Vancouver Community Garden New Site Proposal
A few years ago, Vancouver developed its Greenest City Action Plan. The Plan acts as a strategic guideline for the city to reach its overarching sustainability goals and maintain the status as one of the leading green cities. “Local food” and “green economy” are listed among the 10 goal the plan outlined. In order to reach the target of increasing local food asset by 50%, as well as doubling the green jobs in the city (City of Vancouver, 2015), there’s a need to expand on existing community garden plots. This report will examine the general pros and cons of developing urban agriculture, and propose a site where a potential new garden could be situated in the City of Vancouver.
Urban agriculture practices can take on a variety of forms such as community gardens, urban orchards, pollinator gardens and edible landscapes etc. A city usually adopts a wide range of urban agricultural projects to build a healthy urban ecosystem. In general, there are two main benefits of urban agriculture that can be summarized and further expanded as following:
Food Production
- Increase local food production
- Increase neighbourhood food asset & network
- Increase organic food production / provide health benefits
- Enhance food security
- Build stronger food system & supply chain
Most directly, urban agriculture practices increase locally produced vegetable and fruit yields. By increasing the yield, local foods can feed more people, and contribute to a bigger neighbourhood food asset. Furthermore, it creates a new nucleus for a wider food distribution network around the neighbourhood, and improves city food system in general.
Community gardens and shared growing spaces provide plots for individuals gardening. By engaging residents into the food production process, or let citizens to grow their own food, food supply in the city becomes more secure and sustainable; supply chain of food become visible, locally produced food can become a choice for people that prefers it or feeds the need. Also, food from local urban agriculture is normally produced by organic farming, which means that there’s no use of pesticide, chemical fertilizers or other food additives. Organic food generates healthier diet, and provides health benefits for the residents.
Social Benefits
- Promotes community engagement and development
- Educational value
- Increase environmental awareness
- Increase local resilience
- Provide jobs & enhance economic sustainability
- Reduce ecological footprint
Unlike mass-production global food supplies, urban agriculture can provide a range of social benefits in a similar way that urban green spaces provide cultural ecosystem services. Community gardens or farms that are nearby high density urban area generally have a high social engagement value. It provides a great venue for residents to connect with nature, as well as engage in social interaction, and take part in community services. In addition, urban agriculture provides educational benefit for students in various ages, and study value for researchers and scholars in the relevant field (such as geography, forestry etc.). Community gardens and orchards also create “green jobs”, promote “green economic”, and increase local sustainable solution for economic development (City of Vancouver, 2015). Last but not least, it provides these add-on social benefits with lesser human ecological footprint generated.
There might be some downsides on establishing community gardens. Urban lands are valuable resources and usually contested spaces. In some cases, building community garden may not be of the best interest of the community especially if there’s a housing shortage in the area. Also, community garden requires intensive management and coordination in terms of guiding which plants to plant, regular watering and cares, preventing thievery etc.
The proposed new garden location is in the Memorial West Park in the Dunbar community. The park currently contains playgrounds, tennis courts, lawn blowing club and a community center. It also has useable green spaces to establish a medium size community garden. Below are the estimated basic figures of the new site:
| Garden Statistics | |
| Total Area (sqm) | 1453 |
| Total useable garden space (sqm) | 800 |
| Anticipated total yield | 1920 kilogram / year |
| Anticipated people fed | 16 persons / year |
| Total value of the all vegetables grown in the garden | $6000 / year |
Table 1: Garden Value Estimation
There are several advantages and benefits of establishing a garden at this location. Firstly, there’s a substantial gap in community gardens in this neighbourhood. According to figures provided by City of Vancouver, there’s currently no community gardens established in Dunbar, West Point Grey and Arbutus Ridge (2013). The joint absence of community gardens justifies the need to establish one for the benefit of multiple neighbourhoods. Furthermore, the location is situated in the heart of Dunbar, right beside the community center, blocks away from Pacific Spirit Regional Park and UBC ecological land reserve. The high accessibility provides a “pull-factor” to draw residents in getting to know and participating in the new garden’s activities.
Secondly, in the 1.5km radius, there are four schools located in the area (St. George, St. George Junior, Southlands, and Kerrisdale). This indicates that the neighbourhood’s demography consists of a large number of youth, teenagers, and families. Therefore, this site could become a great venue for neighbourhood families to participate in gardening activities, to join community “green actions” events, and to make social connections with others. By engaging the neighbourhood into the long-term gardening initiatives, it also has a great potential to provide a chain of educational value for children of various ages in the area. Surrounding schools could easily facilitate field trips to the gardening location, and children would have the opportunity to watch vegetables grow, participate in hands-on activities etc.
Figure 1: Garden Development Advertising Sample
This site would also be integrated as part of Memorial West Park which is already a multi-functional park. The playground and various leisure amenities in the park guarantee a flow of residents in and out of the area. This could, in some degree, promise a long-term dedication of residents with their gardening plots. When residents come by the community center or to do sports, they could conveniently complete their weekly watering / care for the plants. The integration of the garden as part of the “community multi-purpose” land use could benefits the garden management and strengthen involvements.
There are inevitably some possible negatives associated with establishing a new garden. Due to the proximity to UBC, the land is of great residential value in Dunbar. Thus, building a new garden in this location might conflict with commercial development of the sites. Also, in order to build the garden, a bunch of trees in the park need to be cut-down or replanted elsewhere. The building process might disturb nearby residents, and cause some contests against the development. This can be compensated by the anticipated high return of the gardening activities, and the immeasurable social values the garden provides.
Site Location
Work Cited:
“Green City Action Plan”. City of Vancouver, 2015. Retrieved from: http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/green-economy.aspx
“Join a community garden”. City of Vancouver, 2013. Retrieved from: http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/community-gardens.aspx