Prendre soin de la nature urbaine en tant que bien commun: le cas de Bologne

The article presents the results of a research on the practices of citizens who in the city of Bologna take care of green spaces as urban commons according to the principles of public engagement and shared administration. Based on a corpus of 28 interviews conducted in 2019-2020 with promoters of collaborative pacts on urban green spaces, the article focuses on the experiences of citizens who have become active individually or in informal groups. We analyse their motivations, their practices and the many ways in which they value nature in the city—socially, relationally, aesthetically and ecologically. The participatory care of urban nature emerges as an ambivalent experience where the individualisation of care is tempered by orientations towards the collective dimension and where, even in the face of risks of depoliticisation, citizens demonstrate their capacity to re-appropriate the public engagement policies promoted by the municipality.