Urban oases and spatial injustices: Community gardens in the Cape Flats through a Lefebvrian lens

Abstract

This study explores how community gardens in Cape Town's marginalised Cape Flats area enact spatial justice through everyday practices. I draw on Henri Lefebvre's ideas on the social production of space, especially the spatial triad (space as perceived, conceived, lived), to unpack how physical, ideological and symbolic dimensions of space intersect in these urban gardens. The findings underscore how community gardeners physically transform otherwise neglected land into ‘perceived’ spaces of cultivation, asserting spatial agency despite insecure tenure and limited infrastructure (water access, soil quality). In terms of ‘conceived’ space, gardeners negotiate and subvert top-down planning logics by repurposing school grounds and municipal reserves. Finally, gardens as ‘lived’ space emerge as sites of cultural reclamation and social cohesion, where crops, seed exchanges and collective action sustain memory and identity in the face of apartheid's legacies. However, persistent challenges, such as tenure precarity, resource scarcity and competing land-use pressures, threaten each garden's longevity. These findings are based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of 34 community gardens and key state actors, supplemented by documentary analysis of planning and policy frameworks. Gardens function as urban oases of resistance and resilience. Addressing urban gardens in the largely overlooked Global South context fills a critical gap in urban justice scholarship. High-impact urban planning should aim to help community gardens secure land tenure, embed them in formal spatial frameworks and recognise their multifunctional role in enhancing food security, cultural preservation and equitable urban transformation.