All posts by Kelly Garland

Project Update 4

The Future of Community Gardens

Since our last update, our group has made a great deal of progress in understanding our issue and also with actually engaging with the community and people involved in protecting Community Gardens. On Sunday, Sara, Oneeka, Lisa and Kelly went to visit the Melrose Commons development in the Bronx. We are able to walk around a small area of the neighborhood and in just a few blocks, found 4 different community garden spaces. It was great to be out and see a few of the spaces we have been studying throughout the semester. While in Melrose Commons we were able to meet up with Ray Figueroa again to find out more about the work he does in this particular community. Meeting with him a second time was very helpful, since we all have more information about the issue of protecting the gardens than we did the first time Ray met with us. Ray explained the role of Nos Quedamos (We Stay) in protecting the land the gardens sit on to preserve their role in the community. The garden he showed us was right across from a school, making it a prime target for developers. He also explained how having a garden benefits the children who go to the school, and the community as a whole by running different educational programs.

Ray also told us about the work he does at the Brook Park garden which he affectionately refers to as ‘his garden’. He clearly has put a lot of time and effort into the programs there and has amazing stories about the work he has done. It was interesting to see the two different sides of the issue, the first being the activism and policy work needed to protect the gardens, and the second being the actual amazing work that the gardens bring about in communities. Ray talked about the Youth Community Farm Project he organizes at Brook Park which works with young people coming through the court system and allows them to farm in the garden as an alternative to incarceration. Overall this meeting was very productive and gave us a lot more to think about. We were also able to formally interview Ray and record his answers to use as material for our video project.

As far as research, our group is still looking into the documents Ray has given us regarding possible policies to be implemented. He gave us a transcript of his testimony to city council for the gardens protection where he highlights the key issues we have discussed before. The more we learn about the issue, the more we see how vast and diverse the groups involved are. Green Thumb signs were posted around the gardens we saw in Melrose Commons so we investigated the group a little further.

In April 1974, the New York City’s first community garden was formed after the City Office of Housing Preservation and Development approved a lease for one dollar a month. It was called the “Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden.” The city loved that these vacant lots were being beautified and used by willing community groups. This created useful, open space in poor neighborhoods. This led to the creation of the GreenThumb program in 1978 which provides organization and assistance.

As the GreenThumb program became more established, the one dollar token lease with the city changed into a licensing agreement. Despite the fact that there was no permanent agreement with the city, community gardens remained. They were resilient against pressures to build housing on these ‘vacant lots.’

Today, GreenThumb serves the largest amount of community gardens via materials and organization.

In 1984, they created the Garden Preservation Program and ten-year leases.

On January 8, 1986, the city destroyed Adam Purple’s famous Garden of Eden. This was the first major garden that was destroyed for subsidized housing.

In the mid-1990s, the city started recovering from the fiscal crisis, leading to pressure on community gardens to become development sites. The city moved the GreenThumb program from the Department of General Services to the Parks Department.

Community gardens faced great adversity when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani placed the city’s over 700 gardens up for disposition for private development. The situation was very similar to what we see today with Mayor Bill De Blasio. The change left many residents upset because there were approximately 11,000 empty lots to choose from for development.

Most of the gardens targeted by Giuliani were spared when two not-for-profit land trust groups offered to buy them. At that time, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer got a restraining order, preventing the city from touching a single flower on its remaining 600 gardens. This agreement lifts that restraining order, allowing the city to immediately build affordable housing on 38 gardens while protecting 400 others from future development or so it was believed.

From here, our next steps are to solidify our policy recommendation and make our white paper more concise. We also need to go to a few more garden sites and get more footage for our video which we plan to do in the upcoming weeks. Ray will be setting up a meeting with a gardener in Harlem for us to talk to and interview to get another perspective for our video and research. We are also planning to have a few group members go to the Gardens Under Threat Ride and BBQ and hopefully get video footage from that event as well. Our project seems to be progressing well, we have learned a lot and now we just need to channel that information into a concrete project instead of abstract information.


Research links:

http://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/community-gardens/movement

http://www.lizchristygarden.us/

http://nyccgc.org/about/history/

http://www.grownyc.org/files/GrowNYC_CommunityGardenReport.pdf

http://www.wnyc.org/story/85574-city-settles-fate-of-community-gardens/

 

 

Reading Response

The Right to the/Just City

The articles this week made some very interesting points in the discussion of how community planning goals interact with the reality of the city itself. I have consistently been asking in class where the ownership or power is truly in place concerning the neighborhoods of the city. The question is: who has the right to determine the city’s future, whether it be planners, city officials, or the residents?Throughout our previous discussions I have been trying to reconcile this disparity and have so far been unable to see a clear-cut answer. Fainstein finally addresses this inquiry in his paper, Justice and Urban Transformation: Planning in Context. Fainstein asserts that urban planners cannot just devise a model of what the ideal city would be and then tear down the existing city to build their vision. While this may be a crude generalization, Fainstein says that urban planning movements throughout history have all been carried out in this way. He mentions planners such as Ebenezer Howard, who modeled a ‘garden city’, as well as Daniel Burnham’s ‘City Beautiful’ concept. Fainstein states that these men’s, “implicit theoretical arguments dwelled on the nature of the good city instead of how one derived either of the ideals or the means to attain them.” So, while planners like Burnham and Howard may have had highly impressive theoretical ideas of how a city should run, they didn’t take into consideration the existing city that stood before them.

Harvey’s Rebel Cities reading put an economic perspective on the issue of how cities function under capitalism. He asserts that in urban development today, the human rights of residents are being ignored in order to fuel capitalism and growth. The city is seen as a profit making machine, not as a product of human expression and sustainability. Land use rights and profit margins are trumping the care for basic human rights of urban residents. People who live in a space are inherently invested in that space. Their voice on that space’s use is important regardless of what a land use piece of paper or zoning law says, which is not something which key players in the issue are taking enough into consideration before targeting areas for development. Using an eloquent quote from David Park, Harvey looks at the human aspect of urban planning and raises questions about what we have to consider before claiming to have found a ‘solution’ for a particular community. Cities can account for social relations, connection with nature, supportive communities, and countless opportunities for personal growth.

Discussion Q: Which rights should be given more consideration in planning decisions? Resident’s unwritten human rights or Public/Private property rights? What is given more consideration under our current system of urban planning?

Reading Response

Community, Part 2: Organizing and Planning

Community is a word that tends to be stretched countless different ways without one overarching or even unifying definition. One very important point I got from Harold DeRienzo’s article is that communities are not just places, they are defined by the presence of interdependence and a commonality and these two factors give the community agency to act and develop. The two models he assigns for community development recognize the political framework of communities in two unique lights. The first, called the Static Enhancement Model, fully accepts the existing social, political, and economic situation surrounding a community and suggests ways that the community can enhance their standing within this situation. DeRienzo rejects this model, saying that realities are not static, they are constantly being created and changed. The Transformative Model better fits DeRienzo’s ideas, as well as the ideas of Tom Angotti, who focuses on policies and economies and how they can better work to serve communities. Both articles see communities and the political landscape as working together fluidly. Power is a critical aspect of these frameworks. DeRienzo says that power lasts for as long as people remain working together, and disappears as soon as they disperse.

Still, many communities are controlled by outside sources of power, especially those with low income residents. Tom Angotti looks at community planning, and its interaction with the large scale powerful real estate development of New York City. He cites Robert Fitch’s Assassination of New York as demonstrating how the FIRE sector dominates the city’s land use and fiscal policies. This sector has a huge impact on the political landscape as the biggest financial backer of political campaigns. So how has community planning stood up to such a huge power force in New York City? Angotti describes community planning movements as dynamic and sophisticated. It’s players are constantly working to create new strategies and ways to interact with the real estate stakeholders of the city. He says that urban planning can work to mediate the gap between real estate development and local community interests with this dynamic sophistication. Combined with DeRienzo’s power concept of the inherent capabilities of people working together, Angotti makes a strong case for the role of urban planning.

DQ: In each of our projects, where is the power held? In the community or outside of it? How do we give more power to unified communities?

