Secondary Sources:
1. “Community Gardens.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 03 June 2010. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. This secondary source talks about the positive contributions that gardens give to a community, specifically the physical and mental benefits to gardening. We plan to investigate these health benefits further, and find the primary case studies for our paper.
2. Crouch, Patrick. “Evolution or Gentrification: Do Urban Farms Lead to Higher Rents?” Grist. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2013.
This Primary source is a personal account of the effects of gentrification in his gardening city. The Urban gardener, Crouch, never thought the gentrification in his city, Detroit, would be correlated with the influx of gardening. Crouch posits that as the gardening seeks to beautify lands and improve the poor communities, the communities gain higher market value and more attractive to white people. He interviews another urban farmer, Karen Washington, from the South Bronx, NY, who speaks about her similar feelings. While gardens gave residents a sense of pride and feeling of ownership, they were now being taken over by the white market and rise of urban white farmers. Washington also gives a reason for the need of gardens in her community. While they are not necessarily to provide food, these gardens helped “push drug dealers out, stop illegal dumping, and create a little beauty in areas that were battling blight and absentee landlords.”
This source will show both the negative gentrification issues and positive community factors to urban gardening.
3. Gottlieb, Robert, and Anupama Joshi. “Growing Justice.” Food Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2010. 134-49. Print.
We will use this informational and insightful book to exemplify how gardening and has always been a primary part of immigrant culture. The need to find a connection to the new lands, as well as stay connected to their cultural values has been the attractive force for immigrants in gardening. Additionally, this book shows how immigrants who have trouble assimilating and learning English navigate to gardening as a means for comfort and cultural connection. Authors, Gottlieb and Joshi, dive into the history of Urban gardening and quote many stories and interviews showing the many needs and benefits of urban gardening for immigrant communities. This source will be extraordinarily helpful to reflect on the urban and immigrant Alphabet city neighborhood as many of the residents have similar histories and cultural heritages to the ones quotes in this book.
Primary Sources:
4. Jacobson, Louis. “Planning News.” Planning [New York] May 1999, Vol. 65 Issue 5 sec.: 24-25. EBSCO. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. .
We will use this Newspaper article as a primary source, as it describes in an objective way the initial intentions considered when establishing the gardens in the Lower East Side area. In addition it provides a brief history review of a specific story that is meant to depict the meaning of the gardens in the development of the community. This source also refers to the process of gentrification and its counter-intutive effects on the community.
5. “SIXTH STREET CENTER.” SIXTH STREET CENTER. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
This websites focuses on the Sixth Street community center agenda, and how it chooses to incorporate the “green”, organic values and movements in the education it provides for the neighborhood’s youth. In addition, we can learn from the activities and amenities it has to offer how it naturally brings the different people of the community together, and strengthens it through community gardening around the neighborhood.
6. Murphy, Anthony. “The 6BC Garden: A Haven in Alphabet City.” Weblog post.Untapped New York. Untapped Cities, 25 July 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. .
In his post, Murphy provides an insight on the gardens’ function in the Lower East Side in New York and their essentiality in setting a fresh, natural tone to the neighborhood. He includes several pictures of the different gardens and descriptions of how they differ from each other and what they have in common. He also indicates the role of GreenThumb and 6th Street Community Center in Alphabet City in maintaing the gardens.
Aliza And Liron
