Search

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of community gardens in a (post)socialist setting during a time of key changes in their perception and management. Community gardens in Zagreb emerged in two specific economic and socio-cultural contexts and a diachronous approach to the study of urban gardens offers a unique insight into differences and similarities reflecting and contrasting those periods. Semi-structured interviews and non-participatory observation were employed. Results show that community gardens in Zagreb are multilayered places which satisfy diverse needs of the urban residents, including home grown food, socializing, recreation, contact with the nature, and supplementation for low pensions. They can also be seen as examples of heterotopias or alternative spaces during both examined periods. In the socialist period they were secluded, private, pseudo-rural places in a semi-authoritarian, communal, and (supposedly) urban and industrial society. In post-socialist Zagreb, characterized by an uncontrolled and unplanned spatial context reliant on neoliberal market-oriented principles, social insensitivity and exclusion, the new gardens are depicted as beacons of communal involvement, grassroots movements, and the ability of citizens to stand together and make their voices heard.

Shrub encroachment and agricultural intensification have been a widespread occurrence in the former communist and socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Such changes have strongly affected grassland areas which are seen as hotspots of biodiversity in Europe. In this study we have investigated the changes in grassland cover as well as the causal mechanism of those changes in a selected region in Northern Croatia during the post-socialist transition. By using the mixed methods approach we combined remote sensing, statistical modelling and a household-based questionnaire (n = 285) to map the changes in the grassland cover and to assess the socio-economic and bio-physical contributing factors of the documented changes. The results demonstrate that areas seeing general depopulation trends and population ageing, along with increases in the amount of educated people are characterized by shrub encroachment and farmland abandonment, while flatlands and lowland areas are seeing higher rates of grassland to farmland conversion. The results also show that the partial de-agrarization characteristic for the socialist period has become a full de-agrarization in the post-socialist period, with the main impetus being education, rather than employment, as was the case during socialism.