Reading Response

Community, Part 1: Development and Control

The Community Development reader chapters were very interesting because they looked at the essential question of why communities exist. We have talked a lot about preserving communities in New York City and ways to influence policies regarding them, but it is important to discuss why they matter in the first place. In the realm of large urban areas, communities are often overlooked in the bigger economic and political picture of things. However, they are a vital element to the people who live their lives in these cities. While it was thought that urbanization would wipe out the existence of communities, that is simply not the case. Urbanization has changed the ways in which communities operate, but does not erase the need people innately have to connect with one another. Communities in a rural setting were necessary from an economical standpoint because people relied on one another for the goods and services necessary to survive. While this aspect is not necessary in urban environments, the social and psychological services provided by community belongingness is perhaps even more essential in urban centers.

Chapter 2 of the Reader looks at poor communities and the ways the government is working to ‘develop’ them. O’Connor points out that the term community development really doesn’t have any sort of standard definition. Normally it is used to describe interventions into a community as part of a long term strategy. The problem with these individual ‘interventions’ is the creation of an abundance of short term programs which address immediate needs but do not create the infrastructure for lasting improvements in the community. These ‘solutions’ are also competing with the economic interests in a community, especially those in New York City that are targeted for development. Throughout the chapter we see that there are so many different interests at play in one community that there is really no solution that can please everyone involved. The accounts of various housing and development strategies throughout history highlight the fluctuation between different interests and how when one party gets what they want another loses out.

In Chapter 3, DeFilippis looks at the histories of both community control and development. I found this chapter to be the most confusing because the struggle between who should control the fate of communities is so unclear. Each side to the argument has valid claims- residents should have a say in what happens to their homes, but landowners and investors also have a right to invest and develop. While residents have important views regarding their communities, they might not know the bigger picture of the issue or plan. And just as valid, urban developers may know about the big picture of their hopes for the project, but know nothing about the community that exists where they want to view. While learning about this topic, I’m not sure I see a clear side that is right. Hopefully by reading more about the subject I can begin to form a more well rounded view of the issue myself.

DQ: Who has the right to say what happens in a community? What are the qualifications- Land ownership? Years of residence? Income? Education? Public Involvement? Political Office?

Housing Plans for (in)Equality

The Capital of Capital, Part 2

This week’s readings once again show us the inherent inequalities present in every affordable housing plan presented by the city in the past decades. It seems that for every attempt to equalize the housing market, further divisions and more problems are created. In his article detailing the effects of DeBlasio’s latest affordable housing plan, Stein makes it clear that the plan will not have the game changing effect it is marketed to achieve. He goes into many aspects of DeBlasio’s plan that are often overlooked by media outlets who promote it as a radical new affordable housing solution for New Yorkers.

The impact of inclusionary zoning is interesting because at first glance, it appears to be a way for builders to create more affordable units than were previously allowed by the existing laws. However, as Stein points out, it brings twice as many middle class and market rate renters along with the supposed ‘affordable’ housing which completely changes the face of the neighborhoods the projects are built in- a so called ‘trojan horse for gentrification’.

As Lason explains in Chapter 6, zoning was originally intended to mold the city into a “large and smoothly operating machine” in the tradition of Taylor. This concept evolved into Moses’s vision of superblocks under zoning regulation for specific purposes. In the 1960s, these functionalist views were being combatted by planners and incentive zoning was introduced, where builders were granted permission to build in certain areas in exchange for providing public access spaces. Now this incentive zoning is being used in a very similar way to promote affordable housing as discussed by Stein in the DeBlasio plan.

When these new developments go into effect they will ultimately increase the divide between low and high income residents, while only serving about 3% of the city’s need for low income housing. Despite DeBlasio’s optimism about the impact of the new housing plan it is hard to ignore the principles of planning described by Larson or the obvious flaws highlighted by Stein to the principles on which the plan is based.

Discussion Question:

Is the city’s main incentive really to support low income residents, or to increase real estate market values through increased development in low income neighborhoods, spearheaded with the ‘affordable housing’ label?