Week 8: Readings

This week’s readings demonstrated how community gardens and land trusts play a role in urban agriculture. Hodgson et al (2011) states that “community gardens were responses to deindustrialization, depopulation, increases in acreage of vacant land, and the failures of urban renewal but also to immigration”. She explains that urban agriculture increases access to fruits and vegetables, especially in low-income areas that have limited access to affordable, healthy foods and it provides opportunities for public health programming to improve nutrition, knowledge, attitudes and dietary intake. According to Cobb (2011), a community garden is a catalyst. “It increases the community’s awareness and interest in a host of shared concerns seen through the lens of food: economic development, social justice, nutrition, and public health”. Even though there is health, social, economic and environmental benefits, there are also risks to urban agriculture. Hodgson et al mentions a study that found that community gardens can lead to “increases in tax revenues of about half a million dollars per garden over a 20-year period”. She also mentions another study that assessed the neighborhood effects of 54 community gardens in St. Louis, Missouri, and found that the median rent and median housing costs (mortgage payments, maintenance costs, and taxes) for owner-occupied housing, as well as home ownership rates, increased in the immediate vicinity of gardens relative to the surrounding census tracts, following a garden opening.  Thus a risk for low income neighborhoods that decide to open a community garden is gentrification. Based on recent research there is a possibility that opening a community garden as a way to provide food security and revitalize a disadvantaged community, can ultimately lead to an increase in their rental property’s value, therefore escalating their rent. This is a huge concern! The people we are trying to help are in the end being harmed. A possible solution is having a rent control policy in place for all rental properties, but I worry how long this will last under the pressures of development and urban renewal. Do you have any other suggestions as to how we can prevent gentrification prior to implementing a community garden in a disadvantaged neighborhood?