. For example, if honeybeesare affected by a pathogen, other pollinator species not affected by thepathogen may take over the function of pollination. In this way diversitycreates redundancy in ecological systems (see Jansson, this issue).
Similarly, when diverse groups of stakeholders, including resourceusers from different ethnic or religious groups, scientists, communitymembers with local knowledge, NGOs, and government officials, sharemanagement of a resource, decision-making is claimed to be betterinformed due to that stakeholders may bemore invested in and support-ive of the decisions, and more options exist for testing and evaluating
Fig. 1. Key attributes of resilience. The interplay between disturbance and diversity and theiresilience and adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems. Social change (e.g. economiccreating conditions when diversity can be crucial to deal with change in constructive ways.sity (left-hand of figure), capacity to adapt to change is increased. Conversely (right-hand srespond to disturbance in effective ways, e.g. nurturing diversity in a system, the likelihoodinertia. Modified and adopted from Folke et al. (2003).
policies (Colding et al., 2003a; Tidball and Krasny, in press). This argu-ment is in linewith findings inmanagement studies, showing that cultur-al diversity on skill-based dimensions such as education, occupation,functional background, and industry experience is positively associatedwith a group's ability to process information, perceive and interpret stim-uli, and making higher quality decisions (Milliken and Martins, 1996).However, diversity in groups can also increase the likelihood that groupmembers are dissatisfied and fail to identify with the group. Forexample, the greater the amount of diversity in a group or an organiza-tional subunit, the less integrated the group is likely to be, with higherlevel of dissatisfaction and member turnover rate (Milliken and Martins,1996).
2.3. Management of Cultural Diversity in Urban Systems
The role of cultural diversity inmaintaining resilience has not yet beenclearly defined, but it seems established now that variations in culturesthat manage land in sustainable ways correlates to spatial variations inhabitats, species as well as variations within species, which increases bio-diversity on aggregated spatial and temporal scales (Andersson et al.,2007; Barthel, 2006; Barthel et al., in review; Maffi and Woodley, 2010).Also, as suggested in the previous section, cultural diversity appears topromote the ability to build and increase the capacity for learning andadaptation in groups. This latter function seems directly linked to thesharing of a common interest. The work of Elinor Ostrom on commonproperty systems, supports this line of argument, emphasizing the roleof collective choice arenas in long-enduring resource managementsystems by which a whole group or community of resource users sharesa common interest in resource management (Ostrom, 1990). For exam-ple, when all participants share common values and interact with oneanother in a complex set of arrangements within a small community,the probabilities of their developing adequate rules and norms to governrepetitive relationships are much greater, and the cost of developingmonitoring and sanctioning mechanisms is relatively low (Ostrom,2005). Conversely, if participants come from diverse cultures, speak
r relationship to knowledge systems and self-organization are key linkages for buildingrecession, unemployment) can in many times be considered as a disturbance in cities,If the social-ecological system can self-organize and learn through making use of diver-ide of figure), when knowledge generation and self-organization do not deal with andof pathological management increases, which can lead to loss of resilience and cultural
Table 1Property rights bundles associated with positions.Source: Modified and adapted from Schlager and Ostrom (1992:252).
Owner Proprietor Claimant Authorizeduser
Authorizedentrant
Access X X X X XWithdrawal X X X XManagement X X XExclusion X XAlienation X
The bundles of rights are independent of one another, but frequently held in thecumulative manner as arranged in the table. These rights encompass rights of access(i.e. “the right to enter a defined physical area and enjoy nonsubtractive benefits”);withdrawal (“the right to obtain the resource units or “products” of a resource”);management (“the right to regulate internal use patterns and transform the resourceby making improvements”); exclusion (“the right to determine who will have anaccess right, and how that right may be transferred”); and alienation (“the right tosell or lease either or both of the above collective-choice rights”) (Ostrom and Schlager,1996: 133). The bundles of property rights are held by individuals with different posi-tions, named accordingly.
159J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
different languages, and are distrustful of one another, the costs of devis-ing and sustaining effective rules are substantially increased (ibid).
That sharing an interest can be a sufficient condition for making useof cultural diversity in cities has been suggested in the literature on en-vironmental policy and planning. For example, Rydin and Pennington(2000) argue that the prospect of meeting friends who share similarvalues and beliefs, and the enjoyment of collective effort with thesepeople, may be a sufficient incentive for greater public participation inenvironmental planning. Likewise, Zanoni and Janssens (2009) suggestthat design policies formanaging cultural diversity in cities should focuson promoting multidirectional flows between different groups and in-dividuals, coordinating cultural encounters in cities. Defining acommon issue that binds together diverse groups and individuals isan essential part in such an approach, e.g. “an activity that is of commoninterest to the different groups” (Zanoni and Janssens, 2009:195). Theyalso argue that the spatial structure, e.g. a square, facilitating proximityof groups is an essential characteristic for creating multidirectionalflows in cities.
These propositions appear to be well supported in recent studiesaddressing collective forms of green space management, indicating aparticular promising subset of physical spaces in cities that promote amultitude of desirable social and ecological objectives (e.g. Barthel etal., 2010a,b,c; Boyer and Roth, 2006; Colding et al., 2006; Krasny andTidball, 2009; Larsson, 2009; Tidball and Krasny, in press). Here werefer to such physical spaces as urban green commons (UGCs). In the fol-lowing we begin by defining the concept of UGCs and proceed by de-scribing three examples of such systems in cities.
3. ‘Urban Green Commons’: Collectively Managed UrbanGreen Spaces
In the literature, the term ‘urban commons’ is surrounded by a richarray of normative statements ofwhat actually constitutes the ‘commons’,with several scholars avoiding any precise definition of the term. Forexample, it is often equated with public open spaces (e.g. Blomley,2008; Campbell and Wiesen, 2009). However, the notion of commonsas “public” or as “nonexcludable” is misleading, ignoring the fact thatthere exists a whole cadre of literature dealing with resources managedunder common property systems (e.g. Berkes, 1989; Ostrom, 1990). Incommon property systems, most rights to a core resource are vested inthe members of the local community or group of users. Equating urbancommons to open public places is therefore faulty as such spaces rathershould be classified as ‘public realms’, i.e. all the areas in cities to whichthe public has open access (i.e. holds entrance-rights). Insteadwe employa more narrow definition of urban green commons here, namely as“physical green spaces in urban settings of diverse land ownership thatdepend on collective organization and management and to which indi-viduals and interest groups participating in management hold a rich setof bundles of rights, including rights to craft their own institutions andto decide whom they want to include in such management schemes”(see more in Colding, 2011b).
Participants in urban green commons hold a number of critical bun-dles of rights (Schlager and Ostrom, 1992), including access rights, with-drawal rights, management rights, and in some cases also exclusionrights to land (Table 1). The critical feature of UGCs rests on their practi-cal management of land rather than on land ownership per se, implyingthat land used for urban commonsmay be owned by a number of poten-tial owners e.g. the state, a local municipality, privately or collectively.Hence, in the following examples the right to manage land for a collec-tive set of individuals is the most distinctive characteristic of UGCs. Thisright may be subtle, but as we later argue, carries immense significancefor cognitive resilience building in cities. Here, we deal with collectivelymanaged parks, community gardens, and allotment areas. In particularwe deal with key institutional characteristics, their role in promoting di-verse learning streams, environmental stewardship, and social–ecologi-cal memory in urban systems.
