Cultivating together: unearthing the transformative potential of community gardening as prefigurative collective action in Ljubljana

Posted on 9. May 2026 by Blaž Križnik

With Laura Mittermaier
Local Environment
Taylor and Francis | Oxfordshire | 2026 | ISSN 1354-9839 | 1469-6711

Community gardening as a form of collective action has the potential to drive transformative social change. Despite this, few studies offer empirical insights into how community gardening affects transformative social change in practice. This study aims to address this gap by examining the Onkraj gradbišča community garden in Ljubljana. Employing fieldwork with participant observation, exploratory and in-depth interviews, and a review of secondary sources as research methods, the study explores how community gardening enables and sustains transformative social change and how institutional support (or lack thereof) impacts community gardening as a transformative community strategy. The findings reveal that Onkraj gradbišča fostered key conditions of transformative social change, including inner transformation, collective leadership, community capacity building, and some scaling strategies. In contrast, scaling up strategies were ineffective and the absence of institutional support limited the impact of community gardening on enabling governance. These findings suggest that the transformative potential of Onkraj gradbišča to contribute to path-shifting urban sustainability transitions was limited. Nevertheless, as a form of prefigurative collective action, Onkraj gradbišča provided a tangible alternative for food production, community capacity building, land use management, and urban planning in the city. The study argues that performing a “vision of a better world” may be the main legacy of Onkraj gradbišča, highlighting the transformative potential of community gardening in Ljubljana.

Source: doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2026.2669757

Re-emerging Civic Urbanism: The Evolving State–Civil Society Relations in Community Building in Seoul

Posted on 10. July 2022 by Blaž Križnik

With Su Kim
Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization, pp. 196-94
Im Sik, Cho, Blaž Križnik, Jeffrey Hou (eds.)
Amsterdam University Press | Amsterdam | 2022 | ISBN 9789463728546

State and markets drove urban development in South Korea for decades, giving little voice to citizens. Recently, citizens have become increasingly engaged in shaping their living environment. While the enabling role of the state in expanding citizen participation is well acknowledged, the importance of community movements has been overlooked. The chapter explores community movements in Seoul and their relations with the state to better understand their contribution to the recent surge of civic urbanism in the city. Comparison of neighbourhood community building in Seoul shows that civic urbanism, while marginalized in the past, has re-emerged as an integral part of urban governance. The chapter also suggests that the growing institutionalization of civic urbanism can weaken its transformative potential to build inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods and cities.

Source: doi.org/10.5117/9789463728546.

Author’s copy is also available for download.

From commodities to community engagement: Localities and urban development in Seoul, Korea

Posted on 8. January 2021 by Blaž Križnik

With Kim Su
Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience, pp. 81-100
Park Se Hoon, Shin Hyun Bang, Kang Hyun Soo (eds.)
Routledge | London | 2021 | ISBN 978-036-74-9840-5

Markets used to be the major drive behind the transformation of localities in Korea. The state facilitated the commodification of localities through property-led urban redevelopment, which resulted in the demolition of deprived residential areas, displacement of the residents, heightened social conflicts, and destruction of social relationship networks. At the same time, localities were sites of grassroots struggles that challenged the state and struggled against the commodification of localities. Recently, the state recognized the negative consequences of urban redevelopment and started to promote state-led urban regeneration to improve the living environment and restore communal life in the cities. This chapter examines the changing relations between the state, property markets and community and their role in the transformation of localities and urban development in Seoul. The comparison of Songhak Maeul and Seowon Maeul shows that the state involvement had a significant impact on the transformation of localities. While the role of state is important, the chapter also argues that the significance of grassroots struggles in the transformation of localities should not be overlooked. Recognizing localities as sites of community engagement could contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of urban development and international development cooperation in Korea, as their success has often been attributed to the state and property markets without much consideration of the state–community relationship in building sustainable cities.

Source: doi.org/10.4324/9781003047599.

Call for papers: Local transformations in urban Asia (CLOSED)

Posted on 8. October 2019 by Blaž Križnik

With Kim Su
Asian Studies, 9(1)
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana | Ljubljana | 2021 | ISSN 2232-5131

The future of Asia seems to largely depend on the effective management of cities and metropolitan regions. Emerging approaches to urban governance in Asia, addressing social, economic and environmental challenges in a more sustainable way, are well acknowledged. Competition and global aspirations of cities in Asia are at the same time considered major drivers of their urban growth. Less attention, however, is placed on the consequences of urban growth on the everyday life in localities. These are not only passive recipients but also as active agents, capable of responding to competition and global aspirations of cities. Moreover, localities are relevant for their growing importance for inclusive urban governance, which aims to foster community development, collaborative economies, grassroots placemaking or expansion of local autonomy. The 2021 special issue of Asian Studies journal, therefore, aims to explore the diverse consequences of urban growth on the transformation of localities in urban Asia by addressing the following key questions:

● How does urban growth affect everyday life in localities across Asia?
● How do localities sustain or resist competition and global aspirations of cities in Asia?
● What is the importance of localities for building just and sustainable cities in Asia?

