Community Gardens

Community garden on 5th Avenue

Urban centers for living are oft depicted in popular culture as towering babels of doom and gloom. Those of us who remember New York of the 1970s would agree—streets with bombed out wrecks of cars burned and pillaged, entire neighborhoods decimated by crack and crime, lost wastelands from a seemingly post-apocalyptic horror.

But times do change, and we can learn from mistakes of the past. Cities now have mixed residential laws that prevent entire blocks from becoming a ghetto during a fiscal crisis. Public buildings, businesses, and private homes occupy the same street, creating an economic diversity that's necessary to the health of any town.

One of the biggest trends right now is urban farming. Ever had a neighbor who had more tomatoes to give away than they could consume? You would see the benefit that gardening would have on a population: the cost benefits alone make any investor thrill. The investment in seeds and a plot of land versus food output is almost impossible to capture in a spreadsheet, it so outstrips any typical outlaying of cash. The need for food stamps would almost dissipate.

We already have beautiful community garden areas. Why not devote a corner to food production? Every week of the growing season (and in the Mid-Atlantic states it's a lonnnng season), gardens would give away a portion of its' growth by block assignment, much like the recent gas rationing in place after Hurricane Sandy. European countries already have their population on a car system for petrol rationing. In Germany, some blocks drive Monday through Wednesday, some have car use from Thursday to Saturday, and the entire community gets Sundays off. Gas consumption goes down, carbon emissions are reduced, the whole population reaps the health benefits of cleaner air and biking to work on their non-driving days. Trains are outfitted with bike racks for commuting to and from the station. Problem solved.

For food production, block assignments would work the same way as gas rationing. Blocks 1-3: pick up the gardens' tomatoes, if that's what's available. Blocks 4-7: OK, probably more tomatoes, but you see where I'm going with this. Each block would have its' week assigned for picking up whatever produce was available from the garden that week until food production ended. Our current system of "Haves" versus "Have Nots" is an artificial construction anyway that needs to be dismantled. There is sun, wind, air, soil, water, and seeds, and these belong to everyone. As we grow as a society, then so we shall grow together.  What ideas for growth do you have?