3.1. Collective Park Management in Berlin
In the city of Berlin, there are examples of whole parks being col-lectively managed by various interest groups. As fiscal cuts impactedfunding for public parks, local politicians beganmaking calls for civicengagement in management of green spaces (Rosol, 2010). Whilethe state owned company ‘GrünBerlin’ runs several of the majorparks in Berlin, civic engagement in green space management hasfostered an immense institutional diversity, in terms of internalorganization that has been not only giving rise to a variety ofmanagement forms for urban green space, but also providing formalinstitutional structures for green area management on municipalland, represented by the Burgerpark concept (Bendt, 2010).Burgerparks represent public parks managed by local groups ofresidents, varying in size between 100 m2 to 30,000 m2, and havingbetween 10 and 100 members each. They are especially common inthe boroughs of Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Neukölln (Bendt,2010).
A particularly interesting form of collectively managed greenspaces is public-access community gardens, or PAC-gardens (Bendt,2010; Bendt et al., in press). PAC-gardens are in public ownership,open for anyone interested in learning to garden. Threshold for activeparticipation is absent or very low. Membership is either formallydefined or according to ex post criteria such as residence or acceptanceby existing members in the group. For example, Lichtenrade Volksparkand Bürgergarten Laskerwiese are PAC-gardens run by formal associa-tions (vereins) with boards and chairmen. In contrast, BurgerparkRosa Rose holds no formal organizational structure with decisionstaken in an ad-hoc manner. In Prinzessinnengarten – a mobile organicurban farming garden – decisions are made by the founders of theenterprise, but in everyday practice the participants make decisionson an ad-hoc basis.
Bendt et al. (in press) combined the social learning approachoffered by communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) with a propertyrights analysis, studying four PAC-gardens in Berlin. Based on exten-sive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, they concluded that PAC-gardens represent a clear-cut example of communities of practice,and identified four broader learning streams in them, including:1) learning about gardening and local ecological conditions; 2) learn-ing about social organization/integration and participation; 3) learn-ing about the politics of urban space (i.e. learning which arises outof negotiation and friction concerning the use and development ofspace in the city); and 4) learning about social entrepreneurship.PAC-gardens also represent a good example of place making initia-tives in cities – a notion long propagated for in planning and architec-ture (Gehl, 2010; Jacobs, 1961) – and during the last decade
160 J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
propagated for in collaborative urban planning (e.g. Healy, 1998) toimprove the quality of physical places by a widening of stakeholderinvolvement beyond traditional power elites.
3.2. Environmental Learning and Community Gardens
Another example of collective green spacemanagement is communi-ty gardening,which depends upon collaborative efforts of a diverse set ofindividuals and/or interest groups to succeed (Colding, 2011b; Shinew,et al., 2004). Lands for community gardens often represent publicly orprivately held vacant lots in cities where local residents grow food,flowers, or conduct urban greenery (Schukoske, 2000). In communitygardening peoplework together on land usually located in the downtownof a city or in a low-density suburban area. Vacant-lot gardens are usuallysmall in size, such as in New York City where gardens constitute 5-by-15meter lots (Schmelzkopf, 1996). Especially in the U.S., community gar-dens are an extremely unstable land use, often representing an interimuse for vacant land awaiting construction. For example, less than 2% ofthe U.S. community gardens were permanent in 1999 (Linn, 1999).
Interestingly, lot lease durations correlate closely with the appear-ance of gardens, with gardens having long-term leases demonstratinga sense of permanency with an abundance of slow-growing trees,perennials, lawns and features such as benches, gazebos, and brickpaths (Schmelzkopf, 1996). As property rights theory would predict,community residents are more willing to invest in gardens with longerleaseholds (Colding, 2011b). Of key importance for securing land forcommunity gardens in the U.S. has been the backing up by variousNGOs, such as the metropolitan gardening organizations (JansonWaddick, 2000). Moreover, the Trust for Public Land also secures publicland for community gardens, and helps them establish themselveslegally as non-profit organizations (Linn, 1999).
Community gardens have been shown to promote positive placemak-ing in cities, community empowerment and development (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2004), social integration and democratic values(Glover et al., 2005; Holland, 2004; Levkoe, 2006; Shinew et al., 2004),health benefits (Marcus and Barnes, 1999), and increase of propertyvalues (Been and Voicu, 2008).
In the vast range of literature on community gardens, some recentarticles are especially interesting within the ambit of resilience theory.For example, Krasny and Tidball (2009) found that community gardeningprovides opportunities for learning that addressesmultiple societal goals,including creating a populace that is scientifically literate, that practicesresource stewardship, and that is engaged in civic life. Communitygardening education has also the potential to foster environmentaloutcomes such as environmentally responsible behaviors, opportunitiesfor unstructured time innature, positive youthdevelopment, understand-ing of linkages between global and local food security, and gardeningskills (Krasny, 2009). For instance, the plants and insects in gardensoffer opportunities for students to observe and perform experiments,thus acquiring content knowledge related to pollination. Moreover,community gardening involves learning about planting techniques, howto tend plants, as well as collaboratively developing rules related to plotallocation and pesticide use. This in turn provides opportunities foryouth to become increasingly more skilled as members of a civic ecologycommunity of practice. Such contributions can include fostering biologicaland cultural diversity and ecosystem services, such as food, pollination,and sites for reconnecting people with nature (Krasny and Tidball, 2009).
3.3. Social–ecological Memory in Allotment Gardens
A third example of collective green space management is allotmentgardening. An allotment garden containsmultiple garden plots of equalsize, often on municipally owned land, constituting well-managedflower-, bush-, and tree rich sites that provide lot holders with vegeta-bles, fruits and ornamental flowers (Colding et al., 2006). There are cur-rently around three million allotment gardens in Europe (Björkman,
2000). This form of gardening primarily originated as a response tofood shortages during the transition from feudal agrarianism to urbanindustrialism (Barthel et al., 2010a,b; Barthel and Isendahl, this issue).In Sweden, allotment gardens were created to help ameliorate socialproblems resulting from mass migration from the countryside tourban areas, such as food shortages and meager living conditions(Lindhagen, 1916).
In contrast to many community gardens, allotment gardens consti-tute quite a stable common-property rights regime (Colding, 2011b).This is reflected in that leaseholds usually are written on long-termbasis between local allotment associations and local municipalities,with leaseholds up to 25 years in Sweden. Allotment gardens are charac-terized by several characteristics typically found in common propertysystems. The local allotment association sets up and enforces its ownrules, although these need to comply with Swedish law (Barthel et al.,2010a). For instance, the local association determines size and form ofcottages as well as the appearance of garden plots. Moreover, while in-dividual gardeners hold operational-level property rights such as “ac-cess” and “withdrawal” rights (see Table 1), they also hold the right to“manage” their own plots relatively independently, although manage-ment is framed by the collective-choice rights of the association, whichin turn holds the collective-choice right of “exclusion” (i.e. the right todetermine who will have an access right to the plot and how that rightmay be transferred). Exclusion of outsiders is often physically embodiedin that fences or hedges usually surround areas for allotments. Whileoutsiders have the right to enter the common areas in most allotmentareas (i.e. walking paths, etc.), entering individual gardens is a violationsubject to the law of trespassing in Sweden and is thereby subject tofines in common law.
