Starting a big project like the one that Gittleman proposes is tough in a city like New York City. Empty lots that have the capacity to turn into community gardens may be hard to come by, but is this project really feasible? Since our city is constantly expanding upwards, the best place to have community gardens would be on rooftops. For example, there are many apartment buildings in the Queens area which have flat roofs but they’re often not used. One option is to give an incentive to the building owners to have community gardens on the roof, which the tenants can use. There are a lot of community gardens in the Bronx, Brooklyn and upper Manhattan area but not that many throughout the rest of the boroughs (2% of the gardens are in Staten Island and 5% are in Queens). I looked up where the community garden near me was and there is one community garden in the Queens Botanical Garden in all of the Bayside, Fresh Meadows, College Point, Whitestone area. Even though the article mentions that community gardens aren’t seen to increase the vegetation in NYC, they actually do. Vegetation has a lot of positive effects on the environment as a general because of all of its benefits which have been previously discussed in class (i.e. reducing pollution, improving air quality, etc.).
Gittleman gives an idea to replace vacant lots with community gardens. This seems like a good idea except the main problem with such ideas is that after the community garden is in place, will the community be able to retain these gardens? A lot of funds will go into these gardens and it seems as though the city will end up saving a lot because community gardens retain a lot of stormwater. What are other places where community gardens or mini gardens can be placed? I live in an area where the sidewalks are quite wide and I’ve actually seen people plant vegetables on the outer edge of the sidewalk where there were originally weeds. If the edges of these sidewalks were turned into mini gardens, that could also help a lot with stormwater runoff and other environmental problems that NYC has.
