Abstract
The fifth chapter presents a discussion of the impact of various stakeholders on the development of community gardens in the South Bronx. These stakeholders that influenced this development include the federal, state and municipal governments, banks, insurance companies, landlords and tenants as well as organizations by actions that led to conditions that encouraged low-income residents of the South Bronx to create community gardens.
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Notes
- 1.
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was supported about ten years later, in 1986, by the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit Law. This law further changed how capital and credit were distributed in the South Bronx, since low-income housing credits were involved in more than 90 percent of all affordable rental housing produced in the United States.
- 2.
Stuart Butler, a policy analyst of the Heritage Foundation, had brought the concept of Urban Enterprise Zones from England and promoted it within the United States.
- 3.
In New York City, the Police and Fire Department were traditionally controlled by the Irish, the Sanitation Department was run by Italians, and the Jews were in charge of schools and civil service.
- 4.
Zucotti Park, which was named after him, received international recognition as the starting place of the Occupy Movement that took place in New York in 2011.
- 5.
Housing Commissioner, Nathan Leventhal, and the Parks Commissioner, Gordon Davis, in particular brought change to the South Bronx, improving the housing and open space situation in the area. In addition, the former City Planning Commissioner, Victor Marrero, who had taken the position of undersecretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Carter’s administration, was pressing for projects in the Bronx.
- 6.
Edward J. Logue was also responsible for the housing units on Roosevelt Island in New York City. When the Urban Development Corporation in New York State was near bankruptcy, he resigned in 1975 as its head and tried to re-establish his reputation with the resurrection of the South Bronx.
- 7.
The Neighborhood Open Space Coalition was formally set up in the 1980s.
- 8.
Today, community gardens on public land are leased for free to gardening groups of a minimum of ten people for a one- to four-year term, depending on the region’s jurisdiction.
- 9.
The Melrose neighborhood is represented by Community Board 1 and Community Board 3 of the Bronx.
- 10.
The architects Petr Stand, from Magnusson Architects, and Lee Weintraub, from Weintraub and diDomenico, were involved.
- 11.
Under the Nehemiah Program, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development supports the construction of so-called affordable housing.
- 12.
The “home rule” has been part of the constitution of the State of New York since 1923.
- 13.
The discussion on community garden preservation as parkland came up again in 2010 before the Community Garden rules were established and still continues today.
- 14.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency of the federal government. It was created in 1933 in response to the thousands of bank failures in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Northwest Bronx Clergy and Community Coalition presented what they had found out about the redlining of banks in the South Bronx to this institution, as well as to the New York State Banking Department, in the mid-1970s.
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Mees, C. (2017). The Impact of Stakeholders on the Development of Community Gardens in the South Bronx. In: Participatory Design and Self-building in Shared Urban Open Spaces. Urban Agriculture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75514-4_5
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