As is the case in most common property systems, there exist informalinstitutions enforced by way of social pressure such as strong norms toexclude pesticides and synthetic manure (Barthel et al., 2010a). Theeffectiveness of such norms is evident in that 91% of the gardeners feelthat their neighbors want them to act in accordance with them (Barthelet al., 2010a,b,c). Similar to commonproperty systems in small-scale soci-eties (Ostrom, 1990), the small size of allotments and the high number ofpeople within the same piece of landmake informal institutions effectivefor dealing with potential conflicts and for monitoring that rules arefollowed and effective sanctions meted out (Barthel et al., 2010a).
Allotment gardens broadly represent knowledge ‘legacies’ of tradi-tional household gardening practices, where the users' gardening knowl-edge has been passed on and socially retained for considerable time(Nolin, 2003). Hence, they serve as sites for conferring practicalknowledge of urban agriculture. As argued by Barthel et al. (2010a,b)allotment gardens play a critical role in retaining and transmitting collec-tivememories of how to grow food in urban settings and how tomanageregulatory and supporting ecosystem services like pollination, watercycling, soil formation, and nutrient retention. While only individualscan be said to remember sensu stricto, individual memory processesderive from social interactions through gardening and are facilitated bysupra-individual means such as sharing stories, artifacts, symbols, rituals,and written accounts (Barthel et al., 2010b). These collective repertoirestend to outlive the practices that first shaped them and function togetheras carriers of experiences, practices and knowledge. Over deep-time evo-lution, this creates, for example, locally adapted varieties of crops thathave co-evolved with human practices and local environmental condi-tions (Fraser and Rimas, 2010).
Because of the inherent feedback loops between human actions andecological processes, we prefer to use the term social–ecological memo-ry to describe the combined means by which knowledge, experienceand practice of ecosystem management are captured, stored, revivedand transmitted over time in allotment gardening as well as in otherco-evolved cultural and natural management systems (Barthel, 2008;Barthel et al., 2010a). The double processes of participation and reifica-tion form a shared memory of a changing physical environment, linkedto socio-economic fluctuations, and local responses to such fluctuations
161J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
(Barthel et al., 2010a,b,c). In this sense, harnessing the power of the di-verse social–ecological memories of various landscape stewards inurban settings can play an important role in the resiliencemaking of cit-ies since it contributes in helping renew and reorganize such systems intimes of crises (Folke et al., 2003).
4. Discussion
As was proposed earlier, a common interest can be a sufficient con-dition for making use of cultural diversity in cities. Moreover, the exis-tence of a supporting spatial urban morphology, or arena, has beenproposed to be critical for cultural integration to come about (Zanoniand Janssens, 2009). Here we have provided insights on collectiveland management systems, i.e. urban green commons, representingsuch a combination of interest and physical spaces in cities. While wehave not explicitly dealt with the cultural diversity of the individualsand/or groups partaking in land management, there are good reasonsto believe that UGCs hold considerable potential in promoting culturalintegration. As Bendt (2010: 8) concludes in his study of BerlinPAC-gardens: “peoplemust interact as they garden”, andmutual engage-ment is what creates membership in communities of practice3 (Wenger,1998).Mutual engagement throughworking together does not, however,require homogeneity among members, but rather creates similarities aswell as differences.Wenger refers to such specializationwithin a commu-nity of practice as “engaged diversity” (Wenger, 1998:73).
In the Berlin-study by Bendt (2010),many respondents talked abouttheir parks and gardens as places where people from different back-grounds and local neighborhoods met through their interest in garden-ing. However, these green areas also represent community space forconcerts, art performances, film screenings and workshops initiatedby the group members themselves. In this way, PAC-gardens representplaces promoting cultural integration and exchange at many levels.PAC-gardens also bring people together around certain problems thatmay arise in local neighborhoods as well as bring people with differentethnic backgrounds together, with some gardeners claiming that theynever had interacted with migrants prior to taking up gardening(ibid). In the Burgergarten Laskerwiese garden, for example, respon-dents mentioned how gardening involved people from both formerEast and West Germany, giving rise to fruitful cultural exchanges, aswell as conflicts, as these divided historical backgrounds were inter-laced in the practice of developing the garden and park. Several respon-dents mentioned how the garden at times was a place where politicalpositions were formulated and expressed, promoting learning alongmultiple political dimensions.
Likewise, community gardens hold potential for social integra-tion, such as building a sense of community among neighbors and fos-tering positive interracial relationships (e.g. Lewis, 1992; Linn, 1999;Schmelzkopf, 1996; Shinew et al., 2004). In Stockholm city, for example,there are allotment areas having members of foreign origin in the tensand over (Oddsberg, 2011), indicative of what a diverse cultural settingthey sometimes constitute. The same is true in the U.K., where allot-ments hold a high diversity of people of different age, race, and sex(Crouch and Ward, 1997; Select Committee, 1998).
4.1. Civic Participation in Urban Land-management
Sharing a common interest and the enjoyment of collective efforts inland management appear to be a strong incentive for civic participationin environmental management of cities. For one thing, people participateby way of free will in this activity in contrast to having formal
3 The defining elements of a CoP are (1) a ‘joint enterprise’ of vigor in learning abouta particular enterprise (e.g. gardening), (2) ‘mutual engagement’ through which peo-ple bond and build social capital, and (3) a ‘shared repertoire’ of rules, jargon, and ar-tifacts that enable a community to reflect upon and understand its own state ofdevelopment and to move forward (Wenger, 1998, 2000).
membership by way of occupation in an organization or by way of resi-dency in a community. Moreover, people have different motives for par-taking in voluntary land management, e.g. social relation building,recreation, food acquisition, sense-of-place, therapeutic reasons, and en-vironmental concerns (Andersson et al., 2007; Oddsberg, 2011; Tidballet al., 2010). In addition, the time people are willing to spend inland-management activities is important to consider in order to create ef-fective participatory designs. For example, PAC-gardens involved peopleinteracting on a regular basis (daily) to those rarely participating, withsome gardens having new participants coming and going continuously.The level of boundary interaction4 thus varied greatly among the gardens,as well as the diversity of actors withwhich they interacted. For example,the two gardens withmore formal associational structures displayed lessboundary activity than the other two that employed looser frameworksfor participation (Bendt, 2010; Bendt et al., in press).
The Berlin case study prompts questions concerning the suitabilityof fixed institutional frameworks for participation in landmanagement.In developing participatory environmental arenas in cities it may there-fore be important to consider trade-offs between property-rightsarrangements which enable fluid forms of participation and thusreach out to a large number of people and groups, and more formalforms (e.g. allotment areas) which involve fewer people but requiremore obligations on behalf of participants andwhichmay foster deeperlearning and social–ecological memory (see e.g. Andersson et al., 2007;Barthel et al., 2010a). Following Ostrom's (1990, 1996) prerogatives forbuilding social capital, Rydin and Pennington (2000) argue that positivesocial capital can be developedwhen local communities are encouragedto build up their own institutional arrangements and not have these in-stitutions imposed from above. There is, however, a notable differenceto what degree UGCs can be viewed as self-organized stewardship sys-tems. For example, Krasny and Tidball (2009) and Ruitenbeek andCartier (2001) argue that community gardens have a tradition ofbeing self-organized and self-emergent, i.e. being initiated by the stake-holders themselves within the community. This is also true for the Ber-lin Burgerparks, having given rise to considerable high institutional andorganizational diversity in green-space management (Bendt, 2010). Incontrast, allotment areas appear to have a considerablemore rigid orga-nizational and institutional structure, likely due to their historical tieswith local governments and experiences of organizing through severalcycles of hunger and economic depression (Barthel et al., in press-a,b).
