'Take part in the community vegetable garden!': Community appropriation and management of urban public space
This article is based on the ongoing fieldwork that I started in 2013 on the claims made by a group of local people on the state and quality of ‘public space’ in relation to a plot located in a small plaza of a very central neighbourhood of Madrid. The plot belongs to the City Council and cannot be...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2016 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia |
| Repositorio: | e-spacio. Repositorio Institucional de la UNED |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:e-spacio.uned.es:20.500.14468/25263 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/25263 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | 51 Antropología ::5103 Antropología social Madrid ICTs citizen participation technological and political appropriation of public space |
| Sumario: | This article is based on the ongoing fieldwork that I started in 2013 on the claims made by a group of local people on the state and quality of ‘public space’ in relation to a plot located in a small plaza of a very central neighbourhood of Madrid. The plot belongs to the City Council and cannot be built on. After repeated complaints about its abandoned state, local people calling themselves ‘neighbours’ decided to look after it. One of them started a Blog narrating the progress of this urban garden project and initiated the process of obtaining a ‘temporary cession of the plot’ and of getting the City Hall to legalise the project. In little over a year, these ‘neighbours’ deployed a broad range of digital technologies, making of this initiative also a political, hyper-connected and continually monitored project. In cases like this, the agents use information and communications technologies (ICTs) in functional and sometimes remedial ways in order to shape, express, manage and publicize citizens’ activities and claims. These digital tools are significant in relational networks that make it possible to understand citizens’ initiatives promoting ways to manage urban public space that are ‘alternative’ to formal political and administrative management. It is also a collective way of making the city not only ‘smart’ but also ‘sentient’. This ethnographic case helps us to understand the significance of new technologies in current neighbourhood management of urban public space. |
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