The Minister of Radish
He shows us around the garden. I see vegetables, and I hear about the governance of the commons. He is one of the community gardeners at a new subsidised housing project in Vienna called Inner Wiesen Ost Erlaeer Housing. Community gardens are part of the urban mediators for living together that I am investigating in Vienna. 30 families are members of the community garden. They need to spend two weeks per year caring for the garden. They dispatch the everyday garden tasks in work groups: vegetables, trees, tools, kids-play, etc. A minister is responsible for each work group. However, the members are not so many, considering the density of the new project. Most residents prefer waiting to get assigned their own small garden plot since each urban block has its designated area for such activity. He is perplexed since he understands that the residents are tuned by society to consume the collective uses rather than co-constituting them. We get a lovely radish as a souvenir of our visit. Utterly delicious.
Socrates Stratis