4.2. Conditions for the Emergence of UGCs
It is a striking fact that the UGCs dealt with herein increase in num-bers during periods of socio-economic hardships. For example, Europeanallotment areas increased substantially in numbers during the twoWorld Wars as well as in the 1930s economic depression (Parker,2003; Select Committee, 1998). Community gardens in theU.S. arewide-ly recognized as an effective grassroots response to urban disinvestmentand decay (Kurtz, 2001) and have been used to promote economicdevelopment in many cities (Bonfiglio, 2009). For example, in Detroit –a city greatly impacted by the loss of job opportunities – communitygardens have over time been used for the purpose of supplementingunemployed workers and their families with food supply (Warner,1987), and as a way to promote regional economic development by in-creasing the local tax base and the number and variety of jobs availableto local people (Bonfiglio, 2009). Since the first organized communitygarden programemerged inDetroit in 1893, the city has invested heavilyin urbangardenprograms during periods of economic recession (Bassett,1981).
4 Shared practices create boundaries in communities of practice, important forlearning by connecting different communities that offer learning opportunities(Wenger, 2000). Boundary interactions represent the frontiers where learning hap-pens as long as the divide between experience and competence is not too wide ortoo close (ibid).
5 This term refers to factors that provide human societies with the means and adap-tations to deal with the natural environment and to actively modify it.
162 J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
The self-emergence of many types of UGCs is not only correlated toperiods of food shortage. Equally important is that available physicalspaces exist in cities. For example, the fall of the Berlinwall and the sub-sequent unification of the city created an abundance of unused urbanspaces (Brachen). This was paralleled by a lack of public funds to main-tain them,making local politiciansmore in favor of civicmanagement ofgreen spaces (Rosol, 2010). For these reasons various forms of tempo-rary usage (Zwischennutzung) proliferated across Berlin as brownfields and former industrial areas were turned into alternative usage,including green areas and parks that developed into community gar-dens (Bendt, 2010). In the U.S., there also appears to be a close correla-tion between community gardening and the availability of vacant lots incities (Bowman and Pagano, 1998; Schukoske, 2000). For example, ashrinking city like Detroit with ample community gardens holds up to70,000 vacant lots, comprising about 27% of the city cover (Bonfiglio,2009).
While the availability of physical urban space appears to be an im-portant factor for the proliferation and spread of UGCs in cities, therole of environmental movements (Barthel et al., in press-b; Ernstsonand Sörlin, 2009) should not be underestimated. For example, indensely built neighborhoods in New York, local inhabitants have along tradition of squatting vacant land awaiting construction, givingrise to the Green Guerillas in the 1970s (Colding, 2011b). This envi-ronmental movement triggered similar squatting projects in othercities throughout the world. Hence, the lack of green spaces in citiesand people taking local action to change this situation is importantfor understanding the emergence of UGCs.
Suffice to say, the emergence of UGCs is closely related to the reorga-nization of cities after some kind of crises. For example, thiswas the casein the redevelopment of urban gardens in Cuba as a response to the foodshortage crisis set about with the collapse of the Soviet socialist bloc in1989 (Altieri et al., 1999). Prior to the crisis, urban agriculture wasvirtually absent in Cuba as urban gardening was perceived as a sign ofpoverty and under-development. Very few of Cuba's gardeners wereacquainted with the small scale, highly diverse, garden techniquesthat now are widely used, but through organizing they facilitated thedissemination of information and knowledge, involving the educationof people on organic gardening (Altieri et al., 1999). In the completeabsence of social–ecological memory of urban gardening on Cuba, itwould have been considerably more difficult to reinvent urban agricul-ture at such a grand scale— indicative of what role “pockets” of social–ecological memory can play in the resilience building of urban systems(Barthel et al., in press-a,b).
Framedwithin the context of resilience thinking (sensu Berkes et al.,2003), UGCs appear to hold particular bearing in the release and reorga-nization phases of the adaptive renewal cycle, i.e. when needs are highto address pertinent and emerging problems such as socio-economicchange, or when populations in cities shrink or when cities becometoo densely built and therefore lack green spaces.
4.3. ‘Cognitive Resilience Building’ for Ecosystem Services
TheMillennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that about 60%of the global ecosystem services have become degraded or are usedunsustainably, ascribed mainly due to the demands of urbanpopulations (Grimm et al., 2008; MA, 2005). It has been suggestedthat rapid urbanization is removing perceived and experiencedlinks between people and nature as modern life-styles are adoptedand people cease to depend on local ecosystems (Miller, 2005;Stokes, 2006). This may lead to ‘extinction-of-experience’ of naturein cities (Pyle, 1978) and to increase ‘environmental generationalamnesia’ among urban populations (Miller, 2005). As people in citiesfail to reconnect to local ecosystems they fail to understand theirdependency upon them (Samways, 2007). Studies also show thatecological knowledge is decreasing among urban populations andthat active land management promotes ecological learning and
environmental awareness among individuals (e.g. McDaniel andAlley, 2005; McKinney, 2002; Theodori et al., 1998). One may there-fore ask whether the majority of the population will be willing to in-vest in protecting something they no longer regard as directlyrelevant to their lives?
The gravity of the issue is highlighted by the fact that 2/3 of the globalpopulation is projected to live in urban landscapes within just a few de-cades. It is therefore critical to broaden city-inhabitants' understandingof their dependence on ecosystem services both inside and outsideurban landscapes. Hence, urban designs that make visible the linksbetween people and nature in cities are important to develop at largerscales (Colding, 2007). Urban green commons, as dealt with herein,represent examples of such designs, where people in cities learn aboutfunctions in nature by way of active land management.
In reference to the issue above and to the global loss of ecosystemservices, it is critical to promotewhatwe here refer to as cognitive resil-ience building. In lack of a better term, we define cognitive resiliencebuilding as the mental processes of human perception, memory andreasoning that people acquire from interacting frequently with localecosystems, shaping peoples' experiences, world views, and valuestowards local ecosystems and ultimately towards the biosphere. Thisis in line with arguments to link local systemsmore closely to planetaryboundaries and the biosphere (Argüelles, 2011: 9; Folke et al., 2011).The notion of cognitive resilience building is closely linked to whatBerkes and Folke (1994) refer to as cultural capital,5 althoughwe stressthat it involves social learning and retention of ecological knowledge(explicitly or tacitly) among individuals to alleviate extinction of expe-riences in urban landscapes. It further builds on insights in sociologyand anthropologywhere it is highlighted not only that cognitive framesare socially situated, but also that thematerial world, objects and there-fore urban space in itself strongly influence cognitive frames (Durkheim,1997; Halbwachs, 1926 (1950);Wenger, 1998), hence the link betweencognitive resilience building and common property rights of physicalurban green spaces (Barthel et al., 2010a,b,c).
