Urban Gardening: Motives and the Possibility of Transformation of the Public Space in the City

This diploma thesis pursues the phenomenon of urban gardening. It especially focuses on urban gardening in the form of community gardens, whose number has multiplied in Prague in the recent years. This trend has also caused an interest of the media and thus its is natural to research the motivation of the people, who participate in this activity, whether it is deeper or if it is just a fad. As a theroretical footing the ideas of Manuel Castells about urban social movements as well as the ideas of Henri Lefebvre about the right to the city were used. These authors believed that in the city the human scale is the most important and not financial value of the urban space. In the next part of the theoretical work the problem of public space and its interpretation in social sciences is presented. The analysis is dedicated to urban gardening in Prague. It aims to find whether it is just a temporary fashion or if the gardens could become permanent part of the public space in Prague. The function of community gardens is analysed with the use of a case study of one such garden. The work also tries to find out if the gardens in public space only bring positives or if they can also cause conficts