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GREEN GUERILLAS, ILLEGAL GARDENS, AND CITY ACTIVIST GARDENERS : BETWEEN LAND RECLAIM, PROMOTING LOCAL SCALE, AND CULTURES OF

RESISTANCE,

Céline BARRERE Docteur en urbanisme

Maitre de conferences, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (France)

UMR 7218 LAVUE (CNRS/MCC)

The starting point of this paper is a questioning about the new relationship between city/nature/city-dwellers, its meanings and its consequences on urban structures. It deals with a a deconstructive approach of the contemporary sequence of this relationship, marked by an environmental logic accompanying urban renewal as opposed to the previous one, of “embellissement”, (beautifying) accompanying urbanization. For about fifteen years, there has been a major shift, in France, in the role and place of gardens and other planted spaces, linked to several intertwined factors: such as the redevelopment of city-centres, the regeneration of vacant industrial lots, or/and the suburban sprawl. These factors brought once again to the forefront the questions of public space and planted spaces from the viewpoint of the authorities as well as the inhabitants1. In order to understand these news mechanisms, it seems effective to change our focus point, to exit the public gardens and enter more marginal spaces, to exit the legal gardens for illegal greening activities. Therefore, I will concentrate on collective forms of gardening in the city, on radical uses of public spaces by different kinds of groups and individuals, which are brought together under the term Green Guerrillas. Green Guerilla movement encompasses a very diverse range of people and motivations, from the enthusiastic gardener who spills over their legal boundaries to the highly political gardener who seeks to provoke change through direct action. The guerrilla gardeners take over abandoned lands ("squat") to grow plants. They believe in re-considering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it.

We can say it is an eco-activist movement aiming at greening cities by diverting the common uses of public spaces and vacants lots. My paper is organized in three parts:

1 LE COUEDIC (Daniel), « La nature et la ville : entre pacification et résistance », in Guy Mercier et Jacques Bethemont (dir.), La Ville en quête de nature, Sillery, Septentrion, 1998, pp. 45-63 ; and also Natures en ville, numéro spécial Annales de la Recherche Urbaine, n° 74, 1997

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1- First of all, I will rapidly trace the history of the movement in the United States 2- Secondly, I will analyse its importation and its acclimation in France in the late

1990’s 3- Thirdly, I will relate its effects both on urban structures and social uses.

I- HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT: THE US IN THE MID-1970’S

1- An urban, economic and ecological context

The movement was born in the US, in New York City in the mid-seventies as one of the consequences of a dramatic financial crisis, originating in the massive departure of the well-off populations to the suburbs of New Jersey or Connecticut and the following pauperization of the centre. More than 14.000 lots were vacant, taxes were drastically reduced. The city was quasi bankrupt, in so much as a prominent daily paper was headlining: “Drop dead!”, the famous answer of President Ford to the then New York city-mayor Large sections were abandoned by landlords and city officials. Criminality was soaring. Public spaces were non existent and insecure.

2- The alliance between conter-culture, eco-activism and community development

Their first actions stem from the double motive of revitalizing neighbourhoods and reclaiming them from decay by turning vacant lots into gardens. The pioneer and leader of the original group of Green Guerrillas was the artist and painter Liz Christy2. In 1973, she gathered her friends and neighbours to clean out a vacant lot on the corner of Bowery and Houston Streets in the Lower East Side. She used gardening as a tool to reclaim urban land, stabilize city blocks, and get people working side by side to solve social problems. They threw “seed bombs” over the fences of vacant lots and helped people transform city-owned vacant lots into community gardens3.

