The Manoteras Community Allotment as a «non-place»

What is a city? On the one hand, it is a geometric reality, whether planned or not; and on the other hand, it is something metaphorical, the sum of the emotional projections of those who inhabit it. Both realities combine and transform each other. The use we make of cities defines them. A city dies when we do not use it.

Before the HCM, there was nothing, a lost slope, abandoned, impassable without a heart or a soul. By Bringing life, in all senses, to this place it became an alive space. For some, a meeting point; for others a green oasis amongst the cement; and for a few, a point of conflict, but without a doubt, a point on the map for everyone.

The conquest of sites in which to grow social networks sets out an alternative to a purely residential city and to the individualistic life the city imposes. Urban allotments have been created on empty sites or tips, as is the case with HCM. Common graves for unfinished projects, forgotten by neoliberal planning.

As a physical working place, the allotment continuously modifies, while as a symbolic space, it harbours different meanings at the same time, as many as there are neighbours. We, the gardeners, who are largely the agents of these constant changes, are also affected by them and inevitably transformed by them. We now know that you can´t understand someone if you don´t understand the pot where he grows.