This article explores one of the strangest and most spectacular urban policies in postwar Britain: national garden festivals. Initiated by Margaret Thatcher's government, the festivals were vast state-sponsored gardening shows held in deindustrializing cities to reclaim derelict land for the property market. A festival was held every other year between 1984 and 1992 in a different city, five in all. The garden festivals showcased a new kind of urbanism, one that would change the ways that British cities related to nature, to capital, and to the wider world. First, they evinced a unique type of environmental politics—an implicit critique of urban industrial landscapes that was distinct from both the emerging critique of climate change and from older ideas about conservation. Second, they emerged at a time when the attraction of private capital was becoming increasingly central to urban regeneration. The festivals were at the forefront of this turn, outsourcing their events to corporate sponsors. Finally, the festivals offered an idiosyncratic, incoherent version of globalization. They courted a global pool of tourists and capital and invited delegations from across the world to plan events while, in many instances, reinforcing a preexisting racialized social hierarchy shaped by imperial legacies.

中文翻译：

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播种：花园节与去工业化后英国城市的改造

本文探讨了战后英国最奇怪、最壮观的城市政策之一：国家花园节。这些节日由玛格丽特·撒切尔政府发起，是由国家赞助的大型园艺表演，在去工业化的城市举行，为房地产市场开垦废弃土地。从 1984 年到 1992 年，每隔一年在不同的城市举办一个节日，总共有五个。花园节展示了一种新的都市主义，它将改变英国城市与自然、资本和更广阔世界的联系方式。首先，他们展示了一种独特的环境政治——一种对城市工业景观的隐含批评，与新兴的对气候变化的批评和关于保护的旧观念不同。第二，它们出现的时候，私人资本的吸引力越来越成为城市更新的核心。这些节日处于这一转变的最前沿，将他们的活动外包给了企业赞助商。最后，这些节日提供了一种特殊的、不连贯的全球化版本。他们吸引了全球的游客和资本，并邀请来自世界各地的代表团来策划活动，同时在许多情况下，加强了由帝国遗产塑造的预先存在的种族化社会等级制度。