Sep

28

Discovering the Benefits of Community Gardens

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In May, each family at my son’s school picked a week to volunteer at the school’s garden during summer break.  We selected late July and I put it on my calendar with a bit of apprehension.  I’ve never been much of a gardener and I worried that I wouldn’t enjoy it or really have the time to invest.

The school garden's greenhouse.

Our week came and my husband, son and I walked the quarter-mile trek to the school.  As we rounded the corner of the building, we saw a sea of green just off the parking lot.  I found a map in the greenhouse that described which veggies were planted in which rows.  There were gloves for weeding and watering cans.  After a quick inspection of the garden, we got to work.

The school garden.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the cost of eating healthy.  My family of three lives off of a single income and we try to stick with a pretty minimal food budget.  Yet we want to eat real food – organic produce and dairy products, quality meats, minimally processed foods.  I’d like to eat the full spectrum of veggies and fruits in the grocery store’s aisles, but my budget means I usually select the bag of broccoli, some organic lettuce, and apples and call that good.

This week is different.  The garden is full of a variety of lettuces.  There are radishes, leeks, chives, kale, chard, and potatoes.  There are budding blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, and raspberries.  There is so much to harvest right now that we have eaten meals from our garden harvests for the past few days – at no cost.  We made vegetable soup, eggs with chives, an apple/rhubarb pie, fresh raspberry whipped cream, and salad.  I’ve added raspberries to my morning yogurt.  I’ve been eating raspberries to my heart’s content and there is still a bowl in my fridge with at least $5 worth of berries, had I purchased them from the store.

My son showing off our bags of produce. He actually ate that chive, too!

In addition to our luxurious dining habits of the past week, I’ve also enjoyed the time we spend at the garden.  It is a different type of family activity for us.  As we pick raspberries together and pull weeds, we can connect in a way that isn’t as easy when we’re at home with distractions and interruptions.  Life seems to slow down while we’re at the garden.

Community gardens, like our school’s patch, offer significant benefits.  Neighbors can come together and grow their own food – spurring social interaction and saving money while encouraging healthy eating and providing for urban green space.  This website provides a wealth of information on community gardens.  As I had hoped, my picky-eater six-year-old son has taken to picking actual vegetables out of the garden and putting them in his mouth.  It’s shocking and exciting for me.  He has tried more veggies this week than during the past few years.  And he even likes some of them!

Belltown P-Patch in Seattle, WA (photo by Flickr user studio-d via Creative Commons license)

Seattle has had its P-Patch program since 1973.  Currently, P-Patches cover twenty-three acres throughout the city.  According to a 2007 survey, over half of gardeners in Seattle’s P-Patches are low-income and over three-quarters do not have access to gardening space at their residence.  The waiting lists for P-Patches, especially in dense neighborhoods, can be as long as three years.

In my quest to feed my family on our limited budget with a diet of healthy and hopefully local and organic foods, I am convinced that neighborhood gardens are an important part of the solution.

May

23

Now Urbanism Lecture: The University and the City (Thursday)

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Thursday, May 26: The University and the City

A capstone and a conversation about the global role of universities shaping present-day urban realities and future urban possibilities.

With:

  • Phyllis Wise, Interim President, University of Washington
  • Kåre Bremer, President, Stockholm University
  • Lynne Brown, Vice President, New York University
  • Dr. Wu Zhiqiang, Dean of the College of Architecture and Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai Session

For more, go to Now Urbanism.

Mar

24

What’s an Eco-City?

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The American Society of Landscape Architects’ blog, The Dirt, asks What’s an Eco-City? You can find out or decide for yourself and explore the evolution of this concept through a new UW symposium “Next Eco-City.”

The University of Washington’s landscape architecture department has put together a symposium that will explore the idea of the Eco-City. In ”Next Eco-City,” a range of leading landscape theorists and practitioners like Kristina Hill, Affiliate ASLA, Pierre Belanger, ASLA, and Yu Kongjian, International ASLA, will cover how the Eco-City concept has evolved with increased urbanization and rapid globalization.

The conference organizers argue that “urban environments worldwide are in the midst of multiple shifts, driven by interconnected flows in capital, people, and resources at local, regional and global scales. It impacts not only cities but also the network of social and ecological systems well beyond their borders.”

Despite the fact that a true Eco-City has never really existed, the idea continues to have legs, and has persevered as a potential solution to global challenges. “In contrast to the complexity of today’s urbanization, the concept of the ‘Eco-City,’ arguably dating back to the ideal of the 19th Century Garden City, seems like an overly simplistic and utopian vision. Yet, the imagery and language of an idealized ‘Eco-City’ continue to shape the planning and design of contemporary cities while disregarding the vital complexity of contemporary urban conditions and issues.”  More…

Mar

8

EPA: energy efficiency is about location, location, location

Filed Under Cities, Housing, Land Use, Sustainability | Leave a Comment

One way for emissions to be noticed as a part of a home's environmental footprint. Via HikersItch.com

We’ve said it before: green don’t mean a thing if it aint got that urban swing…

Where we live has an enormous impact on energy use, according to new research commissioned by the EPA. The report, “Location Efficiency and Housing Type — Boiling It Down to BTUs” finds that Americans use far less energy if they live in an apartment building in a transit-oriented neighborhood than if they live in a detached suburban house, even if that house has green building features and sports fuel-efficient cars in the driveway.

When it comes to this report, a picture’s worth a thousand words. As the graph above shows, the biggest energy efficiency gains come from living in transit-oriented neighborhoods.

A household living in a single family detached house located in a typical sprawl development uses an average of 240 million BTU British Thermal Units, a unit of energy output of energy a year, while the same household would only use 147 million BTU if the exact same house were located in a compact neighborhood. Make that single family house an apartment and energy use is down to 93 million BTU. …More: via Streetsblog Capitol Hill » EPA: Energy Efficiency Is About Location, Location, Location.

Mar

8

Edward L. Glaeser: How Seattle Transformed Itself – NYTimes.com

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Harvard economics professor Edward L. Glaeser was in Seattle recently to talk about his new book “Triumph of the City.” Today, he blogs a bit about his thoughts on our fair city.

How Seattle Transformed Itself

By EDWARD L. GLAESER

Today’s Economist

Seattle has used high-rise construction and good public transportation to support growth and bolster its economy.Stuart Isett for The New York Times Seattle has used high-rise construction and good public transportation to support growth and bolster its economy.

As the 2010 Census rolls out, much of the attention of news organizations is focused on the continuing growth of Texas and Florida, but there is much to be learned from the less extreme, but still significant, population growth in less sunny places, like Seattle.

Seattle is one of the few large cities outside the Sun Belt that is growing more quickly than the country as a whole. The city’s growth reveals the benefits of concentrating smart people in dense cities.

The success of Seattle was hardly foreordained, as it shares much with America’s many declining cities. Like Detroit and St. Louis, Seattle grew as a node of the great transport network, which included canals from Erie to Panama and intercontinental railroads, which enabled Easterners to access the vast wealth of America’s hinterland.

… more: via Edward L. Glaeser: How Seattle Transformed Itself – NYTimes.com.

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