Culturalisation and urban horticulture in two World Heritage Cities

Horticulture features widely in research about urban agriculture. Interest is motivated by eco-technical challenges, such as improving household nutrition in expanding mega-cities, closing urban waste cycles through agricultural processes, and examining ‘SMART’ potentials for the low-carbon production of fruits and vegetables. Studies also link participation in urban growing with political expressions of citizenship. These illuminations largely neglect socio-cultural insights, despite the important traditional contribution horticulture has played in shaping urban cultural landscapes and frequently culture appears as a faint backdrop to urban regeneration, or a proxy for consumption. To help illuminate the role of culture and its actor constellations within urban horticulture, the cases of two UNESCO World Heritage cities, Bath (UK) and Bamberg (Germany), are compared. Drawing on Luhmann’s social systems theory and its derivatives, notably Nassehi’s concept of cultural contingency, the article examines cultural dimensions of urban horticulture in the two cities and identifies four types of culturalisation, or empirically observable and complex bundles of practices that explain how urban horticulture is governed and executed. This indicates the local historical embeddedness of rivalry/competition and cooperation among urban gardeners, and the relevance of culture as a potential for innovation in urban horticulture.