Home Gardening and the Ecological Transition of Small Towns Under Metropolitan Influence: The Case of Magny-en-Vexin, Île-de-France, France
Located one hour from Paris and only 25 kilometers from Cergy, Magny-en-Vexin is a commune in the Val-d’Oise department (France) with a population of nearly 5,600. Surrounded by fields and forests, Magny is part of a regional nature park and is crossed by the Aubette, a river that was once used for the town’s domestic and economic needs, and was the basis for the development of its crafts and small-scale industry (mills, tanneries, chairs factory, sugar mills). Of the bundle of human activities once gathered along the water, the gardens are among the last uses. They enable a dialogue to be recreated with the inhabitants and their elected representatives, who are not only concerned about the risk of flooding from a river whose course and landscapes have been overly artificialized. The gardeners are the actors of new practices that contribute to redefining a meaning but also an intimate relationship with these river spaces for which we are trying to recognize “the value of the place”. Beyond the fence and the object that separates, the gardens seem to constitute today a new lever of appropriation and renewal of a historical landscape; they participate in the revitalization of a town center and bring to light a diversity of socio-spatial forms and practices inducing new looks as well as new individual and collective actions. Based on surveys and in situ observations carried out as part of the Popsu Territoires action research program “Magny-en-Vexin, a small town under metropolitan influence... in search of its lost territory”, this proposal aims to demonstrate that gardens represent an opportunity to rethink the foundations of an urban project where the future is drawn in common.