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Mihailović, Andrija; Predan, Barbara

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Urban gardens, historically vital for subsistence and community resilience, have evolved into critical sites that challenge prevailing socio-economic norms and foster social and environmental activism, including feminist movements. In contrast, contemporary design practices have increasingly diverged from foundational principles of empathy and responsible stewardship, with mass production and a 'throw-away' culture signalling a need for re-evaluation of ethical and ecological responsibilities. Building on these roles, this paper proposes a central question for reimagining social design: How can urban gardens be leveraged to redefine design practices through the lens of social design? Specifically, it investigates how urban gardens serve as living laboratories for "design for care," exploring their role in cultivating human-to-human and human-to-more-than-human relationships crucial for repairing societal and ecological systems. The paper argues that urban gardens, by providing a context for learning within their diverse ecological and social systems, offer a powerful pedagogical model for engineering and product design education. These spaces expose students to multiple forms of diversity, human, social, cultural, and more-than-human, which are often overlooked by traditional design tools. Consequently, urban gardens serve as inclusive educational environments, fostering in future designers and engineers the sensitivity, collaborative skills, and ethical awareness essential for designing for and with diverse communities. Thus, urban gardens are positioned as a practical and conceptual toolkit for rethinking diversity within design and engineering education.

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