Acceso usuarios
This article examines citizen participation in the governance of contemporary urbangreen space. Rather than exploring normative questions of ideal forms of participatorydemocracy, it focuses on changing roles and relationships between local state andnon-state actors in order to identify and explain the changing nature of participation. Iargue that neoliberal urban restructuring has changed the conditions for participationand thus participation itself in fundamental ways and that we need an account ofchanges in statehood and governance in order to capture this conceptually. Based on thecase of community gardens in Berlin, the article discusses the extent to which thischanged relationship is expressed by current citizen participation as well as the potentialand problems that result from it. My empirical results show the emergence of a newpolitical acceptance of autonomously organized projects and active citizen participationin urban green space governance. The central argument of this article is that this newacceptance can be conceptualized as an expression of the neoliberalization of cities.Nevertheless, this neoliberal strategy at the same time leads to complex andcontradictory outcomes and the resulting benefits are also acknowledged.