Designs of UGCs do not need to be confined to vacant lots, parks orallotment areas, but could as well be part of other built-up structuresin urban areas, e.g. university campuses (see e.g. Barthel et al., 2010c),or to promote biodiversity conservation at business/industrial sites(see Snep et al., 2011). Such designsmay involve volunteers inmanage-ment such as local NGOs, employees, and even students. UGCsmay alsoinvolve residents in multi-family dwellings that are givenmanagementrights to lands (Fig. 2). From an urban resilience perspective, policymakers and planners need to increasingly plan cities in relation to ener-gy deficiencies and collapses of supply lines (see Barthel and Isendahl,this issue; Barthel et al., 2010b). As this synthesis shows, UGCs holds apotential to play an even larger role in urban agricultures, supportinglocally generated food and reducing costs for fossil fuel-based energytransports. Moreover, UGCs could also be part of specific conservationtargets in urban settings to support ecosystem services that are indecline or under threat in urban areas (Colding, 2007; Goddard et al.,2010; Snep et al., 2011).
4.4. The Importance of Institutional Diversity
As was discussed and proposed earlier, broader public participationin UGCs depends on a diversity of institutional arrangements in order tomatch different peoples' ability and motives for participating in them.Creating conditions for their self-organization and self-emergenceappear also to be important, although this may not be easy in practice,especially not in urban settings that lack ample green space. However,green roofs, green walls, and park management could be created indensely built urban settings that could be developed around designsof UGCs.
a b
Fig. 2. Urban Green Commons (UGCs). Urban green commons could to a greater degree be designed in areas where people live and work. For example, UGCs may involve residentsin multi-family dwellings that are given management rights to lands where they live, although land ownership may be municipal or private. The figure shows how a traditional yardin a city could be transformed into a lush, biodiversity-rich garden where dwellers could collectively take care of and manage diverse micro-habitats, promoting sense of place,social integration, and cognitive resilience building in urban settings.
163J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
Urban policy makers and planners need to increasingly address thefact thatmore andmore land and resources in cities become privatized,resulting in that urban residents increasingly lose access— and userights to land in cities (Colding, 2011b). This trend decreases people'soptions to have meaningful interaction with nature in cities, alienatepeople from local ecosystems and reducing opportunities for cognitiveresilience building. Moreover, as institutional research suggest, it is im-portant to nurture a diversity of property rights regimes since no singletype of regimes (i.e. state-, private, or common property rights) can beprescribed as a remedy for resource overuse or environmental degrada-tion (Ostrom, 2005). Rather, policy should focus on establishing a mul-titude of property rights regimes that are designed to fit the cultural,economic, and geographic context in which they are to function(Hanna et al., 1996).
Diversity in property rights regimes in cities can also result in diver-sified ecosystem management (Fig. 3), and this can have considerableconservation outcomes (Andersson et al., 2007; Barthel et al., 2010a,b,c; Colding et al., 2006). It should also be recognized that there is a pos-itive correlation between funding and management capability, imply-ing that local governments with restricted financial means to a largerdegree should consider voluntary land-management approaches likethose offered by UGCs (see e.g. Colding et al., 2006; Oldfield et al.,2003). For example, the lack of governmental funding to maintainparks in Berlin after Germany reunified leads to the development ofthe civically managed Burgerparks (Rosol, 2010). Hence, UGCs couldbuild resilience even in economic terms by reducing impacts duringperiods of budget deficiencies and economic recession in cities.
5. Conclusions
Further analysis is required to fully comprehend all the issues andaspects related to urban green commons (UGCs). For instance, thefacets of enclosure, inclusion and exclusion in UGCs need to be morefully understood (but see Kurtz, 2001). Considering the limited analysesmade on urban common property systems, the major purpose of thispaper has been to synthesize recent insights on such systems. Asproposed herein, the increase of cultural diversity at the global level of
a b
Fig. 3. Diversity of property rights and ecosystem management. Diversity of property rightscan promote biodiversity. For example, Andersson et al. (2007) found that management praca different community structure of seed dispersing and insectivorous birds than compared
cities, resulting from urbanization, needs not be positive per se, butdepends on wise governance, management, and appropriate designsto channel and nurture it in productive ways, i.e. supporting local eco-system services and cognitive resilience building related to the chal-lenges of the Anthropocene (Steffen et al., 2011).
As shown here, attention to property rights arrangements involvingurban green commons holds potential to promote cultural integrationin cities through civic participation in urban land management. Urbangreen commons, hence, represent arenas formanagement and develop-ment of interlinked biocultural diversity in urban landscapes. More ex-plicitly urban green commons hold relevance for endorsing differenttypes of learning streams and values that is important to nurture in cit-ies, e.g. environmental and ecological learning, and learning related tosocial organization, the politics of urban space, social entrepreneurship,aswell as positive placemaking, community empowerment, restorativeenvironments, and for fostering of democratic values. Moreover, theyalso hold relevance for interlinked processes of self-emergence ofdiverse urban social–ecological systems that on aggregated spatialscales can enhance urban biodiversity, and which on global scales pro-duce urban ecosystems that differ between cities.
To conclude, broader participation in urban green commons is morelikely to succeedwhen a diversity of institutional options exists for theirarrangement in a city. Such diversity provides a better matching ofdifferent individuals' preferences and motives for participating incollective green-area management. Hence, policy makers and plannersshould stimulate the self-emergence of different types of UGCs, andsupport their evolvement in urban areas through creating institutionalspace, e.g. in conjunction of restoring depraved neighborhoods. Thereare ample of municipally owned land in cities to which urban residentscould be given management rights (i.e. not necessarily ownershiprights). In recognition of that diversity in property rights regimes canresult in a diversification of ecosystem management with positiveconservation outcomes, and when restoring degraded urban lands,policy makers and planners need to carefully consider the fundamentalvalue of promoting institutional diversity in cities. In recognition of thatthe homogenization of property rights (i.e. privatization) may furtherincrease the homogenization of biota in contemporary cities (Colding,
c
regimes in cities can result in diversified ecosystem management practices that in turntices in allotment areas (c) resulted in higher pollinator abundance and that these heldgovernment-managed cemeteries (a) and urban parks (b).
164 J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
2011a),we urgemayors, landowners and urban practitioners to consid-er the benefits of adopting UGCs in urban settings. We conclude byelucidating the following key insights onUGCs and their role in promot-ing urban resilience building:
• UGCs offer arenas for management of cultural diversity, promoting cul-tural integration; hence, could reduce potential social conflicts in cities
• UGCs provide active land-management systems for a greater set ofurban residents, important for social–ecological resilience building
• UGCs represent institutional re-development designs for cities todeal with fast-changing variables such as re-emerging temporalcrises (e.g. unemployment, economic recessions, underfunding ofgreen area management)
• UGCs represent institutional re-development designs for cities todeal with slow-changing spatial variables such as when citiesshrink or become too densely built
• Long-enduring UGCs (e.g. allotment gardens) can promote social–ecological memory in cities, important during periods of crises and/or urban renewal and reorganization
• UGCs promote the ability to build capacity for learning and adapta-tion in urban settings, e.g. through cognitive resilience building
• UGCs may provide economic benefits for local governments to man-age urban green space by drawing upon civic voluntary manage-ment; hence, reduce economic vulnerability
Acknowledgments
This research is part of the SUPER-project within the URBAN-NET pro-gram, funded by the European Commission's Framework 6 Programmeunder the European Research Area Network (ERA-NET) initiative. It isalso part of the Urban Form-project and FORMAS Green Wedge project.Johan Colding's and Stephan Barthel's research has been funded throughsupport and grants received from the Swedish Research Council for Envi-ronment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS). Thanksalso to Mistra (the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research) forsupport to the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and to the Department ofHistory, Stockholm University, in the support of Stephan Barthel's contri-bution. We also thank Jonas Adner for his nice artwork with Figs. 2 and 3of this paper.
