(Food) Justice in the Interim? Temporary Urban Gardening, Welfare Activation, and Plural Valuation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22018303 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julija Bakunowitsch (0000-0002-7971-027X, TU Dortmund University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Urban Planning (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2183-7635 • E-ISSN: 2183-7635 |
| Publisher | Cogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.17645/up.11780 |
| OpenAlex | W7163043963 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 45 |
Across European cities, temporary urban gardening is used to address vacancy, sustainability, and social inclusion. Yet little is known about how justice is enacted when such initiatives are embedded in welfare and labor‐market activation policies. This article examines a publicly funded urban gardening project in Dortmund, Germany, implemented as a labor‐market activation measure on temporarily available land targeting employable welfare recipients. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, the study combines the concept of “food justice” with valuation studies to analyze how labor, land, and exchange are valued in everyday practice. Rather than using food justice as a normative benchmark, the article explores how notions of justice are produced and negotiated through institutional frameworks, daily routines, and actors’ evaluative judgments. The findings reveal tensions between empowerment and dependency, care and control, and social recognition and material precarity. While participants experience gardening as meaningful work and a source of social participation and belonging, these valuations remain bounded by welfare regulations, temporary land tenure, and charity‐based forms of food distribution. The article argues that temporary urban gardening projects function as spaces of plural and negotiated valuation, where justice is enacted provisionally through everyday practices, contributing to debates on temporary urban land use, food practices under welfare governance, and the limits of inclusion‐oriented sustainability interventions
Economic Justice · Empowerment · Normative · Participant observation · Plural · Welfare · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Organic Food and Agriculture · Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
Food justice
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A Conceptual Structure of Justice - Providing a Tool to Analyse Conceptions of Justice
Challenges and Opportunities in Collaborative Cross‐Sectoral (Healthy) Urban Food Environment Planning
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How Do Scholars Communicate the ‘Temporary Turn’ in Urban Studies? A Socio-Semiotic Framework
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The rise of a French pragmatic sociology of values
A scoping review of the conceptualisations of food justice
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Easier said than defined? Conceptualising justice in food system transitions
The nature of urban gardens
Translating land justice through comparison
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Validating verdancy or vacancy? The relationship of community gardens and vacant lands in the U.S
Clashing temporalities of care and support as key determinants of transformatory and justice potentials in urban gardens
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Community Volunteering as Neoliberal Strategy? Green Space Production in Berlin
Urban Agriculture in the Food‐Disabling City
Temporary use of space
Growing public spaces in the city
Food and Green Space in Cities
Learning to see food justice
Exploring the role of temporary use in promoting urban sustainability – A case study in Taipei City, Taiwan
Radical, reformist, and garden-variety neoliberal
Community gardens as feminist spaces
Mobilizing 'impermaculture
What does it mean to do food justice
Value magic
Ten Proposals on Values
A Pragmatic Redefinition of Value(s)
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |