sokolovsky by giray suli

This section is about civic ecology, urban elders, and NY city's community garden movement. Community and garden would seem to be unlikely urban partners, and even less likely to be the subject of anthropological fieldwork. In NY's 500+ community gardens , older adults create spaces where they can share their knowledge and spend their free time., where young people can learn not only about food but their heritage.

Creating urban gardens on vacant public land has a long history in america. many people know about the victory gardens of the two world wars. Most have forgotten about the attempts of cities to help poor citizens grow food on vacant urban land during bad economic times. In europe, a less community orientated efforts called allotmeans system based on individual plots of land, was developed in the eighteen and nineteen century.

When most people think of green space in NY city, they conjure up manicured landscapes such as monumental public parks like central park. Today's community gardens represent a totally different relation to place, space, and power. Across contemporary NY city, citizens from poor and neglected neighborhoods have reversed this process by reclaiming abandoned public lands to civilize city- owned spaces that they saw as being very out of control.

In conclusion , while today's urban community gardens began under the kinds of direconomic circumstances that sparked greening efforts in early eras, they have not only persisted much longer but also have morphed into vital commuity building nodes of social inclusion. Using grassroots civic ecology to develop communities that are sustainable or care environments often requires specialized knowledge about the environment and means of making it usable, and meaningful to people of different ages and physical competence.