Why community gardens are called “shared gardens” in Paris

OnTheCommons.org:

Paris’ (France) City Council has recently developed a policy in favour of shared gardens (jardins partagés) in the city. A charter has been produced that sets some conditions on governance and the balance between public access and the specific rights of the group that cares for the garden. Like many European countries we had a strong -though declining- tradition of allotments, sets of individual gardens in a space provided by a local community or sometimes by an employer. But the notion of community gardens had become quite foreign to us, even if in the past, sections communales (the old French name for commons) existed in many villages and cities. Alice Le Roy and the other promoters of the shared gardens initiatives have taken inspiration in the community gardens that flourish in many US cities, for instance in NYC. But in Paris, it was not possible to call them community gardens. That’s in part because …