References
Abadie, A., Gardeazabal, J., 2003. The economic costs of conflict: a case study for theBasque Country. American Economic Review 93, 113–132.
Alesina, A., La Ferrara, E., 2005. Ethnic diversity and economic performance. Journal ofEconomic Literature 43, 762–800.
Altieri, M., Nelso Companioni, A., Cañizares, K., Murphy, C., Rosset, P., Bourque, M.,Nicholls, C.I., 1999. The greening of the “barrios”: urban agriculture for food secu-rity in Cuba. Agriculture and Human Values 16, 131–140.
Andersson, E., Barthel, S., Ahrne, K., 2007. Measuring social–ecological dynamics behindthe generation of ecosystem services. Ecological Applications 17, 1267–1278.
Argüelles, J., 2011. Manifesto for the Noosphere: The Next Stage in the Evolution ofHuman Consciousness. North Atlantic Books9781583943038.
Baleé, W., 1993. Indigenous transformation of Amazonian forests. L'Homme 126–128,231–254.
Barthel, S., 2006. Sustaining urban ecosystem services with local stewards participationin Stockholm (Sweden). In: Tress, B., Tres, G., Fry, G., Opdam, P. (Eds.), From LandscapeResearch to Landscape Planning, Aspects of Integration, Education and Application:Wageningen UR Frontis Series, vol. 12, pp. 305–320.
Barthel, S. 2008. Recalling Urban Nature: Linking City People to Ecosystem Services.PhD Thesis, Dept of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, Stockholm. ISBN978-91-7155-741-4.
Barthel, S., Isendahl, C., this issue. Urban gardens, agricultures and waters: sources ofresilience for long-term food security in cities. Ecological Economics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.06.018
Barthel, S., Colding, J., Folke, C., Elmqvist, T., 2005. History and local management of abiodiversity rich urban cultural landscape. Ecology and Society 10 (2), 10 ([online]URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss2/art10/).
Barthel, S., Folke, C., Colding, J., 2010a. Social–ecological memory in gardening:Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services. Global Environmen-tal Change 20, 255–265.
Barthel, S., Sörlin, S., Ljungqvist, J., 2010b. Innovative memory and resilient cities: echoesfrom ancient Constantinople. In: Sinclair, P., Herschend, F., Isendahl, C., Nordquist, G.(Eds.), The Urban Mind. Uppsala University Press, Uppsala, pp. 391–405.
Barthel, S., Parker, J., Folke, C., Colding, J., in press. UrbanGardens-Pockets of Social–EcologicalMemory, in: Tidball, KG andME Krasny, (Eds.) Greening in the red zone: Disaster, resil-ience, and urgent biophilia. Dordrecht: Springer. ISBN 978-90-481-9946-4
Barthel, S. Parker, J. Ernstson, H., in press-b. Food and Green Space in Cities: A Resil-ience Lens on Gardens and Urban Environmental Movements. Urban Studies.
Barthel, S., Crumley, C., Svedin, U., Folke, C., in review. Pockets of social–ecologicalmemory: combating bio-cultural erosion in landscapes of food production. Ecol-ogy and Society.
Barzel, Y., 1997. Economic Analysis of Property Rights. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, MA.
Bassett, T.J., 1981. Reaping on the margins: a century of community gardening in Amer-ica. Landscape 25, 1–8.
Been, V., Voicu, I., 2008. The effect of community gardens on neighboring propertyvalues. Real Estate Economics 36, 241–283.
Bellini, E., Ottaviano, G.I.P., Pinelli, D., Prarolo, G., 2008. Cultural diversity and economicperformance: evidence from European regions. HWWI Research Paper. 1861-504X, 3–14. Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) (42 pp.).
Bendt, P., 2010. Social learning and diversity of practice in community gardens inBerlin. Master Thesis, Stockholm Resilience Centre, StockholmUniversity, Stockholm,pp. 73.
Bendt, P., Barthel, S., Colding, J., in press. Civic greening and environmental learning in public-access community gardens in Berlin. Landscape and Urban Planning. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.10.003.
Berkes, F., 1989. Common Property Resources. Ecology and Community-Based Sustain-able Development. Belhaven, London.
Berkes, F., Folke, C., 1994. Investing in cultural capital for the sustainable use of naturalresources. In: Jansson, A.-M., Hammer, M., Folke, C., Costanza, R. (Eds.), Investing inNatural Capital. Island Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 128–149.
Berkes, F., Folke, C., 1998. Linking Social and Ecological Systems. Management Practices andSocial Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C., 2000. Rediscovery of traditional ecological knowledge asadaptive management. Ecological Applications 10, 1251–1262.
Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, 2003. Navigating Social–Ecological Systems: BuildingResilience for Complexity and Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,U.K.
Björkman, L., 2000. Vad betyder koloniträdgårdar för den urbanamänniskan i Stockholm?Länkarmellan fritidsodling i staden, ekologisk kunskap och uthållig samhällsbyggnad.Master thesis. Department of Sytems Ecology, Stockholm University, Stockholm.
Blair, R.B., 2001. Birds and butterflies along urban gradients in two ecoregions of theU.S. In: Lockwood, J.L., McKinney, M.L. (Eds.), Biotic Homogenization. Kluwer,Norwell, MA, pp. 459–486.
Blomley, N., 2008. Enclosure, common right and the property of the poor. Social andLegal Studies 17, 311–331.
Bonfiglio, O., 2009. Delicious Detroit. The city is plowing resources into its extensive vacantland. : Planning. American Planning Association, pp. 32–37 (August/September 2009).
Bowman, A., Pagano, M.A., 1998. Urban l in the United States. Working paper,WP98AB1. Lincoln Land Institute of Land Policy, Boston, MA.
Boyer, L., Roth, W.-M., 2006. Learning and teaching as emergent features of informalsettings: an ethnographic study in an environmental action group. Science Educa-tion 90, 1028–1049.
Campbell, L., Wiesen, A., 2009. Restorative Commons: Creating Health and Well-beingthrough Urban Landscapes. USDA Forest Service, PA, USA.
Castells, M., 1989. The Informational City. Blackwell, Oxford.Colding, J., 2007. ‘Ecological land-use complementation’ for building resilience in urban
ecosystems. Landscape and Urban Planning 81, 46–55.Colding, J., 2011a. The role of ecosystem services in contemporary urban planning. In:
Niemelä, J. (Ed.), Urban Ecology. Patterns, Processes and Applications. Oxford Uni-versity Press, Oxford, pp. 228–237.
Colding, J., 2011b. Creating incentives for increased public engagement in ecosystemman-agement through urban commons. In: Boyd, E., Folke, C. (Eds.), Adapting Institutions:Meeting the Challenge of Global Environmental Change. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, UK.
Colding, J., Folke, C., 2001. Social taboos: invisible systems of local resource manage-ment and biodiversity conservation. Ecological Applications 11, 584–600.
Colding, J., Elmqvist, T., Olsson, P., 2003a. Living with disturbance: building resilience insocial–ecological systems. In: Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C. (Eds.), NavigatingSocial–Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 163–185.
Colding, J., Folke, C., Elmqvist, 2003b. Social institutions in ecosystem management andbiodiversity conservation. Journal of Tropical Ecology 44, 25–41.
