In response to our white paper presentation, we were asked why we picked the Melrose Commons for our project. If we look at its history, we can see that it has faced many of the issues that we are seeing today. A core issue with community gardens is that they are being redeveloped without considering the voices of the community. When we looked into the history of the Melrose Commons, we found that when the city was planning for the South Bronx’s redevelopment in the 1980’s and 1990’s, none of the residents of the community were consulted.

In 1991, the Bronx Center Project initiated the start of the Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Plan. This original plan was met with much disapproval from community residents when brought before the public in 1992, as it would displace thousands of current Melrose residents. Community resident, Yolanda Garcia formed the group Nos Quedamos in order to organize the community and keep them informed of planned developments. The group resisted large scale urban renewal plans and worked along with the City Council and consultants in order to shape the plan into something which benefitted the existing community and allowed for further growth. Since then, the Melrose Commons has been awarded praise from the ADPSR, the National Civic Council, and finally the LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The ongoing success of the development is what makes it such a great role model for community gardens activists working with the city to achieve favorable outcomes for all parties involved. The development also shows how affordable housing and green spaces can and should be built together, not in opposition to each other.

This lack of political recognition seen here relates to another issue that was pointed out with our white paper, which was why we chose to include the history of NYC’s 1970 fiscal crisis. Throughout history, community gardens have gone through a cycle of being developed as a quick fix for people – particularly the poor – that are lacking food, and then being abandoned when political support dies. The government liked how people were beautifying blighted neighborhoods, so they let them build gardens. However, as soon as the opportunity for redevelopment – which was more financially beneficial for the city – came, they changed their minds. Essentially, the government sees them as expendable when it comes to the City’s plans for redevelopment. They have chosen to ignore the complaints of the people actually in these communities, in favor of drawing in more money.

In our previous update, we discussed the social benefits of community gardens. However, we can look not only at healthier diets, but also at the independence and sense of self that is gained from participating in them. During our presentation on Friday, someone asked us what would motivate low income residents to take part in community gardens when all they need already comes from food stamps. Again, we see an unquantified aspect of community gardens. Similar to how they provide residents with a sense of togetherness and community, they allow those that work in them a chance to work hard for their own food; a sense of responsibility. More tangible forms of responsibility that have sprouted from community gardens are community groups and organizing.

We also expanded more on what we did in class on Monday. We had started off by discussing where gardens fall into in terms of government. In New York City, most of the community gardens are under the jurisdiction of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. These gardens were generally formed on city or privately owned vacant lots, and were transferred to the Parks Department for administrative purposes. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and New York Restoration Project (NYRP) are both private land trusts, and collectively own approximately 25% of the city’s community gardens. The distribution of land ownership within survey respondents is different from actual distribution in a number of ways. For example, NYRP gardens constituted 25% of survey respondents, while only 6% of the responding gardens were owned by the Trust for Public Land. The actual distribution is 11% and 14% respectively.

Community gardens in NYC may also choose to affiliate with any number of greening and gardening organizations, institutions, and agencies. These organizations provide everything from resources and a network to fiscal sponsorship and workshops. They are critical to helping gardeners increase membership, learn new skills, and access free materials. GreenThumb is the branch of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation that registers community gardens. In return for registering with the city, gardens are identified as gardens instead of vacant lots, and may be eligible to receive resources such as lumber for raised beds and soil. Green Guerillas, GrowNYC, and Just Food work with gardens individually to help build infrastructure like chicken coops, rainwater harvesting systems, pathways, and sometimes help with building membership or community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. Brooklyn GreenBridge and Bronx Green Up are programs of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the New York Botanical Gardens respectively. These programs are enormously supportive with horticultural advice and educational resources. More Gardens! focuses mostly on advocacy and political activism around garden preservation. Most of the agencies, institutions, and organizations provide educational workshops that are open to the public.

Although we have not gotten a response from Ray Figueroa about connecting us to a Melrose Gardens local, we hope to gain a more personal account of how community gardens have helped people’s lives through this. We intend to find out how informed locals are about the situation with community gardens, how they feel about these problems, and how community gardens have affected their lives. Through what we gather from this, we can go about informing the public on community gardens. This will be done on a more formal level with the interview that we already recorded with Ray and more personally through everyday people and their thoughts. Hopefully, this will speak to audiences of all demographics. On another note, we have created the wordpress url for our website, although we have yet to finalize what information will actually go on it.

We also hope to attend an event held by 596 Acres and Public Space Party  named “Gardens Under Threat Ride.” The affair will include physically looking at the gardens that are endangered to be torn down by private developers. Starting from Grand Army Plaza, the group plans to travel through Brooklyn and into Manhattan. The gardens that will be seen include Maple Street, Roger That, Eldert Street, Children’s Magical and Siempre Verde Community Gardens. By visiting these gardens, it provides a humanistic and personal account of how the community actually celebrates these spaces. At each garden, gardeners will offer testimony about the importance of their spaces as vital tools for education, green infrastructure, and support for community development. The mission of the event is to gather more support to make the city recognize the community gardens as park spaces.

Reference:

http://www.maparchitects.com/melrose-commons-timeline/
http://www.plannersnetwork.org/magazine-publications/case-studies-and-working-papers/melrose-commons-a-case-study-for-sustainable-community-design/
http://www.grownyc.org/files/GrowNYC_CommunityGardenReport.pdf