On November 21-23, the VIII International conference CERS – Central European Conference in Regional Science “Resilience of cities and regions in an uncertain time” was held (online event). The results of the research of community gardens located in New York, Paris, Oslo and Copenhagen were presented by Agnieszka Dudzińska-Jarmolińska, PhD Eng. (UW) during a speech entitled: “Community gardens and their contribution towards pro-climate activities as an element of social integration and motivation based on city of New York”.
Below is an abstract of the presentation:
Challenges related to climate change and its negative effects – affecting millions of people in urban spaces all around the world – impending sensible actions like an adaptation to these events – is an important challenge for many agglomerations all around the world (at the spatial, economic or environmental level).
Impending sensible actions implemented towards this direction in the cities are varied in nature of actions, – from so-called top-down actions, which transform large urban areas, often undevel-oped up until now – to individual actions – grassroots – organized by local communities, immediately will-ing to change surroundings where they live.
Both approaches to changing public understanding of and attitudes to climate change are valuable, both types of action can contribute to adapting city space to climate change. But we should remember that the top-down activities by their scale and costs, can lead to a gentrification’s phenomenon, while grassroots actions are more friendly for the local community and less likely to gentrification process, it is an element of social integration and is environ-mental justice.
One of these grassroots actions is creating community gardens, often in lots left vacant by the city and degraded in urban fabric. This way of planning allows or even promotes the use of many functions (from recreational up to production farming ). They are also used as a local centres for its communities.
The Integration of local communities around the community gardens reinforces the commitment (motivates) toward pro-environmental actions in there. In that way community gardens may play an important link between a way of perception a greenery not only as a decoration element in the city – but largely geared towards adaptation urban area to climate change actions and as a result – to motivate citizen for implementation by local community – such a solution like – bioswales, grass ponds, retention ponds, rain garden ect.
During the Conference will be presented research results of the study an existing community gardens in New York (August 2022), which were imple-mented in urban fabric already in the 1970s, through transforming degraded urban micro-spaces for a little oases of greenery for using by their local communi-ties, often without public green spaces nearby. Their structure will be presented here with a social importance, functional and financial aspects, the story of their foundation and potential and grooving to motivate people for counteraction to a climate change.
At the same time will be presented community gardens that were built near new housing investments in Paris, Copenhagen and Oslo (research of these areas were also carried out in 2022). These examples show a new approach for creating this type of area, very often in its structures we found many of a NBS solution (a very important aspect in adapting urban spaces to a climate change action).
Presented conclusions are a part of research conducted within the project CoAdapt “Communities for Climate Change Action” with universities UW, SGGW, WNRI, OsloMet and can be good guidelines for creating this type of facilities in Polish cities, or good examples motivating local communities for pro-environmental activities and changes in their immediate environment.