Cultivating Civic Space in Lasnamäe
by Ekaterina Gladkova
In the heart of Tallinn's largest Soviet-era district, Lasnamäe, a quiet yet meaningful urban transformation is taking root. What began as a modest grassroots initiative has turned into a symbol of civic agency, spatial care, and environmental awareness. Lasnaidee is a community-driven platform founded over a decade ago. It has become an incubator for new urban practices. Among its most visible outcomes is Laagna aed, a public garden that challenges the way we think about common space in post-socialist cities. (https://lasnaidee.ee/laagna-aed-vana/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
Fig. 1. Laagna aed Community Garden in Lasnamäe, Tallinn, Estonia. May 26, 2025.
Photo: Ekaterina Gladkova
Lasnamäe has long struggled with the legacy of monofunctional planning and a lack of inviting public environments. Originally designed to house tens of thousands of residents in the Soviet era, it has retained a reputation as a marginal, car-oriented, and socially fragmented area. But this image is changing, in part thanks to community initiatives that reimagine everyday space as a site of participation and care.
The Laagna Garden, located in the courtyard of Tallinna Laagna raamatukogu, a public library. The community garden has transformed what was once an underused patch of lawn into a vibrant civic space. Nestled just off Laagna tee, the district's central traffic artery, the garden now brings together locals for gardening, seasonal events, and informal education. Built with minimal funding, recycled materials, and the help of dozens of volunteers, it has grown into a civic micro-infrastructure: not just a space for growing plants, but a place where social ties are cultivated.
Fig. 2. Tallinna Laagna Library, a public library at Võru St. 11, Tallinn, Estonia. May 26, 2025.
Photo: Ekaterina Gladkova
Workshops, communal planting days, and open harvest events are a regular part of life in the garden. Residents of different backgrounds, including families, elderly people, and recent immigrants, come together to share knowledge and shape the space collectively. In a district where top-down planning once dictated every square meter, this horizontal, slow, and experimental approach is quietly radical.
Fig. 3. Photo exhibition of balconies in the Lasnamäe district, held in the garden of Laagna. May 26, 2025.
Photo: Ekaterina Gladkova
Laagna Garden is a testing ground for a different kind of urbanism, one based on participation, low-threshold engagement, and ecological stewardship. It invites reflection on the overlooked value of informal, low-cost, and care-based urban interventions in places too often treated as "dormitory districts."
The success of the project also raises wider questions: What would Tallinn look like if each district had a garden like this? How can city policies support, rather than restrict, such bottom-up experiments? And can post-Soviet spaces, so often portrayed through narratives of decline or inertia, become fertile grounds for inclusive, green urban futures? Encouragingly, the initiative has already inspired similar community gardens in other parts of Tallinn, while Lasnaidee’s team actively participates in events and knowledge exchange across the city’s growing network of communal green spaces.
As the climate crisis and social fragmentation reshape our cities, the lessons from Lasnamäe are more relevant than ever. In a place where urban life was once shaped by rigid central plans, it's the small, soft, and slow changes that now point to the future.
Fig. 4. Laagna aed Community Garden. May 26, 2025.
Photo: Ekaterina Gladkova
