Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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the City applied the military sounding name as a clear
reflection of the dire situation in neighborhoods that it
was hoped development of community gardens would
alleviate [7]. GreenThumb remains a program that provides
materials and technical assistance to gardeners and
that manages the leases of public land for gardening [8].
When signing the lease of a garden lot, the gardeners
agree to observe certain rules: for example, the lease
“(…) will be terminated if there is an ‘illegal structure’ on
the property, an ambiguous term defined as ‘any enclosed
structure’.” (Sciorra, 1996: 81)
Urban renewal programs were finally re-enacted under
of Mayor Edward I. Koch, following his re-election in
1985 [9]. “According to the city‘s department of Housing,
Preservation and Development, some $1.3 billion of city
funds went into the South Bronx alone”. (Worth, 1999)
The South Bronx was built up again, not with the previous
five-to six-story tenements, but with owner-occupied
houses with private yards that were of low density and a
maximum of three stories high. The housing was subsidized
to enable more residents to own the land they lived
on in order to socially and economically stabilize the area
[Fig. 3].
With the ongoing redevelopment population numbers
increased again, while the access to open space decreased
[10].
The community gardens that had helped to trigger this
re-development were now endangered, since the land
they occupied increased in value and since there was no
legislation in place to protect their status as open space
[11]. A survey conducted by the American Community
Gardening Association in 1996 states “there is now no
new long term protection other than permanent transfer
to Parks. Despite trying other mechanisms to protect
those lots in intermediate status, there is still no answer
to the permanency dilemma.” [12] (American Community
Garden Association, 1997)
In 1999, New York City announced the auction of public
land occupied by 112 community gardens, based on
Mayor Giuliani’s perspective that „this is a free-market
economy. The era of communism is over.“ (WABC, 1999)
The arrest of gardeners protesting the auction called
public attention to the situation and one day before the
land was to be auctioned off, the non-profit organizations
the Trust for Public Land and the New York Restoration
Project bought the properties for $4 million [13].
In the same year, New York State Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer sued the city for neglecting to provide an environmental
assessment of the impact on neighborhoods
caused by selling community gardens.
In February 2002, the judge in the Spitzer case issued
a temporary restraining order to stop the auctioning of
community garden land. The order terminated in September
of the same year in the Community Gardens Agreement.
This settlement preserved most of the existing
community gardens by transferring them to the jurisdiction
of the Department of Parks and Recreation. At the
same time, it allowed the city to develop immediately
some garden sites with affordable housing and to build
upon other gardens, when they had undergone a Garden
Review Process and the gardeners had been offered an
alternative gardening lot in the vicinity [14].
Today there are over 600 community gardens in New
York City, many administered by the GreenThumb
Program [15]. Their design varies, depending on the
neighborhood and the group of residents that created the
garden. In general, the elements of the landscape disclose
that the space is commonly used: a small sheltering
structure, a barbecue, benches and tables – all next to
small, individual gardening beds.
The safety and liability standards required by insurance
and applied to other municipal parkland are often
not met in a community garden, which provides city officials
with arguments to curb the “impending privatization
of public space” by imposing new rules in regard to the
use of community garden land. In practice though, rules
can be interpreted. In 1984, for example, GreenThumb’s
former Director, Jane Weissman, had in regard to illegal
structures on garden sites “(…) to a large degree turned
a blind eye to gardens with casitas”, because she
had “(…) realize(d) that any attempt to do away with it
would drastically reduce Puerto Rican involvement in
municipal-sponsored gardening.” (Sciorra, 1996: 81) In
2007, city officials from the Department of Buildings and
the Department of Parks and Recreation drew up new
standardized guidelines concerning the construction of
structures in community gardens. This issue had already
been discussed in 1991, when “as a result of increased
media attention, city hall pressured GreenThumb to
develop an officially-sanctioned, standardized, open-air
structure (…).” (Sciorra, 1996: 81)
The new guidelines specify that the roofed area of a
structure must be a maximum of 150 Square Feet (about
14 Square Meters), the height is restricted to a maximum
height of 10 Feet (about 3 Meters) and that a distance of
6 Feet (about 1.80 Meters) has to kept from all lot lines.
In addition, the enclosure has to be optically permeable,
because often garden structures, particularly “casitas”,
were utilized in unsafe ways that also was to city officials
a sign of privatization of public space. In 1996, the structures
were described as follows: “Casita interior space is
furnished with many of the comforts of home; a table and
chairs, a couch, and even a television. A number are outfitted
with a small but operational kitchen complete with
a refrigerator, running water and a working stove. Gas is
supplied from a refillable tank and water is obtained from