Contemporary urban community gardens are embraced by municipalities and residents, making them a widely spreading phenomenon. The academic literature, though, understands this phenomenon in diff erent, sometime diametric, ways. Some studies conceptualize urban community gardens as asocio-spatial practice that is transformative of both social relations and spatial urban arrangements; a space with a potential to materialize new ideas of cooperation-based relations and sustainable urbanism. Other studies criticize the romantic view of urban community gardens and analysethem as another form of greenwash and as another strategy of neoliberal development. This article reviews the existing discourses of urban community gardens, with a focus on North America, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin and offers an integrative perspective to understand this evolvingurban landscape. This perspective takes into account the broad, sometimes conflicting, understandings of the phenomenon and amalgamates them to create a complex reading of what kind of landscape is produced by community gardens.
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