Just a few weeks ago the Borough President of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, released a remarkable policy report designed to “spark systemic change in New York’s regional food system.”  The document, titled FoodNYC: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System, contains a respectably comprehensive range of proposals which identify keys points of intervention for our city.  It also outlines ambitious plans for implementing and connecting various initiatives toward this end.  Surprisingly, however, the report seems to have garnered surprisingly little attention in the print media and in the sustainability and food blogs.  I must admit that it wasn’t until yesterday that I seriously picked it up.  If, like me, you’ve heard about it but haven’t bothered to give it a read, or if you haven’t even heard of it yet, now is the time!

You might be particularly interested in the sections of the report that deal with urban agriculture and composting in NYC.  Stringer proposes sweeping measures on the part of the city to assess the availability of publicly held land and to rededicate suitable areas to permanent spaces of cultivation.  He also proposes a two-pronged composting project to help deal with food wasted across the five boroughs.  Large-scale composting would be established through the creation of a municipal facility (bringing the unions on board, perhaps) while a whole slate of small endeavors would be promoted and supported.  These are just two (of ten) ideas set forth by the Manhattan Borough President’s Office and in the coming year we expect to see some movement in these different arenas.  Yet another example of how cities are taking the lead in sustainability efforts around the world!

We made it through February. Hooray! And while March can still be a month to savor and simultaneously curse the last days of winter, it is certainly time to start thinking about gardens. 

And we have some very ambitious friends who are imagining putting a small patch of concrete near NYC City Hall to good use.  DC’s most important lawn–perhaps the nations most important lawn– is gearing up to carry its 2nd season of fresh produce. This is the first time The White House has had a productive yard since Eleanor Roosevelt’s WWII victory garden graced the premises. At that time, 40% of America’s produce was grown on small plots that made up the victory garden movement. I can’t quite think of a parallel in today’s patriotism. But New Yorkers! Pay attention to this and sign yourself onto the movement.

From the NY Times Diner’s Journal:

But today, “The hope is that a vegetable garden can be planted in front of City Hall in time for a nice tomato harvest this summer,” said Daniel Bowman Simon, who is organizing a petition drive to hand over to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

I came across a set of animations this weekend that I thought our readers would be interested in checking out.  The first is called “Foodprint Manhattan” and was presented by The Why Factory during last year’s Hudson Quadricentennial events on Governor’s Island.  (I wasn’t able to find a video with audio but the text is completely readable if you set the viewer to full screen):

The second clip features the same idea applied to the Hague and the Netherlands (again, no audio):

I really like these animations because they begin by simply asking “how much do we consume?” and then they go on to explore and visualize the spatial consequences.  I especially like the use of “food group” towers in the Manhattan clip.  I wonder, though, how these animations might change with a thorough and detailed assessment of the capacity of the built environment to produce .  I generally agree with the conclusion that complete food independence is not a realizable (or desirable? ) goal within the city limits of any given city, but a realistic assessment like this one might produce a less fantastical scenario than 22km high food towers.

From Design Trust for Public Space

The Design Trust for Public Space recently announced a project to asses the state of urban farming across New York City and “to create the nation’s first citywide plan for urban agriculture.”  The initiative, called the Five Borough Farm, is designed to bring together leading experts in sustainable development, urban policy, landscape architecture, and key stakeholders in order to “help transform underutilized lots in all five boroughs into urban farms.”

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about this initiative, but the folks here at the institute are especially keen on hearing how the Trust will define metrics to measure the benefits of urban agriculture.  While the idea may seem a little insipid, a lot of us see it as the crucial next step for urban sustainability in general.  While more and more municipalities begin implementing policies to become more sustainable, the task of measuring success and comparing results between places becomes imperative.

Five Borough Farm will inventory existing agricultural activity in the five boroughs and assess underutilized arable land in order to identify opportunities for City agencies to support urban agriculture. Using Added Value’s holistic, community-development model as a guide, the project will develop metrics that measure urban agriculture’s broad range of benefits, including youth empowerment, impacts on obesity rates, employment opportunities, access to healthy food, stormwater retention, and many other indicators. Finally, the project will create a pilot project that demonstrates the vitality of urban agriculture and its importance to New York’s public realm.

The anticipated timeframe for the project is 12 months, beginning March 2010. For the first phase, the Design Trust will select two fellows in the fields of metrics/evaluation and policy/sustainable development.

Today we have a post from Alex Hanson. She is CISC’s Internship Coordinator, as well as a first year graduate student in urban planning at Hunter College.

This year, First Lady Michelle Obama planted the first vegetable garden on the White House lawn since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden during World War II. Since March, Mrs. Obama has been working with a group of fifth graders from the local Bancroft Elementary School to prepare the soil, plant the seeds and harvest the vegetables. The purpose of the garden is to teach students about healthy eating habits and the value of locally grown food. The initiative has raised the profile of gardening as an educational tool to teach students about healthful and sustainable food practices around the country.

As a graduate student in urban planning, I am currently researching the topic of school gardens  for one of my courses.  Whether in raised beds, hoop houses, or unassuming window boxes, these gardens have the potential to teach students a wealth of lessons about the natural environment and their connection to it. Yet as important are the lessons that educators can learn from the history of school gardens.  During the early 1900s, a movement for school gardens swept across the nation. This culminated in the School Garden Army, which enlisted children to plant food-producing gardens as part of the war effort.   At the movement’s peak, many supporters claimed that school gardens could do everything from fight the war to cure juvenile delinquency.  However, the frenzied pitch was unsustainable and school gardens declined in the years after the war.

There appears to be a renewed interest in the benefit of school gardens in recent years, to which Mrs. Obama’s initiative has further contributed.  What I have realized though is that we cannot simply focus on the sustainability of the gardens themselves, we must also look at the sustainability of the infrastructures that support them. Without committed institutions that set realistic goals and provide adequate support, any current push for school gardens and will fizzle out as it did over a century ago.