Different needs and interests

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(40) “nature in city has positive effect on temperature, air quality and noise: it helps create shadow, light and air circulation [...] it also plays an important role in the work of climate adaptation” (Bynatur i Kobenhavn).

In addition, another document released by the municipality and directed to foreign businesses and entrepreneurs, highlights the positive externalities that can emerge from such green solutions:

(41) “the city’s green environmental profile and will to demand and implement solutions to global societal challenges such as climate, demographics and chronic illnesses, support the businesses’ innovation power and opportunity to develop solutions for a world market” (Business & Growth Policy).

Finally, there also seems to be an alignment concerning the positive impact of urban gardening solutions on city’s branding, both from the perspective of the municipality and the urban gardeners. In fact, both municipal actors and social innovators interviewed commented on the positive opportunities such a branding might lead to

(42) “urban gardening also gives a lot of opportunities for the green branding of the city” (Respondent 1) ;“urban gardening projects are also a great thing for the municipality, because it has some positive impacts on its branding”

(Respondent 6).

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into the following organizing themes ‘different citizen needs’ and ‘governance issues’ (see appendix 8 (f)).

6.5.1 Different citizens’ needs

As pointed out by Respondent 6 and Respondent 4 and further confirmed by one of the documents issued by the municipality of Copenhagen, multifunctional 'green' interventions aiming at regenerate specific urban areas, as well as the green city branding, seem to have a positive impact over the prices of real estate properties as the area becomes increasingly appealing to prospective inhabitants. Therefore, in welfare countries, endowed with a strong tradition for affordable housing and low degrees of inequalities, the theme of increasing housing prices could become especially controversial.

(43) “Several studies also show that proximity to green areas has a positive influence on property value and a major importance for urban life in nearby”

(Bynatur i Strategi 2015-2025); “Beautification somehow contributes to increasing housing prices and driving out lower income residents (Respondent 6).

Furthermore, as mentioned by Respondent 5 and Respondent 6, in the context of unregulated housing markets, the social consequences of this trend are often related to gentrification and segregation of lower income inhabitants. In both the cases of the areas of Nørrebro and Nordvest in Copenhagen, some respondents have also mentioned the risk of progressive loss of identity of the neighborhood, facing a transition from an affordable and culturally diverse area towards a rather ‘gentrified’ and ‘homogeneous’ area which conforms to middle-class tastes.

Among the consequences of this, is to be found the exclusion of ethnic minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged people in specific areas of the city has been pointed out. However, urban community gardening in such

‘sensitive’ areas of the city have been set to tackle precisely the issue of

‘ghettoization’:

(44) “Tingbjerg Gadeteam is a gardening project like ours. It is a place in NordVest that is famous for its criminal activities and they made this place

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safer by engaging the resident community in a common project” (Respondent 7).

As often came out from the interviews, social project might yield positive results over time, but they require a lengthy preparatory phase. However, in other instances the proposed social interventions might lead to unexpected reactions from the local residents who have not been included in the solution-finding process. Emblematic examples of such issues are Sundholm’s urban garden and ByOasen’s playground:

(45) “the young guys with other ethnic background, who have lived here all their lives before the project started, feel very much that this is their place, they’re dealing and driving fast, they want to be seen [...] that is a problem for kids and parents who visit ByOasen, because they get scared” (Respondent 7); “I think the problem was that we didn’t involve people enough… so some kids thought it would be fun to do vandalism [...] they thought of it as foreign space, but it was actually meant to be for them” (Respondent 2).

In both instances, it is the very same stakeholders who were not consulted in the project design phase that might sabotage such projects and prevent the expected positive social impact from being realized.

6.5.2 Governance issues

In the previous sections (6.2.2) we discussed land as a limited resource.

Relating to that, multiple references have been made to the municipality being under pressure for the compelling need to build new houses, which in some instances goes at the expenses of green areas in the city and spaces for gathering and leisure. In the perspective of the urban gardening communities, urban development is often responsible for land expropriation:

(46) “I definitely wish that urban gardens could be taken more seriously and not be only viewed as temporary projects. Down the garden, they are going to build this parking house with on the lower floors some boutiques and stuff like that. This was part of the plan before the garden was established. But now a lot of people have come to love the garden so much and they don’t want someone to build over it. I think that is a bit the thing with urban gardens, they often start as this temporary places but people come to love them and now no one wants this parking house. We tried to talk to the municipality and I think

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that is what we are going to keep on doing, along with the local councils”

(Respondent 4).

Different approaches have been adopted by the municipality to accommodate the different needs of citizens, including housing needs, the need for green areas and community activities in public land among others. As Respondent 1 revealed, the municipality is currently in the process of buying back land as to ensure that residents can enjoy nature in the city, also state actors have helped urban gardeners in negotiation for land acquisitions and opened direct negotiations to review future urban development in the favor of specific projects.

Considering the case of Copenhagen, with an increasingly recognized “green”

and “livable” reputation, the other interest at stake is to maintain the city branding through an urban planning that accounts for green spaces and for support of green initiatives:

(47) “It is our ambition to ensure good and easy access to greenery areas in urban development areas [...] We therefore need a targeted strategy that does not only aim to maintain the status quo on existing green areas, but sets a common direction or the city center in Copenhagen.” (Natur i Byen, strategi 2015-2025); “Copenhagen wishes to be a core partner and customer for socio-economic businesses” (Business and Growth Policy); “Copenhagen is continuously pursuing a strategy of close involvement and collaboration with businesses, industry and knowledge institutions, investors, building owners and citizens to develop the best tools to tackle the climate challenge”

(Copenhagen Climate Projects).

6.5.3 Silos-ed municipality departments

The last theme groups the answers relating to the lack of cross-departmental coordination in the municipality itself and silos-thinking:

(48) “My job is trying to convince my colleagues that we should support common initiatives and create agreement among different departments is also part of my job [...] with advocacy we are trying to create new paths within the different municipality’s department which have different priority to create shared solutions” (Respondent 2); “We tried to make a rooftop farm in the Carlsberg site and some of the buildings are ideal to make a farm.. but that is a preserved building, it’s the state’s. They don’t want us to make a farm on top of the preserved building, because urban farming isn’t part of the history of this

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building [...] Regulations obstacle what the people and the municipality itself want. Basically there’s a lack of coordination between different departments within the municipality” (Respondent 9).

Reflections:

Different interests and needs of different urban actors result in critical trade-offs that require the compelling action of the municipality to coordinate them and prioritize among proposed solutions. Moreover, the multitude of inputs and representations of interests are deemed to improve the understanding of unmet social needs, foster mutual learning, enrich public innovation outcomes and contribute to shared ownership of solutions, eventually suggesting the compelling necessity of different governance arrangements according to the different preconditions and actors involved. However, what clearly emerges from the interviews is the flexibility of the municipality in handling the bureaucratic hurdles encountered by the social innovators in an unsystematic way, e.g. informal permissions, temporary permissions, interpretation of the law, help in negotiations.