Les jardins collectifs ont-ils droit de cité ?

Collective gardens, a term which covers many different types of gardens, raise new issues around the environment, social links, exchanges and the protection of ‘ordinary’ nature in metropolitan territories. These gardens are often initiated by spontaneous collective aspirations which ignore public policies. But they become institutionalised spaces once the local authorities take over responsibility for them. Although they may feature in politicians’ declarations, they rarely feature in urban projects, particularly where space is subjected to intense real estate pressure. These collective gardens then do not enjoy the protection they deserve in view of the services they provide. By taking a new look at the history of family gardens, which enjoy some measure of recognition, this article proposes further measures that might be studied in order to better integrate collective gardens into urban projects. Several approaches are considered, the first looking at legal measures that could give these gardens specific statutory protection that would limit their precarity. The second approach looks at the developing movement for urban ecology, in which the garden has an important role to play, despite the difficulties of introducing it to town-planning tools. The last orientation is founded on an extension of our notions of heritage in order to encompass the collective garden as a king of median space between nature and culture

A Socio-Ecological Approach to Conserve and Manage Riverscapes in Designated Areas: Cases of the Loire River Valley and Dordogne Basin, France

The environmental management of rivers faces a substantial geographical problem: due to their elongate shape and their position at the valley bottom, the area that they cover is fragmented by territorial borders. Therefore, only very few river basins or substantial parts of them have yet been assigned as dedicated sites (nature reserves, parks, etc.). Commonly, these sites occur in a scattered pattern within the riverscape and belong to different administrative units, which makes coordinated conservation and management difficult. Moreover, access to documented results is limited, and the practical experience of site managers remains an unexploited source of knowledge. Here, we compare two sites, the Loire valley (with a large zone protected by a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Natura 2000 sites network, and a French Regional Natural Park, which are partially overlapping) and the Dordogne watershed (entirely belonging to the first UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of this kind and a French Public Basin Establishment). The targets concerning conservation and sustainable management of these sites differ, however, they all focus on cultural and ecological sustainability. Combining reports and interviews with the respective site managers with literature back searches, and analyzing these data with case study and content analysis methods, we addressed the following questions: (1) What are the priority management issues, including threats that impact the site from outside, and how are they tackled? (2) Who are the stakeholders and what are their interrelationships? (3) What are the dynamics of socio-ecological systems related to riverscapes? (4) How to conserve and manage riverscapes with socio-ecological approaches? and (5) What are the best management practices from the Loire River Valley and Dordogne basin cases that can be harnessed in other riverscapes? We show that the Loire River Valley and Dordogne River basin present positive examples for a transdisciplinary socio-ecological approach to conserving and managing riverscapes, integrating diverse stakeholder knowledge in participatory decision-making, recognizing the natural character of the river, and coupling social and hydrological systems. The greatest achievement of the site managers is that they have built up trust and found feasible solutions for satisfying the different interests of diverse stakeholders. Ingenuity and perseverance, combined with excellent moderation skills, were the most important characteristics leading to success. The overall target of this paper is to evidence problems and their solutions concerning the management of dedicated sites that are connected to rivers, to encourage the creation of further sites of this type, and to facilitate cooperation between different types of dedicated sites

Jardins en ville, Villes en jardin

International audienceDans le cadre du programme Popsu (Plate forme d'observation des projets et des stratégies urbaines), analyse de la place et des formes que prend le jardinage dans 8 villes d'Europe : parc urbain, jardin partagé, ouvrier, friches urbaines occupées, toits d'immeubles, jardins en logements sociaux. En fin d'ouvrage, essais de Pascal Amphoux, Nathalie Blanc, Nicolas Gilsoul, Bruno Marmirol