The special issue aims to bring together contributions from scholars in human geography, urban and regional planning, environmental management, landscape architecture, urban sociology and anthropology, cultural studies or political sciences, which can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the local transformations in urban Asia. It aims to focus on residential neighbourhoods, traditional commercial areas and markets, streets and alleys or urban parks, for instance, to explore how everyday practices and shared identities, embedded in localities, affect and are affected by the urban change. These localities are seldom part of global financial centres, shopping malls or speculative mega projects but belong to multifaceted civic spaces, where diverse social groups can mingle and coexist.

Next from its focus on a comprehensive understanding of localities, the special issue also wants to engage with a locally informed understanding of the local transformations in urban Asia. Cities in Asia were often studied in relation to and based on the methodological tools and explanatory frameworks, borrowed from the Global North, without challenging their relevance for particular Asian urban contexts. This not only restricts the understanding of cities in Asia but also possibilities to challenge general urban theory. The special issue, therefore, aims to bring together contributions that critically address the local transformation in urban Asia while challenging established methodological tools within Asian urban contexts. Theoretical or empirical contributions are welcome from scholars, researchers, PhD students and other experts, particularly from those using a qualitative research approach.

Previously unpublished original contributions should be submitted online by July 1st, 2020 via the journal’s website. Additional information available here.

Community-based urban development: Evolving urban paradigms in Singapore and Seoul

Posted on 1. January 2017 by Blaž Križnik

With Cho Im Sik
Springer | Singapore | 2017 | ISBN 978-981-10-1985-2

The book compares different approaches to urban development in Singapore and Seoul over the past decades, by focusing on community participation in the transformation of neighbourhoods and its impact on the built environment and communal life. Singapore and Seoul are known for their rapid economic growth and urbanisation under a strong control of developmental state in the past. However, these cities are at a critical crossroads of societal transformation, where participatory and community-based urban development is gaining importance. This new approach can be seen as a result of a changing relationship between the state and civil society, where an emerging partnership between both aims to overcome the limitations of earlier urban development. The book draws attention to the possibilities and challenges that these cities face while moving towards a more inclusive and socially sustainable post-developmental urbanisation. By applying a comparative perspective to understand the evolving urban paradigms in Singapore and Seoul, this unique and timely book offers insights for scholars, professionals and students interested in contemporary Asian urbanisation and its future trajectories.

Source: doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1987-6

Recovering streets as communal space in localities: Urban regeneration of Samdeok Town in Seoul

Posted on 16. December 2016 by Blaž Križnik

With Park Hayun
Crossroads: Asian Streets in the Dynamics of Change, pp. 8-17
Heng Chye Kiang and Zhang Ye (eds.)
School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore | Singapore | 2016 | ISBN 978-981-11-1812-8

Cities are faced with growing social and economic disparities, environmental problems and political tensions, which erode their capacity to effectively cope with social, economic and environmental risks. Community-based urban regeneration has been recognised as one of the key approaches that can help cities to achieve a socially inclusive and environmentally balanced urban development. While different views exist on the role of communal space for successful urban regeneration, recovery of local streets, plazas or parks is recognised to play a vital role in bringing together residents with different economic, social and cultural backgrounds. This is seen as an important step towards sustainable development of cities.

Seoul Metropolitan Government has recently placed community building and urban regeneration at the centre of their efforts to address social, economic and environmental challenges in the city. Community-based urban regeneration is expected to improve built environment as well as restore communal life and shared identities in localities. In result, there is also a growing interest in Seoul in recovering streets as spaces of everyday life.

This paper explores urban regeneration of Samdeok Town to understand the changing role of streets as communal space in localities. By taking the Residential Environment Management Project as a case study, this research focuses on how the community-building and urban regeneration affect perception of streets among the residents and their appropriation of streets as communal space in Samdeok Town. The authors conducted extensive fieldwork and attended community workshops as well as interviews with several residents, urban planners, community activists and researchers. The research results show that the perception of streets has been largely changed and the residents have successfully recovered them as their communal space, which played the key role in successful community-based urban regeneration of Samdeok Town.

Source: Academia.edu

Local responses to market-driven urban development in global cities

Posted on 25. March 2015 by Blaž Križnik

Teorija in praksa, 51, pp. 221-240
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana | Ljubljana | 2014 | ISSN 0040-3598

Urban development has become an important instrument of neoliberal urban policy by which cities are trying to respond to global pressures and opportunities. Barcelona and Seoul are taken as case studies with different historical, cultural and institutional background, yet similar when it comes to how neoliberal urban policy and market-driven urban development are embedded into particular localities. The paper compares transformation of Poblenou in Barcelona and Wangsimni in Seoul in terms of planning approach, consequences on the everyday life in locality and local responses to market-driven urban development. Although its outcomes in Poblenou and Wangsimni were rather similar, the local responses were quite different. While the residents in Poblenou saw transformation of the neighbourhood as a threat to their collective identity, the residents in Wangsimni initially perceived it as an opportunity to improve their economic situation. The paper argues that local responses to market-driven urban development in this way reveal what Mlinar calls the mutual interdependence between individuation and globalisation. Although similar structural processes transform localities around the world, the later remain an important source of social and urban change in global cities.

Source: dlib.s/details/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-FPJ1AGLZ

Between Poblenou and Wangsimni

Tag Archives: community

Call for papers: Local transformations in urban Asia (CLOSED)

Recovering streets as communal space in localities: Urban regeneration of Samdeok Town in Seoul