‘Quiet’ green community innovations at the interface of public and private ownership in an old neighbourhood in Zhengzhou, China

This paper examines informal urban gardening practices within a 70‐year‐old industrial neighbourhood in Zhengzhou, central China, employing the conceptual framework of ‘annexed common space for private green infrastructure’ (ACS‐PGI). Through urban morphological and typological analysis, it interrogates how historical institutional legacies, urban land tenure regimes, local governance structures, socio‐spatial configurations and cultural‐agricultural traditions collectively inform and sustain these grassroots greening practices. Adopting a structural attribution system framework, the study advances a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted structural determinants underpinning informal gardening. Departing from Western‐centric interpretations that often frame such practices as acts of political contestation, the Zhengzhou case elucidates a historically embedded, socially legitimised and spatially articulated phenomenon rooted in collective memory, communal land‐use rights and tacit state tolerance. This research contributes to urban socio‐environmental scholarship by underscoring the necessity of situating informal urban greening within its distinct institutional and cultural‐historical context, thereby offering critical insights for the theorisation of sustainable urban green infrastructure and community agency.