2 For further details about Liz Christy’s Works, see www.lizchristygarden.org 3 For further détails about the firt green guerilla movement in New York City, see their compréhensive website : www.greenguerillas.org/

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Figure1­Howtomakeaseedbomb© www.greenguerillas.org/

Once the seeds have germinated, they form a kind of proto-garden, a transitory state between the vacant lot and the community garden that marked an identity, a collective claim on the land and the beginning of a community development.4 Since the beginning, this movement of illegal gardening is rooted on a few strong principles and orientations. They rely on: - the neighbourhood scale: theirs are localized and rooted actions that do not aspire to expand to the whole city at first, but to connect various collective activities, to create network co-operations. - a community mobilization to strengthen their collective action: they insist on the central role of local community. Green Guerillas oppose authoritative urban renewal by proposing an alternative process based on community development, on the empowerment of local residents

- the modesty of action: at first sight, green guerillas actions can be seen as happenings, playful activities: throwing seeds, installing window boxes, planting flowers in tree pits, on pavements, on fences, painting green murals of building facades. They are grassroots activities combining expressions of art, ecology, and contre-culture, using a mix of education, organizing, and advocacy to help people cultivate gardens

4Malve Von Hassel, The struggle for Eden : Community garden in New York, 2002, Bergin and Garvey, Westport, 183 p.

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- land reclaim process: using ordinary pieces of urban land, mainly publicly

owned land: streets, sidewalks, tree-pits, roundabouts, expressways, etc.

- communication and publicity: these in situ actions are inseparable from communication processes that emphasize the fragility of the endangered and neglected spaces, denounce real-estate pressures on urban development and relay that gardens and gardening are vital needs in an urban setting, ranging from cultural practices to outdoor activities, to promoting healthy food in deprived areas.

Thus, they use an extensive range of media: flyers, manifestoes, posters, internet social networks, blogs and videos of their actions, etc. Greening the city is also a space of freedom of speech, at several levels:

o information and visibility o consulting and assistance o education and transmission of knowledge through educational

booklets, forums, tips and tricks, initiation workshops for children, grown-ups, elderly people.

- For that purpose they strongly use the rhetoric of guerrilla warfare: They

refer to previous experiments, dating back from the commons reclaims in the 17th century in England and the US. Their narrative is infused by strong references to the writings of Che Guevara and Mao. As we can observe in Richard Reynold’s On Guerilla Gardening, published in 2008, a guideline and a manifesto, translated in French and German5. They capitalize on a vocabulary that connotes rebellion, opposition and romanticism of action that value breaking rules.

We can trace it in the name of some groups in France, such as “Germinal” which refers to the germinating process as well as Germinal by Zola that tells the story of a miners’ strike and rebellion. Also in some slogans, such as “terrorisme tendre” ou “tender terrorism” 3- Scaling-up-: from seed-bombs to community gardens Nevertheless, these coalition and activist groups organize themselves on a local basis in order to generate a « scale-up » movement: from the neighbourhood to the municipal authorities. They lobby and become instances of collaborative governance, promoters of participatory democracy. Thus, in 1978, the municipality of New York created the Green Thumb program to maintain the community gardens created by the Green Guerrillas. It is bases on lease (from 1 up to 10 years) of municipal grounds to an association of gardeners to promote community garden. This structure enforces basic guidelines that include public access, opening hours, events and programming, membership lists, ongoing maintenance, and keys.6

5 Richard Reynolds, On Guerilla Gardening, London, Bloomsbury, 2008 6 Malve Von Hassel, The struggle for Eden : Community garden in New York, 2002, Bergin and Garvey, Westport, 183 p.

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Figure2­GreenguerrillasinLondon:fromseedbombstocommunitygardens © http://www.guerrillagardening.org

Their actions range from grassroots digs to long-term urban development, from illegal plantations to negotiations with municipal authorities in order to stabilize the created gardens. Within these groups, two main logics appear:

- on the one hand, illegal and short-termed actions that want to stay radical and oppose every form of authority

- on the other hand, groups who consider guerrilla actions as a prelude to long-term cooperation with authorities and land owners to officialise their spaces of intervention

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Going back to the American history of the Green Guerrilla movement shows us its principles and realisations as well as the fact that its reprise in France is not merely an import but mostly an acclimation: principally in the way

- to consider urban space, - to mobilize residents into collective groups, - in its relationship to community and neighbourhood - in management process

