Urban Gardening in Germany: Cultivating a Sustainable Lifestyle for the Societal Transition to a Bioeconomy

• Main Authors: Bastian Winkler, Anika Maier, Iris Lewandowski
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-02-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: urban gardening; survey; motivations; characterization; cultivation methods; terrabioponics; transformative group; societal transition; bioeconomy
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/801

Urban gardening has the potential to turn the growing number of consumers into conscious producers by raising awareness of natural resource cycles, contributing to environmental conservation and climate change mitigation. This study investigated the motivations for urban gardening in Germany, based on an extensive review of 657 urban gardening project websites. The subsequent online survey of 380 project participants provides a characterization of the gardeners, giving insight into both cultivation methods and technologies used and the participants’ consumer behavior. It was shown that urban gardening has an influence on consumer behavior and can induce a change towards a more sustainable lifestyle. The gardens provide a space for the exchange of social values, knowledge and ideas on different ways of life among the diverse participants. Hence, urban gardening creates far more than just food; it influences society on multiple levels. Urban gardening can support the bottom-up societal transition towards a bioeconomy as both have common attributes. Finally, the paper proposes an innovative, resource-efficient cultivation system that may attract further societal groups to the urban gardening lifestyle, with the aim of fostering the development of the bioeconomy.