All History Happens Somewhere

Right before we arrived, we were looking down at a small valley of rubble and ruin. “That’s the prison where Socrates was killed by popular vote,” the professor said, glancing away — equal parts warning and shame.

It’s a reminder that everything happens in place — up on a hill, down in a valley. All history is written in the cracks and crevices of subtle geographies. Our society built ghostly white capitals and courthouses in imitation of those ruins, as if democracy lived in marble domes and colorless columns.​. But the rule of the people has always lived elsewhere: in the hearts of village dwellers and city denizens, in how and what they know and care about, in the streets and squares where they risk everything to make the invisible visible.

Placemaking as the Antidote

So no, democracy alone won’t save us. As Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” What will save us is spreading a culture of caring — building a society where health, housing, food, a clean environment, and factual understanding are foundational agreements.

Placemaking can help. We need places to gather, to see one another’s struggles, to create empathy and shared access to the good life. Without those places, it’s too easy to “other” people — to blame them for their circumstances, to call them lazy, and to think they’re leeching instead of contributing.​

In the Pacific Northwest, we encountered what seemed like a revolutionary idea — communities growing food, cooking and sharing it for free.

There were no labels or limits to entry. These didn’t feel like soup kitchens or food banks—these were community gathering spaces for a hot, dignified meal.

As someone who works in food and direct service, I contrasted this simple solution with the stigmatized and gatekeeper-intensive way most food benefits are administered: you need to fill out paperwork, demonstrate need and then receive coupons or a gift card to use for the purchase of eligible products.

While there’s some good ideas even in this over-regulated approach like Market Match: a program that gives you double your food stamp vouchers at Farmers Markets to be used on fresh fruits and vegetables, and food box prescriptions which provide insurance dollars for healthy whole food boxes, the clunkiness of this system means many who need and deserve the benefits don’t activate them. That being said, the federal administration is intensifying the barriers for able bodied citizens, which shows a narrow and uncaring view of who needs food and the benefits of safety nets and free community hubs. This all seems counterintuitive when you take into account that 90% of the $4 trillion spent on US healthcare goes towards treating preventable lifestyle diseases.

One wonders how much waste is created in oversight and benefits left on the table to offset the specter of abuse this rigamarole is meant to diffuse. On the Road to Resilience, we find free food flows amongst friends in third spaces and is a baseline of community good practice, giving and gratitude. 

A few minutes before the 1pm closing, my host on Whidbey Island whirled by the Methodist Church where an A-frame sandwich board announced “Free Lunch.” We plowed into the parking lot and ran in the building, evading the rush and arriving just in time for the last scrape of the soup pot for today’s meal.

The savory lunch was crafted with donated goods from local gardens and partially purchased supplies from a restaurant supply store. We got to interview the chef who told us the inspiration for this place was Dorothy Parker’s Catholic Worker and the Non-Violence Movement — that peacemaking is an everyday activity beyond civil disobedience.

In the room were retired teachers, seniors, a homeless person, a schizophrenic and a few friendly folk who just like to socialize and connect. We were shown around the room, which had several monumental artworks all in the style of Picasso’s Guernica, and equally representative of massacres and uprising including of the local native people and another of the current affairs in Palestine.

One doesn’t necessarily think of a soup kitchen as a place for intellectuals, philosophical debate and conviviality but this place felt like the hippie lunch annex of the Bohemian Club. The chef ladled out his philosophies along with the ginger broth, dispelling wisdom, like how kind makes kind. Some women came asking if they could use the space to host a knitting event and then later offered to clean the carpet of the oversized room. The group also had been helping contribute to a bake sale for Palestine through a roadside market they baked cookies for.

When the call went out in Jefferson County for nutrient-dense fresh foods for food banks, local gardeners answered the call. There are now around a dozen gardens producing nearly 20,000 pounds of food and over 1,000 eggs per year.

The gardeners help feed people while helping themselves, learning, socializing and upskilling while they work in communal food growing. The group is as clever as they are kind: innovating ways to grow and deliver produce using electric bikes, and forming the Wild Rovers, who support school gardens in the summer.

Cheer them on as they quietly chant their mantra, “We grow. We gather. We give.”

Is it something about Island folk that they care about each other a little more than those of us on main land?

The Hornby Island Education Society organizes a free lunch three times a week at Joe King Ball Park, an athletic league facility built by members of the community. That seems to be the ethos on Hornby Island, by the community and for the community. This program calls out to many types of people, those with disabilities, seniors and even singles and tradespeople. It positions itself as open to anyone who needs help finding nourishment. During COVID, they also started a hot meal delivery program which continues to this day. Furthermore, the Comox Valley Food Bank operates a satellite food distribution at the same location so folks can shop a shipping container of fresh and shelf stable foods that they bring home for later. Produce at both the food bank and the Kitchen lunch program are partially grown on the island by the community at a gorgeous co-managed Hornby Island Community Garden.

At the federal border in Tijuana’s Las Playas, the wall cuts across the sand into the Pacific Ocean like a razor. To the South, there’s a buzz of energy — families strolling the malecón, music and murals spilling toward the surf. On the U.S. side, silence. A steel scar bristling with cameras, robotically monitoring a crowd made mostly of children splashing in the tide.
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Incidentally, I arrived here on the Fourth of July, when the border looks more like a bleacher. A Mexican crowd hugged close to watch the night sky bloom with luminescent bursts above San Diego. In Spanish, fireworks are called fuegos falsos — false light. How apt, I thought. The explosions on the other side rang hollow this time, ghostly echoes from a country stripping back our rights, trading care of our countrymen for consolidation of power, and stealing breadcrumbs from the poor to feed the rich. The false lights of freedom fading across a darkening sky.

In Las Playas, Tijuanense are proud of the border wall's bright murals, blooming with color — playful, human, creative. Yet on our side of the fence, the surface is stripped of expression: dull, institutional, oppressive.  It confronts me with another border I’ve stood at — the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing Korea, one of the tensest places on earth where World War III could erupt at any moment. Across that chasm, South Korea is like Mexico — families separated by war hang ribbons with the names of loved ones, even spending holidays under barbed wire just to be physically close to relatives they hope are still alive on the other side.  Shockingly, we seem more like North Korea: austere, watchful, fearful — pressing our nation’s thumb down on our extended family.

Evoking another global echo, a fragment of the Berlin Wall stands on display in TJ. It pulls me further back — to Auschwitz, where I once saw names carved into the brick bunks. The internees had almost everything taken from them — family, freedom, even their clothes — but not the act of marking their presence: I was here.

​At Las Playas, the south side of the border wall carries that same insistence. Names, murals, slogans layered over steel — a refusal to disappear, a reclaiming of human dignity in a place built to erase it.

Walking along the fence feels like stepping through a hall of mirrors. At the DMZ, we call the north’s barbed wire and guard towers tragic. We shake our heads at concentration camps and say “never again.” And yet, at our own border, standing on the Mexican side looking north, you see that same oppressive architecture of walls and watchtowers. It’s hard to escape the conclusion: we may feel we’re on the right side of the wall, but the wrong side of history.

The sights along La Frontera offer a firsthand glimpse of grassroots goodness, starkly contrasted by the rule of force and finance. The long arm of the law asserting itself as troops patrolling the beach with machine guns — a move Ricardo said only fueled violence. Meanwhile, extractive capital interests bend the government to bankroll their schemes: tax dollars egregiously spent to dig up riverbeds for casinos and luxury housing where nature never allowed it — projects that make no sense, except to speculators who cash in and slip away before the rains come.

When these imposed dynamics distort reality on the ground, people stop looking to government for support and turn instead to one another. At the native garden planted here by Ricardo and the Friends of Friendship Park, he explained that philanthropy has helped — but it often comes with strings attached. “They come with their own ideas,” he warned.

He pointed to a planter box overgrown with mint, tended by an Egyptian sojourner who wanted nothing more than herbs for tea. It reminded him of a time funders approached a migrant orphanage with the idea of aquaponics. They dreamed of gleaming towers of vegetables, red-orbed tomatoes bursting from shiny technology for the ribbon-cutting.

​Ricardo had seen too many of these flashy projects built, photographed, and abandoned. Instead, he asked the women running the shelter what they actually needed. Their approach was far simpler: tea and herbs. They grow quickly, they’re reliable, and they carry both the nutrition and the memory of home — medicine for the body and the heart.

Chicana writer and feminist Gloria Anzaldúa once called this border an “open wound where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.” Ricardo still tends that wound in his way —  watching both the corn he planted and the youth he once taught grow, carrying seeds forward in garden boxes and open-air classrooms, both wedged between the imposing wall and the gaze of a gun-slinging guard.

The dominant narrative here might be steel and surveillance, “bad hombres” and barbed wire. But underfoot, Ricardo and his friends persist like dandelions stubbornly growing in the cracks — sipping mint tea, whispering prayers through the fence, and delighting in the laughter of innocent children playing in the churn of the sea.

As storm clouds crackle above America — with border police moving from the edges into our cities, as our federal government strips back rights and dismantles vital programs — we can still take hope from these unlikely placemakers. Even in the darkest corner of our country, where we turn our backs on our brothers, there are gardens growing green, murals messaging resistance, gifts being offered, and memories being shared. ​

​Each act is a drip of water, barely noticed at first, but over time carving valleys, smoothing stone, eroding mountains. It is this quiet persistence that raises the tides and shapes the world. For the walls may separate our  bodies, but the surging water will wash the wounds clean.

Though Los Angeles County’s MEHKO program only began at the end of 2024, there are already over 100 home restaurants up and running. This is the work-from-home revolution meeting the local food economy—turning bedroom communities into kitchen parties and bringing life to residential neighborhoods that lack businesses, jobs, and places to gather.

MEHKOs might be the missing ingredient in retrofitting suburbia with the climate and social goals Carlos Moreno lays out in his “15-Minute City” concept, and that the C40 Cities initiative is pushing by connecting climate adaptation and equity. 

Home kitchens opened to the public, help repair what zoning and auto-oriented development broke in cities and society: they shorten the distance we travel just to clock in at a central business district, and they enliven the uninteresting places we live—housing pods with nowhere to gather. By allowing these homemade hangouts, we’re saving time, money, and carbon while producing joy and connection closer to home.

MEHKO lowers the barrier to starting a food business. It invites us to share in each other’s rich cultures through food and familiarity. And it makes life easier for immigrants and entrepreneurs who would otherwise need to secure permits, equipment, and leases—or go underground to do what should be most natural.

​Wendy and Alyssa represent a new frontline for food and family in the neighborhood, where people come together to eat, talk, and solve the world’s problems around the table. The meals are affordable without the overhead, and the experience lingers—into laughter, comfort, and connection.

It’s the kind of feeling Donald Appleyard describes in his Livable Streets study—where, in the right neighborhood context, the sense of home turf stretches past your front door and envelops the whole block,  like the smell of fresh bread wafting from a kitchen window.

On recent trips to Türkiye and Morocco, I was charmed by the omnipresence of public pets—particularly cats. These furry denizens wander freely through cafes, markets, and streets, offering moments of unplanned connection that enrich urban life. In Türkiye, cats are so integrated into public life that during a panel talk I gave in Izmir, a cat casually wandered onto the dais, nuzzled the microphone, and stole the show.

Why Cats Rule in Türkiye and Morocco

Public pets thrive in Türkiye and Morocco due to a mix of culture and practicality. Cats have been celebrated throughout the region for millenia, both for their associations with religion, royalty and more pragmatically, for their rat-catching skills. Islamic tradition holds them in high regard—popular tales link them to the Prophet Muhammad and of course, Cleopatra. This mix of reverence and utility ensures that cats are well-fed, calm, and a celebrated part of the urban landscape.

The Urban Layout: Roads vs. Streets

In Türkiye and Morocco, human-scale streets create a patchwork of comfortable pathways where people—and animals—naturally interact. Medinas and labyrinthine alleys encourage neighborly exchanges and shared experiences, such as greeting a friendly street cat. These spaces can also serve as a bellwether for the comfort and inclusion of others, like seniors.

By contrast, the U.S. prioritizes roads over streets. Our cities are designed for oversized cars, parking lots, and big-box stores, leaving little room for the serendipity of human or animal encounters. Our car-dominated infrastructure not only diminishes social interaction but is also hazardous for animals—an estimated 1 million become roadkill annually in the U.S.

There's No Place Like "Away"

America’s obsession with cleanliness and control stems from a broader cultural concept: the idea of "away." We treat waste, and often street animals, as something to be removed and forgotten, sent to an imaginary place called "away." 

This concept, deeply ingrained in American culture, removes the messiness—and, ironically, the humanity—from urban life. Street pets, once integral to the urban ecosystem, have been relegated to shelters or euthanized, stripped of their role in making cities feel like shared living spaces.

​Meanwhile, in Türkiye, a network of informal public dog houses offers a different perspective, hosting canine neighbors as part of the urban fabric.

Privatization of Pet Life: The American Approach

Interestingly, the U.S. has found ways to reintroduce animals into urban life, but only in controlled, commercialized, or segregated forms. Cat cafés, for example, offer the companionship of cats—but at a price. What other cultures embrace as a free, public joy, we package and sell.

Similarly, dog parks are caged spaces that confine pet life to designated corners of our cities, separating them from the broader urban environment. Instead of integrating pets into daily life, we isolate them within fenced-off areas, treating their presence as something to be managed rather than celebrated.

Even leashed pets in American cities often symbolize tension rather than connection. Dogs tug owners along sidewalks, only to "disturb" overly-manicured lawns or defile tree wells—acts viewed as disruptions in our sanitized urban landscapes. These interactions, far from fostering community, often lead to annoyance or conflict, reflecting the broader friction between individual and shared urban spaces.

​This tendency to compartmentalize pet life into privatized or tightly controlled contexts—be it cat cafés or dog parks—underscores a uniquely American discomfort with the spontaneity and shared responsibility that animals bring to public life.

Social Responsibility and the Fear of Free-Roaming Pets
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​America’s lack of public pets also reflects a broader failure of social responsibility. We tend to view free-roaming animals not as companions but as threats. The specter of “dangerous” strays—like the stereotype of marauding pit bulls—reflects a society where mistrust and fear often overshadow care and stewardship.

Abroad, the presence of well-fed, calm animals in other countries suggests a community that takes collective responsibility for its shared spaces, fostering an environment where animals and people coexist peacefully.

​This isn’t to idealize other countries entirely. Türkiye recently enacted stricter laws targeting its 4 million stray dogs after several fatal attacks. While controversial, the law focuses on addressing animals that pose public health risks, rather than eradicating all strays. This approach contrasts sharply with the U.S. regulatory mindset, where a “one-size-fits-all” approach often punishes the many for the sins of the few. American regulations frequently stifle social activities like street vending and festivals, assuming bad intent rather than targeting specific problems.

Lessons in Coexistence for the U.S.

​Public pets remind us of the value of shared spaces and mutual responsibility. They create small moments of connection that humanize cities, making them feel less like sterile machines and more like living rooms. 

Public pets represent more than cute encounters—they are a lens through which we can examine urban design, regulation, and social values. Their absence in U.S. cities reveals a deeper discomfort with the messiness of shared urban life, a preference for control over connection.
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By embracing—not erasing—these interactions, we might create cities that feel less like the crucible of commerce and realm of machines and more like living rooms: cozy, communal, and alive.​

What comes to mind when you think of play? Perhaps childhood, freedom, and energy. Maybe places to play. Play has been all but written out of our neighborhoods and our lives. But when we tweeze out the characteristics of play, we see it can unfold in many ways, shapes, and forms. And importantly, play is not just for children, but is vital to a good life at all ages.

Play is a very human endeavor. It involves spontaneity and exploration that are often absent in over-planned and over-engineered environments. Many of us live in suburban areas designed for vehicles, which reduce opportunities for spontaneity by design. That’s because cars demand predictability. This creates a negative correlation between auto-dependency and play.

If environments that encourage play are interactive and multidimensional, and suburbs are prescriptive and linear, then is it all a loss? I think not. By understanding the characteristics of play, we can think outside the sandbox to find simple ways to create more playful suburban places.

Play is a spontaneous, enjoyable activity that engages our curiosity and imagination, and promotes exploration. It is inherently enjoyable, requiring no external sources to fuel its happening. While there are a variety of ways we can define it, six basic characteristics of play are as follows:

Characteristics of Play, at Its Core:

1. Curiosity: Encouraging discovery and interaction.
2. Exploration: Designing spaces that invite wandering and adventure.
3. Imagination: Creating areas that inspire creativity and storytelling.
4. Intrinsic Motivation: Providing opportunities for self-directed play.
5. Spontaneity: Facilitating unplanned and impromptu activities.
6. Enjoyment: Activities bring joy and satisfaction.

Playful environments encourage discovery and interaction in unscripted ways. They inspire creativity and promote wandering and adventure. It’s no mistake that many of our first thoughts associated with play is a “playground”. Nearly all of the land in suburban contexts is privately-owned, and due to various regulatory factors such as deep setbacks and wide lots, the streets aren’t exactly welcoming. Thus, oftentimes tiny plots of land dedicated solely to play (such as playgrounds) are the only safe spaces to play.

The privatization of land is deeply embedded in North American culture, and the likelihood of homeowners inviting the public onto their properties to play on a play structure or engage in a game of pickleball is slim. So where and how can people play? When we consider the characteristics of play, we can see there are several ways in which we can create more playful suburban streets in very gentle ways.

When it comes down to it, it’s simply about breaking monotony and promoting interaction, which can be done through thoughtful landscaping. And surprisingly, many of these solutions may not look like play at all.

Four Landscaping Elements For More Playful Streets

PlacemakingUS recently hosted the NYC Public Realm Roundtable at Pratt Institute School of Architecture with a halo of stars, including Mayor Adams' Office of the Public Realm, the incredible Department of Transportation (NYC DOT), leading firms in the cities-for-people space like Street Plans and Street Lab, and think-and-do tanks like the Design Trust for Public Space, Urban Design Forum and the Alliance for Public Space Leadership.

Another thorough exploration of these issues as they relate in particular to BIDs is presented in the Regional Plan Association's recent report entitled, GO LOCAL! Nurturing Neighborhoods & Advancing Equity, which postulates that "the City has an extraordinary opportunity to catalyze equitable public space investment in all neighborhoods by lifting constraints and actively affirming BIDs and other place-based partners in less-resourced areas." The author of the report, Tim Tompkins, who formerly ran the Times Square Alliance and is the Founding Director of Partnerships for Parks, is on a mission to say this goes beyond the BIDs to impacting all public space partners, from Friends of the Parks organizations to Community Boards.

Now it's true: across the spectrum, the permitting process is not 100% impossible. We've encountered rare talented individuals who are permit masters. David Tamulonis, Events & Marketing Manager for the Erie Downtown Partnership, sits down one day a year with every department in his small city and gets hundreds of downtown activations permitted. He comes from a development background and is used to rigorous 18-month planning approaches and has adapted that to the lowly event permitting process.

In Portland, Oregon, they've made great strides towards simplifying permitting and creating more categories of permits with easy web access to facilitate the process under the banner, Portland in the Streets.
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Through the action of the NYC Public Realm Roundtable, we heard the stories of individual actors experiencing pain points and red tape, where they should be invited as trusted partners to make great places for residents. We also learned these issues have been well-documented, and each of the plans mentioned above has a dozen recommendations put forth to streamline and enable positive action to move forward. Some of the participants in our roundtable, Jackson Chabot and Elana Ehrenberg, along with Rebecca Macklis of the Municipal Arts Society (MAS), even wrote an Op-Ed in May, Opinion: Free NYC’s Block Parties from Suffocating Red Tape, opining the same thing we're talking about here. So is there any hope?

There is a glimmer on the horizon. In May, Mayor Adams and the Small Business Services Division (SBS), which oversees 75 BIDs across the city, made an announcement aimed at addressing these issues. These include making $500,000 in grants available to offset insurance costs, launching a new "Trusted Partner" program to cut red tape for consistent partners delivering services and value to New York residents and visitors, and initiating a new pilot partnership with the Urban Design Forum. This partnership, called "Connected Corridors," will provide legal and logistical support to small BIDs like Trey’s and Tiera’s, who may have limited staff time to tackle giant recurring topics that can be better approached through a subject matter expert, third-party partner.

We're writing about this topic so that it doesn't just get tackled in New York City but to present all cities and citizens with the opportunity to take stock of their permitting process and recognize the dead and dangerous spaces that pervade our cities. These spaces could be co-activated by citizens through easier and less expensive processes. We got the good news that the Design Trust for Public Space has received funds to continue their work and continue to present their materials to the New York City Law Department, where they feel legal language and liability aversion are where the rubber needs to meet the road.

If there are cities out there, philanthropies, political action groups, or even economically-minded groups who see the potential of public space as a platform for the regeneration of our places and our economy, we hope you will get in touch and we can mutually support this body of work and this changing of the guard from one-size-fits-none to loosening the levers for many more to utilize public space for cultural activities, social gatherings, micro and mobile businesses, and health and well-being.

The other option is to watch as our public spaces continue to wither under bureaucratic constraints. It's time to break free and let our cities flourish with creativity and community spirit.