II- IMPORTATION AND ACCLIMATION OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE FRENCH CONTEXT 1- An urban crisis Once again, it is a crisis that triggers the appearance of new forms of gardens and planted spaces and gardening in France in the late 1990’s. This crisis, however, is not comparable to the New York one, neither in its size and scope nor in its effects. If we focus on Paris, we see that it is mostly tensions and unbalances due to:

- the shortage of existent gardens and planted spaces, their defects and dysfunctions

- the challenging of the public gardens inherited from the XIXth century with its flower beds, iron gates, public benches and many regulations

- the increase in vacant industrial lots consequences of the closures of industrial plants (motor car plants in Boulogne Billancourt, slaughterhouses of La Villette, Citroën plant in the XIVth borough, etc.) and moving of railway warehouses. This vacancy provokes both a fierce debate on prospective development and the interest of real estate developers

2- The civic forums: the medium of diffusion It is through testimony and emulation that theses actions spread and become popular

in France within the context of civic forums that have several goals: defending public spaces, promoting social link, improving everyday life.

It is mainly the 1997 forum in Lille of the “Jardin dans tous ses états” or “Gardens in its various states”7 and the 1999 forum in Nantes8 that marked the import of the Green Guerilla movement.

During these forums, international experiments in civic and communal gardening where relayed: the Green Guerillas, the Plantage de Genève, the pockets gardens in Lyon, the Jardins de Cocagne in Lille. They all promote civic actions and cultures of resistance, with leitmotivs such as: implication and self-creation. They enhance values of solidarity, closeness, locality and biodiversity. They combine urban, political, ecological, social demands.

The main difference between the American movement and its French

counterpart is that the first one put the emphasis on community whereas the second put it on the individual. The neighbourhood is still the reference, but for the American it is a

7 Le Jardin dans tous ses états. 1e Forum du jardinage et de la citoyenneté, 23/24 octobre 1997. Compte rendu, 31 P. at http://www.jardinons.com 8 Le jardin dans tous ses états. Actes du 2e forum Solidarité, proximité, citoyenneté, environnement, Nantes, 8/9 décembre 1999, 30 p. at http://www.jardinons.com

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community, for the French its an urban scale. In France, it is the spatial matter that will lead and open onto the social one and not the reverse as in the United States.

3- Urban experiments: French groups and their actions I will talk now more specifically of some French groups and their actions.

It is difficult to list each and every green guerrilla action and group, because they are not uniformly structured: there can be non-profit organizations, or friendly-groups meeting on a regular basis or simply loose networks that aggregate and separate according to the calls for action. To name a few:

- a group of radical seed-flower diggers in Bordeaux - the “On Sème” or “We Sow” group in Lyons that has created a wild garden

on squatted land - the “Germinal” group in the XVIIIth borough of Paris that promotes a

“tender terrorism” - short-term groups existing only for a one-time action: as in March 2008

when some students of the Versailles school of architecture and landscape and the members of a group of the city of Gentilly called ‘Mieux vivre sur le plateau”, launched an operation to collect seeds and asked for volunteers to reclaim disused lands.

Figure3­TheBordeauxfarmers:plantationsalongthetramwaypath © http://bordeaux-farmer.blogspot.com

I’ve observed and studied more comprehensively two groups, in Paris, obeying to different structures and aims:

- a network called “Rébellion Jardinière” or “Garden Rebellion” which is mainly virtual

- a non-profit organization implicated in local democracy processes: the “Verdir” or “Greening” group.

a- Le groupe Rébellion Jardinière

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Created in 2003, “Rébellion Jardinière” brings together gardeners, visual artists, creators, designers and basic city-dwellers. Their main slogans are « Pour le fleurissement global et désordonné dans la ville » ou encore « Cultivez les interstices près de chez vous », that is to say « For the global and muddled flowering of the city " and " Cultivate interstices nearby »9.

