Planting (in) the City

Urban Gardening and Models of Urban Dwelling

Abstract

Thе article examines urban gardening as a practice of dwelling in the postsocialist Bulgarian city. Drawing on long-term anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Trakia housing district in Plovdiv, the study explores how inter-block gardens and peripheral “rancho” plots are maintained, transformed, and transmitted over time under shifting regimes of urban governance, property, and regulation. Urban gardens are approached as heterotopic and heterochronic spaces in which different practices of care, appropriation, and civic engagement overlap. The analysis demonstrates how repeated practices of planting, maintenance, and protection enable residents to transform abstract public space into lived place. From this perspective, urban gardening is understood as a durable mechanism of urban rootedness and as an analytical lens for understanding postsocialist modes of dwelling and the negotiation of public space.

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