Colding, J., Lundberg, J., Folke, C., 2006. Incorporating green-area user groups in urbanecosystem management. Ambio 35, 237–244.
Colding, J., Lundberg, J., Lundberg, S., Andersson, E., 2009. Golf courses and wetlandfauna. Ecological Applications 19, 1481–1491.
Collier, P., 2001. Implication of ethnic diversity. Economic Policy 32, 129–166.Crouch, D., Ward, C., 1997. The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture, 2nd ed. Five
Leaves Publications.Crumley, C.L., 1994. Historical Ecology—Cultural, Knowledge and Changing Landscapes.
School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, USA.Crumley, C.L., 2000. From the garden to the globe-Linking time and space to meaning
and memory. In: McIntosh, R.J., Tainter, J.A., McIntosh, S.K. (Eds.), The Way the
165J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
Wind Blows-Climate, History and Human Action. Historical Ecology Series. Colom-bia University Press, NY, USA.
Durkheim, E., 1997. The Division of Labour. The Free Press, USA.Elmqvist, T., Folke, C., Nyström, M., Peterson, G., Bengtsson, J., Walker, B., Norberg, J.,
2003. Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecologyand the Environment 1, 488–494.
Elmqvist, T., Colding, J., Barthel, S., Borgström, S., Duit, A., Lundberg, J., Andersson, E., Ahrné,K., Erntson, H., Folke, C., Bengtsson, J., 2004. The dynamics of social–ecological systems inurban landscapes: Stockholm and the National Urban Park, Sweden. Annals of the NewYork Academy of Sciences 1023, 308–322.
Emanuelsson, U., 2010. Europeiska kulturlandskap-hur människan format Europasnatur. Fälth and Hässler, Värnamo, Sweden. ISBN 978-91-540-5977-5.
Ernstson, H., Sörlin, S., 2009. Weaving protective stories: connective practices to artic-ulate holistic values in Stockholm National Urban Park. Environment and PlanningA 41, 1460–1479.
Florida, R.L., 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Lei-sure, Community and Everyday Life. Basic Books, New York.
Folke, C., Jansson, A., Larsson, J., Costanza, R., 1997. Ecosystem appropriation by cities.Ambio 26, 167–172.
Folke, C., Colding, J., Berkes, F., 2003. Synthesis: building resilience and adaptive capacityin social–ecological systems. In: Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C. (Eds.), NavigatingSocial–Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity andChange. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, pp. 352–387.
Fraser, E.D.G., Rimas, A., 2010. Empires of Food. Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall ofCivilizations. Random House Books, New York, USA.
Geertz, C., 1993. The Interpretation of Cultures. Fontana Press, London . (1973).Gehl, J., 2010. Cities for People. Island Press, Washington DC.Glover, T., Shinew, K., Parry, D., 2005. Association, sociability, and civic culture: the
democratic effect of community gardening. Leisure Sciences 27, 75–92.Goddard, M., Dougill, A., Benton, T., 2010. Scaling up from gardens: biodiversity conser-
2008. Global change and the ecology of cities. Science 319, 756–760.Halbwachs, M., 1926. On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA.
[1950].Hanna, S.S., Folke, C., Mäler, K.-G., 1996. Rights to Nature. Ecological, Economic,
Cultural, and Political Principles of Institutions for the Environment. IslandPress, Covelo, California.
Hansen, A.J., Defries, R., Turner, W., 2004. Land use change and biodiversity: a syn-thesis of rates and consequences during the period of satellite imagery. In:Gutman, G., Justice, C. (Eds.), Land Change Science: Observing, Monitoring, andUnderstanding Trajectories of Change on the Earth's Surface. Springer Verlag,New York, NY, pp. 277–299.
Healy, P., 1998. Collaborative planning in a stakeholder society. Town PlanningReview 69, 1–22.
Holland, L., 2004. Diversity and connections in community gardens: a contribution tolocal sustainability. Local Environment 9, 285–305.
Jacobs, J., 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, New York.JansonWaddick, C., 2000. Metropolitan Gardening Organizations: planning for sustain-
able communities. PUBP 8500. Research Seminar in Public Policy, pp. 1–36.Krasny, M., 2009. Children jump into community gardens: what springs out? In:
Tidball, K.G., Krasny, M., Faurest, K. (Eds.), The Case for a Community GreeningResearch Agenda. American Community Gardening Association, Columbus, OH,pp. 49–60.
Krasny, M., Tidball, K., 2009. Community gardens as contexts for science, stewardship,and civic action learning. Cities and the Environment 2, 1–18.
Kurtz, H., 2001. Differentiating multiple meanings of gardening and community. UrbanGeography 7, 656–670.
Larsson, Marie. 2009. Stadsdelsträdgård - plats för gemenskap och kreativa processer.Doctoral diss. Dept. of Landscape Architecture, SLU. Acta Universitatis agriculturaeSueciae vol. 2009:40.
Lee, S., Webster, C., 2006. Enclosure of the urban commons. GeoJournal 66, 27–42.Levkoe, C., 2006. Learning democracy through food justice movements. Agriculture and
Human Values 23, 89–98.Lewis, C.A., 1992. Effects of plants and gardening in creating interpersonal and commu-
nity well-being. In: Relf, D. (Ed.), The Role of Horticulture in Human Well-beingand Social Development: A National Symposium, 19–21 April 1990, Arlington,Virginia. Timber Press, Portland, pp. 55–65.
Lindhagen, A., 1916. Koloniträdgårdar och planterade gårdar (Allotment gardens andplanted gardens). Rekolid, Stockholm, Sweden.
Linn, K., 1999. Reclaiming the sacred commons. New Village 1, 42–49.Ljungqvist, J., Barthel, S., Finnveden, G., Sörlin, S., 2010. The Urban Anthropocene:
Lessons for Sustainability from the Environmental History of Constantinople. In:Sinclair, Paul, Herschend, Frands, Isendahl, Christian, Nordquist, Gullög (Eds.),The Urban Mind, cultural and environmental dynamics Studies in Global Archaeol-ogy, 15. University Press, Sweden, Uppsala, pp. 368–394.
Low, B., Ostrom, E., Simon, C., Wilson, J., 2003. Redundancy and diversity: do they influ-ence optimal management. In: Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C. (Eds.), NavigatingSocial–Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity andChange. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, pp. 83–114.
(MA) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being:Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, D.C.
Maffi, L., Woodley, E., 2010. Biocultural diversity conservation. A global source book.Earthscan, London.
Marcus, C., Barnes, M., 1999. Healing Gardens: Therapeutic Benefits and Design Recom-mendations. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
McDaniel, J., Alley, K.D., 2005. Connecting local environmental knowledge and landuse practices: a human ecosystem approach to urbanization in West Georgia.Urban Ecosystems 8, 23–38.
McIntosh, R.J., 2000. Social memory in Mande. In: Mcintosh, R.J., Tainter, J.A., McIntosh,S.K. (Eds.), TheWay theWind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action. ColumbiaUniversity Press, New York, pp. 141–180.
McKinney, M.L., 2002. Urbanization, biodiversity, and conservation. BioScience 52, 883–890.Miller, J.R., 2005. Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience. Trends in
Ecology & Evolution 20, 430–434.Milliken, F.J., Martins, L.L., 1996. Searching for common threads: understanding the
multiple effects of diversity in organizational groups. Academy of ManagementReview 21, 402–433.