It is an information hub with a sophisticated online site listing every activity linked to gardening and urban culture through many keywords referring to actions; spaces; species; tools; persons, etc.

The group activities combine ecology, gardening and culture through: - the design and circulation of images, objects and

accessories garden and eco related: seed-pouches, badges, (“Je pousse ici”, ‘I grow here’ or “Jeune pousse libre” Young free shoot”), jewellery and trinkets, stickers, etc.

- the listing of informations and links: seed exchanges, collective harvests and crops, digs

- forums and blogs relaying actions and experiments throughout France, with photos and videos

9 as stated on their internet web site : http://rebellionjardiniere.free.fr/

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Figure4­GroupRébellionJardinière© Rébellion jardinière

The group activities combine ecology, gardening and culture through various events. This is not properly an association, but rather a network censing extensively initiatives of all kinds toward city-greening and alternative urban culture and uses. It is not involved with any decision-making body and doesn’t want to be a kind of go-between, but stay on the margins. The recipients of their actions are activists, common citizens, garden amateurs and artists. Their purpose is informative and non-specialised. b- Le groupe Verdir On the contrary, the group Verdir is very rooted and committed for the development of its neighbourhood, sustaining grassroots actions and building itself as an agent of local democracy. It is located in the Xth Borough, in the Porte Saint-Denis. Created in 2005, it is a non-profit organisation under the 1901 Law. Its registered purposes, stated in its legal status are:

- to support and coordinate private initiatives to grow plants - to promote and suggest public and municipal initiatives to develop

gardens and planted spaces10 It brings together old and new residents, deep-rooted ones and gentrifyers under

common demands about the improvement of living conditions.

10 The groupe charter and the minutes of the district city Council meeting are reproduced on http://verdir.blogspot.com/

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Figure5­GroupeVerdir:digsandplantations © http://verdir.blogspot.com/

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Figure6­Installingofplanttubsandwindowboxes© http://verdir.blogspot.com/

Its actions expand in several directions:

- seeds exchanges and supplies, plant and material giveaways: in 2007 during the Pari’s des Faubourgs celebration or in 2008

- the setting of window boxes and plant tubs: on the pavements, on buildings, on public facilities (traffic lights, signposts, electricity suppliers)

- the creation of a community garden since 2007 on the rue de Metz: with lots for residents and neighbourhood associations, for local schools as well as lots opens to all Parisians

- the involvement in local democracy: through participation in district councils meetings

- through the co-development with the municipality of a Greening charter (Charte de Verdissement) voted in 2007. This charter associates several municipal bodies (Green spaces, Public roads, Sanitation). It stabilizes the group actions in the Xth borough and can be used in other boroughs as well. It states the rights and obligations of each agent in the greening process: the association has to realize the works according to public safety and traffic regulations, has to remove its fixtures immediately at municipal request, has to maintain the cleanliness of the sites.

III- EFFECTS ON THE URBAN ORGANIZATION AND THE SOCIAL USES. This brings me to the effects on urban structures and social uses.

Through these examples, we see how greening the city is a collective stake and agent. It is in turn an everyday life activity, a social demand or a legitimization narrative. It is set at a crossroad between urban renewal and land reclaim where ordinary citizens call for an active role in city development, not only opposing, but co-producing their space of living. These are processes of counter-proposals and co-development of urban places. They transform urban structures and social uses in three main directions: 1- A main theme: the local scale

