URBAN AGRICULTURE/URBAN OASES IN THE "CONCRETE JUNGLE":
The Culture of Community Gardening in the Bronx

By Professor Juliana Maantay

Urban agriculture/community gardening in the Bronx has multiple roles, including economic, environmental, and cultural. These roles are particularly important in light of urban sustainability issues and environmental justice concerns. These concerns include differential access to open space, recreation, and fresh produce in poorer communities and communities of color, as well as differential environmental and health impacts of unsustainable practices on these communities.

Urban agriculture is a relatively new phenomena in many large and densely settled cities around the world, including New York City. In much of the historic past, cities were founded on or in close proximity to the most productive agricultural lands. These farms in the cities' hinterlands then supplied the cities with most of the necessary food supplies, but as cities have increased in physical extent, much of the most productive nearby farmlands have been taken over by urban sprawl. Therefore, food must travel ever-greater distances to reach the urban market, making food more costly, and having adverse environmental ramifications caused by long-haul transportation.

Interest in the potential of urban agriculture has grown recently. There are huge economic and environmental costs in bringing food to the cities and hauling away organic wastes. Since organic wastes are then landfilled rather than reused as fertilizer, rural farmers are forced to rely on petroleum-based fertilizers, which lack organic matter and microorganisms, thereby diminishing the soil's long-term fertility. Urban agriculture is seen as a cost-effective way to feed people and to treat the wastes now discharged to local environment, reducing pollution of rivers, estuaries and seas.

Proponents cite historical trends as evidence of the potential of urban agriculture to achieve sustainability. For instance, the pre-industrial city was "to a substantial degree a closed-loop system. The liquid and solid wastes of the city were returned to the land and served as the prime source of soil building and enrichment for the production of perishable food for the city...With the industrialization of the last two centuries came rapid urbanization and the development of a dichotomous planning concept that created a functional separation between the 'country' and the 'town,' with the countryside producing food and the city industrial goods. Urban land use planning and hygiene principles discouraged urban farming. The development of large-scale waste management systems that dispose of rather than recycle waste, as well as the change in the composition of waste from largely organic to increasingly inorganic and toxic waste, made recycling of waste into farming a complex task.... A 'complete' or 'sustainable' design for a city would be a closed loop, with all the wastes of one process used as an input of another process. The city would be in balance with its bioregion and with the biosphere" (United Nations Development Programme 1996:12-14). Therefore, urban agriculture is seen as a viable solution to urban food supply and waste disposal problems.

Proponents of urban agriculture stress the need to link nutrient inputs and outputs in a closed, coordinated system, and they hold that not only will a substantial increase in urban agriculture ease global and local food distribution problems, help use urban waste more efficiently and cost-effectively, reduce pollution, and improve peoples' diets, but there will be many more localized benefits, some of which focus less on the practical considerations and more on the philosophical and spiritual (Sachs 1990).

Such programs also bring communities together and restore a sense of connection with natural processes - benefits that are too frequently lost in the asphalt jungle of modern cities....While in many ways, cities are more environmentally friendly than other forms of human habitation, they also separate people from nature and give them the false sense that they exist outside the limits imposed by nature. Urban agriculture can bring nature back into the cities and help restore this connection" (Nelson 1996).

New York City's current community garden system started about 25 years ago as an effort by the City to maintain interim uses for vacant lots that the City suddenly owned: lots that had been abandoned, foreclosed on for non-payment of taxes, or formerly contained buildings which were casualties of landlord arson. These vacant lots tended to be located primarily in the City's poorer and more heavily minority and immigrant neighborhoods, reflecting the upheaval caused by ill-advised urban renewal schemes and "white flight" of the 1960s and 1970s. The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) instituted a program called Operation Green Thumb, which leased city-owned (usually in-rem) properties to community groups who would then utilize them as gardens accessible to the public. Most leases are short term (one or two years), with the understanding that at any time the City can retake the property either for its own use (for housing, etc.) or for sale to developers at public auction to bring funds to the City's coffers.

The City therefore received considerable benefit from this program, since these abandoned or otherwise liability-type properties became, in effect, someone else's responsibility, while retaining the City's ownership and disposition rights over the properties. The lots, typically in bad shape, and having had often become dumping grounds, were cleaned up with free (volunteer) community labor, and generally became assets to the communities they are located in. Anecdotal evidence suggests that property values of homes near successful community gardens are above average for the area. Many of the gardens are thriving and long-term, sometimes multi-generational projects, with fruit trees and labor-intensive landscaping that required many years to mature and perfect. Community residents with this much time and effort invested in their gardens are less apt to quietly submit to the City taking back their gardens for development schemes that rarely benefit the local community. Common situations include the City requiring the vacating of the garden in a lower income neighborhood that is beginning to gentrify, in favor of using the land for housing that would be unaffordable to most people in the community. Sometimes the gentrification occurs as a direct response to the beautification programs and community organization resulting from the garden's existence. It is thus a double injury to the community: first, losing the garden, and second, suffering the adverse impacts of gentrification, with the attendant rising rents, higher prices in local shops, and the demise of many older "mom and pop" type businesses, which are often owned by local families.

In the instances that NYC destroys the gardens, it is usually in order to build new housing. Ironically, most of the neighborhoods where the gardens are located have a considerable amount of older underutilized housing stock which could be rehabilitated and made serviceable again, albeit at a lesser profit to the developers. This strategy would maintain the fabric of the community, maintain the existing cultural and demographic mix, and recycle still-useful structures, rather than the wasteful practices involved in new construction and the demolition of older buildings. For instance, in West Harlem, the 11-year old Project Harmony Gardens were destroyed in order to build new housing, despite the fact that the gardens were right next door to several abandoned buildings, which could have been renovated. NY State Assemblyman Keith Wright denounced the plan by saying "I know we need housing, but until all of Harlem's vacant buildings are restored, and all the garbage-strewn vacant lots cleaned out, I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to destroy this program [the Project Harmony Garden]" (Burgher 1996).

The gardens generally help promote a sense of place, a focus for communities, which often have little access to safe parks or recreational space within their neighborhoods, and create a center for community cultural and educational activities. The Bronx currently has about 175 community gardens administered by Operation Green Thumb (Weissman 1995), as well as a number of community gardens operated by non-profit entities, such as the Parks Council, and community gardens on private property. On average, the Bronx community gardens use about 75% of their land for growing vegetables, and many gardens supply the farming families, in addition to others in the neighborhood, with much of their vegetable requirements for the year (NYC DPR 1997).

New York City's policies and practices regarding community gardens are in a state of flux and uncertainty, and have recently taken on a decidedly Draconian tone. This project was undertaken to provide some geographical facts to help decision-makers regarding the future of threatened community gardens. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the locations of community gardens within the Bronx were mapped. The socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the proximate populations were ascertained through a GIS analysis, using data at the census block group level, and compared with the population of the Bronx as a whole.

This is an on-going project, and various types of information are being explored in relation to community gardens. Residential property values around established community gardens will be compared to property values before the gardens were established, as available. Students and faculty are also examining the locations of other vacant land resources in close proximity to community gardens under threat by the City and private developers. Another aspect being investigated is the location of community gardens in relation to other open space options for those communities. This page will be updated as the work progresses.

The findings of this project can be used to assist decision-makers and community-based organizations in developing realistic and equitable solutions to New York City's vacant land management and planning process, and in increasing environmental sustainability with little, if any, outlay of public funds.

Work on this project was supported (in part) by a grant from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program. The project was entitled: "Urban Agriculture / Urban Oases in the 'Concrete Jungle': The Environmental, Economic, and Cultural Meaning of Community Gardening in the Bronx"

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