Incorporation of Nature Within A City - New York City

New York City

Nature and the environment have been incorporated into city life through the use of community garden schemes. Community gardens are plots of land that have been allocated to be used as allotments. In general, institutional response to community gardening has been piecemeal, like a handing out of green band-aids. Public land is made available by municipal governments to both neighbourhood organizations and private agencies who lease it on a temporary basis, usually for one year. Extensive public pressure has compelled some city agencies to extend leases by a few years. Community gardening not only produces Healthy food close to home but also cultivates a sense of community among neighbours. Many surveys indicate that people participate in community gardening because they enjoy the opportunity to meet and make friends. Many community gardens incorporate sociability settings — arbours, picnic tables, benches, and barbecues. The growing sense of community fostered by these modern-day commons empowers neighbourhood residents and strengthens their social, physical, and mental health. A vacant lot transformed into a community garden filled with vegetable crops and blossoming flowers or the vibrant colours of a mural painted on the wall of a dilapidated building instantly, almost magically, transform the image of a rundown urban area. New York City is home to a system of about 750 community gardens that have sprouted since the mid-1970s on vacant city-owned lots in low-to-moderate income neighbourhoods. After existing for more than 20 years, many community gardens have come to be seen by community development corporations as a key aspect of “community building.”... Despite this growing recognition of their importance, these gardens have a very tenuous hold on their land. Most have short-term license agreements with the Parks Department’s Green Thumb Program. An ACGA survey conducted in 1997 by Monroe and Santos revealed that fewer than 2% of community gardens are considered permanent by their managers. Due to this aspect of ‘Nature in the City’ being so effective, the government agencies involved have drawn up plans to further implement Community Gardens, i.e. to create more of them and help them to become permanent.

Their intended actions include:

• Secure more land and create long-term stability for community garden through purchase of land and long-term leases or other agreements.
• Increase support for community gardens through partnerships with other government agencies, neighbourhood groups, and businesses, civic and gardening organizations.
• Integrate community gardens into existing open spaces near areas of higher density residences that do not currently have community garden space, while balancing other open space needs.
• Provide administrative resources and agreements that enable community gardening groups to manage the gardens to the extent practicable.