One of the best ways to improve the quality of any community, or any property, is to provide residents with the opportunities they need to improve their resilience.
Here’s a simple example of that in practice.
Here’s a picture of an apartment complex in California (via KGI).
Notice anything strange about it?
There are gardens in front of it. The apartment building’s owner was smart enough to give all of the tenants in the apartment complex a raised bed to grow some food.
One reason this is a great idea for any apartment owner: gardens add value to the apartments. They make them more valuable. They are also more valuable to the renter, since they can eat better, get more exercise/outdoor time, and cut their food budgets.
This approach doesn’t only work on the small scale. Entire cities can employ it to improve the quality of life, economic performance and the resilience of their residents. Here’s an example of that from Zurich, Switzerland.
Those small buildings and green spaces in the foreground are garden allotments for the apartment dwellers living the high density buildings at the top of the photo.
Here’s another reason allotments are important: they attract and retain resilient people.
Resilient people improve the community.
Resilient people innovate and improvise. They produce, energize, and build at the local level. They are practically optimistic (in contrast to the childish “wish-based optimism” that is so prevalent today).
They are the types of people we need around us as we head into turbulent times.
Resiliently yours,
JOHN ROBB
PS: When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was extremely difficult to find enough food to eat (or afford it when it was offered on the market). How did most people get by? Many had allotments (a dacha) to fall back on. During the Soviet era, people used these allotments to grow the fresh foods they didn’t get in the supermarkets.
PPS: If you are really ambitious about this? Dive into the governance of your community. Add allotments to the zoning regulations for new construction. It will pay off in terms of improved home values, improved quality of life, and increased community resilience over the long term.
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Great ideas, but it is not new. As a kid, during WW-2, we have Victory Gardens all over out town.
Fresh vegetables became scarce and the victory Gardens sprang and lasted well after the wars end.
Also chicken coups and rabbits hutches sprang up to feed the Home Front.
These ideas your are highlighting are happening right now, all over the country.
Thanks for the continuing stream of ideas.
Great concept. It would be interesting to see how this works out in the long run. Is there any theft? Who pays for the water? I’m guessing their needs to be some collaboration between the tenants that are utilizing the raised beds, could be some conflict between those that use heirlooms vs. GMO seeds. Also whether the area is to be pesticide free vs. natural methods. At least it would get the tenants out and talking to each other.
I live in the UK, where allotments are very common. My parents have one, and so do a couple of my older friends – there’s usually quite a long waiting list to get a plot allocated to you. They exit both in urban and rural conurbations – we have some up the road from us here in North London, which is otherwise extremely urbanized. At this time of year I can see people growing fruit and vegetables, and quite often you will see people giving away surplus crops if the weather has been particularly kind.
Allotments have been part of European culture for at least a century, and I’m a bit surprised there seems to be no real equivalent movement in the US. If you want to find out more, have a look at the International Office of Allotment and Leisure Gardens at http://www.jardins-familiaux.org
Food is only one aspect of the resilience we need in order to face the challenges that are on the way.
How will we cook with intermittent power supplies and possible water shortages? How about health care if travelling becomes difficult? What about the tools we will need in order to relocalise manufacturing and repair? How about all those skills that are rapidly disappearing?
The list of needs is long. That’s why Transition Initiatives, with the structure they imply, are important.
Best wishes from Cornwall, UK
Farming without water – http://grist.org/food/farming-without-water/
And the opposite of what we’re trying to create. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DUMPING_THE_DEAD?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-08-02-21-26-20
Which makes one very sad, the lack of people and relationships to hold a community together allows some nasty consequences to take hold.
Seattle, Washington has a P-Patch program, a system of garden plot allotments, that’s been operating since 1973.
Here’s the website for the program:
http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/ppatch/
From the intro of that page:
“The P-Patch Community Gardening Program, in conjunction with
P-Patch Trust, a nonprofit organization, oversees 75 P-Patches distributed throughout the city, equaling approximately 23 acres, serving 4,400 gardeners. Gardeners throughout the city contributed 17,000 hours maintaining the common areas of the garden in 2010.”
Bellevue, Washington, east of Seattle across Lake Washington, has had a much smaller P-Patch program that’s been running since the 80′s. I rented a plot there for three years in the late 80′s.
Here’s the website for that program:
http://www.bellevuewa.gov/community-farms-gardens.htm
In Germany ‘everyone’ has a little ‘Schrebergarten,’ there are allotments on the edges of all towns, but especially along railways, where I assume people wouldn’t want real houses.
They do spend weekends in the little garden houses, and become very supportive communities. Germans don’t move every two years, like the average in USA, so some of these are multi generational communities. I like them, although they are considered ‘spiesig’ here. (bourgious, middle class)
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