Nolin, C., 2003. Koloniträdgårdsrörelsen i Stockholm: Dess förutsättningar ochuppkomst vid 1900-talets början, in: Nordiska Muséets och Skansens Årsbok(Ed.), Stadens odlare. Nordiska Muséets Förlag, Värnamo, Sweden.
Oddsberg, J., 2011. An analysis of the potential of local stewardship as a managementmode for increasing and enhancing ecosystem services in the urban landscape.Master's thesis 2011. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Oldfield, T.E.E., Smith, R.J., Harrop, S.R., Leader-Williams, N., 2003. Field sports andconservation in the United Kingdom. Nature 423, 531–533.
Ollman, B., 1971. Alienation—Marx conception of Man in Capitalist Society. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge.
Ostrom, E., 1990. Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for CollectiveAction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ostrom, E., 1996. Crossing the great divide: coproduction, synergy and development.World Development 24, 1073–1087.
Ostrom, E., 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press,New York.
Ostrom, E., Schlager, E., 1996. The formation of property rights. In: Hanna, S., Folke, C.,Mäler, K.-G. (Eds.), Rights to Nature. Island Press, Washington D.C., pp. 127–156.
Ottaviano, G.I.P., Peri, G., 2006. The economic value of cultural diversity: evidence fromUS cities. Journal of Economic Geography 6, 9–44.
Parker, J.N., 2003. The Rise of the Allotment Movement in Europe: An Historical Over-viewwith Theoretical Implications. The Department of Systems Ecology StockholmUniversity, Sweden.
Pyle, R.M., 1978. The extinction of experience. Horticulture 56, 64–67.Ricketts, T., Imhoff, M., 2003. Biodiversity, urban areas, and agriculture: locating prior-
ity ecoregions for conservation. Conservation Ecology 8, 1 (http://consecol.org./vol8/iss2/art1).
Rindos, D., 1980. Symbiosis, instability, and the origins and spread of agriculture:A new model. Current Anthropology 21, 751–772.
Rosol, M., 2010. Public participation in post-Fordist urban green space governance: thecase of community gardens in Berlin. International Journal of Urban and RegionalResearch 34, 548–563.
Roszak, T., 1973. Where the Wasteland Ends. Doubleday Anchor, New York.Ruitenbeek, J., Cartier, C., 2001. The invisible wand: adaptive co-management as an
emergent strategy in complex bio-economic systems. Occasional Paper. Centerfor International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia (34 pp.).
Rydin, Y., Pennington, M., 2000. Public participation and local environmental planning:the collective action problem and the potential of social capital. Local Environment5, 153–169.
Sala, O.E., Chapin, F.S.I., Armesto, J.J., Berlow, E., Bloomfield, J., Dirzo, R., Huber-Sanwald,E., Huenneke, L.F., Jackson, R.B., Kinzig, A., Leemans, R., Lodge, D.M., Mooney, H.A.,Oesterheld, M., Poff, N.L., Sykes, M.T., Walker, B.H., Walker, M., Wall, D.H., 2000.Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100. Science 287, 1770–1774.
Saldivar-Tanaka, L., Krasny, M., 2004. Culturing community development, neighbor-hood open space, and civic agriculture: the case of Latino community gardens inNew York City. Agriculture and Human Values 21, 399–412.
Samways, M., 2007. Rescuing the extinction of experience. Biodiversity and Conserva-tion 16, 1995–1997.
Sassen, S., 1994. Cities in a World Economy. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, US.Scarborough, V.L., 2008. Rate and process of societal change in semitropical settings:
the ancient Maya and the living Balinese. Quaternary International 184, 24–40.Schlager, E., Ostrom, E., 1992. Property-rights regimes and natural resources: a concep-
tual analysis. Land Economics 68, 249–262.Schmelzkopf, K., 1996. Urban community gardens as a contested space. Geographical
Review 85, 369–381.Schukoske, J.E., 2000. Community development through gardening: State and local
policies transforming urban open space. Legislation and Public Policy 3, 351–392.Select Committee, 1998. The United Kingdom Parliament, Select Committee on Environ-
mental, Transport, and Regional Affairs Fifth Report to The House of Commons . (1998).Shinew, K.J., Glover, T.D., Parry, D.C., 2004. Leisure spaces as potential sites for interra-
cial interaction: community gardens in urban areas. Journal of Leisure Research 36,336–355.
Sinclair, P., Frands Herschend, F., Nordquist, G., Isendahl, C., 2010. The urban mind, cul-tural and environmental dynamics. Studies in Global Archaeology, 15. UppsalaUniversity Press, Uppsala, Sweden.
Snep, R.P.H., WallisdeVries, M.F., Opdam, P., 2011. Conservation where people work: arole for business districts and industrial areas in enhancing endangered butterflypopulations? Landscape and Urban Planning 103, 94–101.
166 J. Colding, S. Barthel / Ecological Economics 86 (2013) 156–166
Steffen, W., Persson, Å., Deutsch, L., Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Richardson, K.,Crumley, C., Crutzen, P., Folke, C., Gordon, L., 2011. The anthropocene: from globalchange to planetary stewardship. Ambio 7444–7447.
Stokes, D., 2006. Conservators of experience. BioScience 56, 7–8.Sukopp, H., Trautmann, W., Korneck, D., 1979. The soil flora and vegetation of Berlin's
wastelands. In: Laurie, I. (Ed.), Nature in Cities. John Wiley, Chichester.Theodori, G.L., Luloff, A.E., Willits, F.K., 1998. The association of outdoor recreation and
environmental concern: reexamining the Dunlap-Heffernan thesis. Rural Sociology63, 94–108.
Thorns, D.C., 2002. The Transformation of Cities: Urban Theory and Urban Life. PalgraveMcMillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke.
Tidball, K.G., Krasny, M.E., (in press). From risk to resilience: expanding the role ofcommunity greening and civic ecology in urban stability, security, transition andreconstruction contexts, in: Tidball, K.G., Krasny, M.E. (Eds.), Greening in the RedZone: Disaster, Resilience, and Urgent Biophilia. Springer, Dordrecht. ISBN 978-90-481-9946-4.
Tidball, G.K., Krasny, E.M., Svendsen, E., Cambell, L., Helphand, K., 2010. Stewardship,learning and memory in disaster resilience. Environmental Learning Research 16(5–6), 591–609.
UNESCO, 2008. Links between biological and cultural diversity —concepts, methodsand experiences. Report of the International Workshop. UNESCO, Paris . (2008).
Warner, S.B., 1987. To Dwell is to Garden: A History of Boston's Community Gardens.Northeastern University Press, Boston.
Webster, C.J., 2002. Property rights and the public realm: gates, green-belts andgemeinshaft. Environment and Planning B 29, 397–412.
Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Wenger, E., 2000. Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organizaton 7,225–246.
Zanoni, P., Janssens, M., 2009. Sustainable DiverCities. In: Janssens, M., Pinelli, D.,Reyman, D.C., Wallman, S. (Eds.), Sustainable Cities. Diversity, Economic Growthand Social Cohesion. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, pp. 3–25.
![Introduction to Wikimedia Commons [[User:MB-one]] Matti ... · Introduction to Wikimedia Commons Introduction What is Wikimedia Commons? “Wikimedia Commons is a database of content](https://static.documents.pub/doc/80x56/5fff7ce042830266fa4b39f8/introduction-to-wikimedia-commons-usermb-one-matti-introduction-to-wikimedia.jpg)
