Academic Scientific JournalsChanges in the use of “Morwa” family allotment garden in Łódź in 2010–2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26881/jpgs.2026.3.04Keywords:
family allotment gardens (ROD), use of family allotment gardens, transformation of family allotment gardens, plot in ROD, ŁódźAbstract
Since the very beginning of the operation of allotment gardens, the main goal (idea) of their creation was to provide areas for cultivation. Such gardens were created for the poorest families and the families of underpaid workers who, by cultivating garden plots, could support their modest household budgets, sourcing basic produce grown on their own plot. Changes in everyday life, caused by the development of civilization (including cheap food in hypermarkets) and political changes in Poland, contributed to the intensification of the process of a gradual shift in the use of allotment gardens from agricultural production to recreation (Szkup, 2022). The contemporary importance of Family Allotment Gardens (RODs) results from a combination of production, recreational, social and ecological functions. Allotment gardens should also be treated as multifunctional elements of the urban spatial structure whose importance has been changing with the social, economic and spatial changes in Europe (Bell, et al., 2016). This article attempts to present changes in the use of “Morwa” Family Allotment Garden in Łódź, comparing the use of plots in the garden in 2010 and 2025. The article also presents changes in the socio-demographic features of garden users in analogous time cross-sections. These goals were realized by using a direct inventory and a questionnaire survey among the users of the surveyed garden. The results show very clear transformations of the socio-demographic structure in terms of the garden users’ age and gender. The most important change between 2010 and 2025 is the clear aging of the population of “Morwa” ROD users. In “Morwa” Family Allotment Garden in Łódź, a transformation in the use of plots is taking place. There is a gradual shift in the use of the garden from production use related to the cultivation of vegetables and fruits to leisure and recreational use, but the scale of these changes is small compared to the gardens of the Łódź Voivodeship.
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