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Abstract |
Urban green space and urban green infrastructure as contributors to city qualities have received growing scholarly and practical attention. Of the many forms of urban green space, we focus on urban green commons (UGC), arguing that issues of environmental justice are highlighted and strengthened in the perspective of commons. The UGC concept has been used with slightly different meanings, where e.g. Németh (2012) defines urban commons (not only green spaces) as being collectively owned, held in joint use, and to which everyone has access. Coldings and Barthels (2013:157) definition of UGC includes urban green space of varied ownership and which “depend on collective organization and management”, as e.g. community gardens and allotment gardens, which are not open to all. In this study, we define UGC as green spaces that legally are accessible to anyone, which in a Swedish context is where the Right of Public Access applies (SEPA 2020). However, just because you have the legal right of access does not mean that you have realized access.We focus on access in a broad sense explored from an environmental justice perspective. The degree of access is often defined quantitatively such as proximity to green spaces, or by how many from a certain social group use these spaces (Kabisch & Haase 2014). However, access is a complex concept, and inspired by Rigolon (2016) we include mental (e.g. fear), social (e.g. company), physical (e.g. roots, ice), and structural (e.g. transport, information) aspects of access. There are different ways of theorizing and analyzing environmental justice (e.g. Anguelovski 2020), and in this study, we follow Svarstad and Benjaminsen (2020), who defines environmental justice as distributive, recognition, procedural, and capabilities, and Rutt and Gulsrud (2016) who apply this lens on access to UGC. We find that within these categories all aspects of environmental justice can be explored.UGC are intended to be accessible for all people – but is that really the case? Loftus (2020) raises the question about what really is included in the expression “all the people” that often is used in policy and planning declarations, also concerning urban green spaces. But are they in practice UGC from an environmental justice perspective? The use of UGC is increasingly studied, but people with impaired mobility, e.g. using a wheelchair, is one example of a group whose access to urban green spaces has been largely neglected. Most studies about this group include all disabilities (Burns 2013) or are not focused solely on the urban context (Burns 2013, Stigsdotter 2018). However, Corazon et al. (2019) present a qualitative study with people with mobility impairment in cities. |
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