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First of all, every greening group put forward the local scale as resources. They bring to light a strong demand of a direct and familiar contact with the natural element in the city on behalf of city-dwellers. First of all, every greening group put forward the local scale as resources. The small scale is invested and valued, the human, the “tactile scale” to speak as French landscaper Bernard Lassus11. The aim is to fill in the width between residents and urban spaces12. They bring to light a strong demand of nearness, analyzed, in France, by N. Mathieu or still Chr. Younès13. Proximity and neighbourhood are invested as a reference frame for urban, ecological, social and political experiment. Thus they participate in redefining a complex urban identity, based on different levels of commitment in their living places and areas, in the building of local community14. Gardens and gardening assert themselves then as principles of conquest of the city. They are the expression of a “right for the city”, (as defined by Henri Lefebvre)15 through playful, collective and direct action on space, around two joint themes: the environment and the living environment. To garden, to plant are forms of commitment to one’s living area in a not violent way. It is to claim a place, one’s place. That is to say an individual and collective empowerment on pieces of the urban territory, mainly the abandoned and degraded spaces. The practice of gardening is not any more delegated to professional municipal gardeners, but a matter of responsibility for everyone. Nevertheless, these greening practices still waver between self-expression and social demand, between individual assertion and environmental concern. These postures are plural, never exclusive one of the other, but successive, making every time, the city a place of desires and these short-lived gardens places of mobilization. 2- A redefinition of public spaces Secondly, the greening experiments contribute to the evolution of the city by moving the limits between private and public places. Indeed, they invest mainly public places in the broad sense: streets, ways, but also established gardens. With these individual and collective initiatives, their appearance change marginally, but their definition and their meaning change fundamentally

These movements of land reclaim do not try to privatize space but, on the contrary, to open it a little more. They give a new dimension to the word public: it is not only land owned by municipalities or public bodies, but land invested by a collective aim, a collective demand, a collective experiment. 3- The city scale: the stitching of urban spaces

Thirdly, this greening approach rejects the binary vision of urban development based 11 LASSUS (Bernard), The Landscape approach, Philadelphia, PENN-University of Pennsylvania press, 1998, 196 p. 12 BLANC (Nathalie), COHEN (Marianne), « Les Parisiens et la nature », in Nouveaux Paris. La ville et ses possibles, Paris, Ed. Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 2005, pp. 58-65 13 BLANC (Nathalie), MATHIEU (Nicole), « Repenser l’effacement de la nature dans la ville », in Courrier du CNRS, n° 82 Villes, 1996, pp. 105-107 14 DUARTE (Paulette), NOVARINA (G., « L'association : un lobby d'intérêt général », in Actes du Colloque “Actions associatives, solidarités et territoires”, Saint-Etienne, Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 18-19 octobre 2001, pp. 235-243 15 LEFEBVRE, Henri (1974), La Production de l’espace, Paris, Anthropos, 2000, 485 p.

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on a centre/suburb logic, in order to propose another one, based on the « entre-deux », the “in between” space, which emphasizes the role of passages and soft transitions in stitching urban spaces16. These practices of spontaneous and illegal plantations irrigate and connect the whole city.

It develops an inclusive ecological grammar, an approach of defragmentation of urban and natural spaces17. Greening experiments from micro spaces such as the edges of window, the feet of trees, pavements, allow, then, to connect urban scales. Indeed, it centres mainly along the infrastructures of transport and traffic. It plays with limits by leaning and extending beyond railings, fences and street furniture. Its role of connective pattern in the urban stratification is enhanced with the help of vegetal mobility, the absence of stable official localization of these spaces. These activities try to repair or limit the negative effects of urban growth and density. CONCLUSION

If these groups are not the only bearers of original attitudes and initiatives on contemporary urban challenges, their orientations, their actions are nevertheless important in the redefining of the ecological, social and governance concerns in the urban sphere18.

These direct gardening practices assert themselves as tools of insertion and negotiation. They testify of a will to exercise a control over one’s living space. The urban greening movement is a crossroad, a federative principle of a new urbanity based on inclusive logics, direct action and local approach.

16 REMY (Jean), « La ville et la nature : de la mise à distance à l’imbrication », in Espaces et sociétés, n° 118, 2004, pp. 251-266 17 ROROSEC-SERFATY (Perla), « La ville et ses restes », in L’Aménagement urbain : promesses et défis, sous la direction d’Annick Germain, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1991, pp. 232-267 18 BLANC (M), « Politique de la ville et démocratie locale. La participation : une transaction le plus souvent différée », in Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine, n° 68-69,1995