Landscape urbanism and informal space-making: insights from a guerrilla gardening case in Montreal, Canada

ABSTRACT

The present article follows the inception and the development of an unauthorized community garden that emerged out of a re-appropriated composting site in a municipal park in Montreal, Canada. The article identifies the principal reasons and mechanisms that account for how the guerrilla garden was able to remain in a high-profile location for a period of time. The article explores the intertwined combination of the guerrilla garden and the spaces it affected vis-à-vis landscape urbanism and its pursuit of a new urban development paradigm.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all respondents for their time and eagerness to be a part of this study. I would like to thank Dr. Nik Luka, Professor Ricardo Castro, Dr. Sarah Moser, and Nikolaos Gryspolakis whose involvement and support were critical for this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1.. A rather recent discussion on the similarities between landscape urbanism and new urbanism in the Journal of Urban Design (i.e., Journal of Urban Design 2015 20[3]) is one evidence to that. See also an edited volume Landscape Urbanism and its Discontents (Duany and Talen 2013), for a critique collection of various aspects of landscape urbanism.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [752-2015-2401] and a Schulich Graduate Fellowship.