Combining top-down and bottom-up gardens in Lisbon as an improved planning strategy

Abstract

This paper compares two concepts of urban agriculture (UA): a) top-down allotment gardens and b) bottom-up participative gardens. The example studied for the former are: 3 Parques Hortícolas of Lisbon city council (LCCHP), which are horticultural parks that include playgrounds, bike paths, etc., on public land. The case study for the latter is Horta do Baldio (HB), a participative garden on private land. The goal is to identify the advantages of a possible combination of the two concepts for planning. This study includes two methodologies: applying a questionaire and comparing other characteristics of LCCHP and HB such as waiting lists, costs and the motivations of the gardeners. The data gained was analysed by using the following indicators: social characterization of the gardeners, their opinions about the garden’s role in city life, their reasons for participation, cultural initiatives, waiting lists, access to general public, time consumption and costs. The questionaire led to similar answers in both garden types except that only HB gardeners included participation and communitarian spirit as important factors. The conclusion is that both types of garden have their strengths but the bottom-up initiative has relevant advantages: participation and communitarian spirit caused “hands-on” implementation and maintenance of the garden, encouraging cultural activities. There are no waiting lists and the garden also costs less than those in the top-down projects because more human resources were involved in the creation and maintenance. On the other hand HB is more time consuming since 306 volunteers are involved in the planning and management, which can cause conflicts e.g. when planning the future of the garden. The integration of urban gardening bottom-up initiatives on city planning, on both public and private land, could catapult Lisbon UA to a higher level of sustainability. Promotion of bottom-up initiatives or combining both strategies could increase participation, optimize community initiatives and costs, decrease waiting lists, create different public access experiences and increase gardening areas which better support the continuity of the city green structure (CGS).