Story by Ryan Smolar
Photos by Ryan Smolar, TJ Maguire and Ethan Kent

I began my day on Friday in an industrial area of Long Beach at the Foodbank of Southern California. For the last 47 years, this non-profit center has worked out of this warehouse to distribute food with over 700 non-profit partners. I was a guest at an opportunity luncheon, where local Southern California farmers, food policy experts, non-profit leaders, and government workers came together to learn about the future partnership opportunities that were coming up to help strengthen the infrastructure of the local food network. We enjoyed a delicious farm-to-table lunch from a local chef while seeing the designs for the renovation of an additional distribution hub, innovative vehicles built for better food drop-off in small urban streets while also engaging in networking and discourse about how to shift food bank food away from the traditional reliance on canned and processed food into healthier offerings through partnerships with local farmers.
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Saturday morning began at the Growing Experience Farm in North Long Beach, where I watched my first ever Crop Swap: an amazing exchange of backyard produce that attracted plentiful food from growers all across the city. One of my favorite items was the candied lemon peels that one resident brought to share. Chef Dina Feldman of Feel Good Salsa demonstrated how to make a healthy vegetable salad, and I took home a couple of containers to share. I learned how residents promoted the idea of bringing aspects of Blue Zones to the local Long Beach community to enhance longevity by promoting healthy food, physical activity, and community connection. A walk topped off this visit through the beautiful six-acre space, which not only includes a teaching garden and vertical gardens, but also an aquaponics system which grow food and fish in a closed-loop system.
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This weekend was both educational and thought-provoking. It made me reflect on the vision of what I would like my neighborhood to look like: full of food forests alongside walking trails where I can meet neighbors, easily accessible, affordable, healthy local food, and warm shelter for all who live beside me, as well as the opportunity for all to share their gifts in the beautiful community we are cocreating here in Long Beach. I met many others this weekend who share the same vision and desire to partner to manifest this New Renaissance along with our Mother Earth: reimaging a world, an urban city where all can flourish, be nourished, live integrally within our natural environment, and shape our built environment into creating spaces where people can join in on this movement and reimagine how we live. Isn't this what placemaking is all about? Bringing together creative, visionary, and rooted community members to shift energy and stir up the pot of complacency and the status quo to reshape the world we have been born into, one we only dream of living in but also can envision passing along to those who will come after us? We are responsible for honoring our vision and desires for peace and prosperity for all while respecting the indigenous wisdom still in this land and learning from nature how to live in this time in history to promote social change and hold dear to the near future where love shows the way.

2. Crafting the Welcome

Artful Entrances: The entrance should be a testament to the garden's ethos, inviting curiosity and interaction. An attractive sign or archway that captures the essence of the garden can intrigue and draw in visitors, setting the tone for the experience within.​

Informative Displays: Clarity invites participation. A well-designed welcome area should offer essential information at a glance – opening hours, contact details, and upcoming events. This openness not only encourages community involvement but also integrates the garden into the rhythm of neighborhood life.

Neighborhood Signage and Wayfinding: Effective wayfinding ensures that the garden is a community fixture, not a hidden secret. Signs placed throughout the neighborhood can guide residents and visitors to this verdant haven, making it an accessible destination for all. Consider maps, directional arrows, and even digital markers for those using smartphones to navigate.

3. Programming and Open House: Cultivating Community Through Activity

Urban gardens are more than plots of land for cultivation; they are vibrant community centers that offer a remedy to the mental health crises and isolation prevalent in today's society. To truly flourish, these spaces must provide a variety of reasons for people to gather, connect, and engage beyond the care of their garden beds.​

Wellness and Recreation: Activities like yoga, including popular variations such as goat yoga, invite people to unwind and connect in the serenity of nature. These sessions offer a dual benefit: promoting physical health and creating a communal rhythm that resonates through the garden.

Direct Engagement with Nature: Initiatives like 'U-Pick' events and farm stands do more than just provide fresh produce; they invite hands-on interaction with the garden's bounty. This direct engagement is a tangible way for community members to support the garden's sustainability while enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Community Exchanges: Our 'Crop Swap' program is a testament to the power of sharing. Over eight years, participants have exchanged over 14 tons of produce, seeds, and gardening insights, fostering a rich tapestry of communal knowledge and culinary diversity.

Open Hours and Amenities: By opening the garden for regular visiting hours, offering volunteer opportunities, or simply providing a space where one can work remotely with the added benefit of free Wi-Fi and garden-grown herbal tea. Mixing uses by adding a mobile book shops or flower store, can transform these green spaces into hubs of community life.