A solution to inner city living?

How might you meet the demand for ‘grow-your-own’ within dense urban areas where available land is scarce? What-if: projects together with local residents of an inner city housing estate in Shoreditch have come up with a novel solution: grow your greens in a bag.

A formerly inaccessible and run-down plot of housing estate land has been transformed into a beautiful oasis of green. Seventy 1/2 tonne bags of soil have been arranged to form an allotment space. Within their individual plots, local residents are carefully tending a spectacular array of vegetables, salads, fruit and flowers. A new sense of community has emerged.

May 1st – June 21st 2008
VACANT LOT will be part of the Love London Festival
Love London is London’s greenest annual festival, celebrating projects and organisations that are making a real contribution to creating a more sustainable capital.

20th June – 20th July 2008
VACANT LOT will be part of the London Festival of Architecture, focusing on the theme of “FRESH”.

Coming Soon
VACANT LOT on BBC Gardeners World

More on VACANT LOT

After recent discussion of garden paving atrocities (‘Front Gardens‘), it’s time to even things up by talking about all the good things that can be done in your front garden. Riding a growing trend for city-dwellers to grow their own fresh fruit and vegetables wherever they can find space, ‘Food Up Front‘ is an expanding network of urban farmers with the following mission:

To partner with the people of Greater London to promote and initiate the use of front gardens and balconies to grow and share healthy, natural food. This will reduce food miles and dependency on supermarkets, whilst increasing self-reliance and community empowerment.

Established in April 2007, ‘Food Up Front’ was inspired by co-founder Sebastian Mayfield’s failure to get his hands on a local allotment plot. “After four years, I was still only 22nd on the waiting list, so I began looking for an alternative closer to home. And then it dawned on me while lying in the bath one day, why don’t we make better use of the space we already have?”

Starting off as a small group of Mayfield’s neighbours in Balham, South London, ‘Food Up Front’ now has a network of over thirty street coordinators, with growing interest from other London boroughs. A not-for-profit enterprise, the scheme charges an annual membership fee of £20 to cover running costs and fund expansion. New members receive the following:

• A ‘Starter Kit’, comprising a container, locally produced, peat-free compost, and some organic salad and herb seeds
• Basic planting and harvesting guide
• Advice and support from a Food Up Front Street Rep, a local volunteer
• Details of Food Up Front gatherings and workshops, offering the chance to meet other members and share food growing knowledge
• The opportunity to share and grow food with neighbours and people in the surrounding area

‘Food Up Front’ was winner of the ‘Green Group or Project’ category at the 2007 Green Guardian Awards.

‘Green doorstep challenge“: Timesonline

Ethanol is promoted as a sustainable, clean-burning and eco-friendly fuel that will reduce pollution and global warming. A study from Stanford University suggests that large-scale moves away from gasoline to ‘alternative’ fuels containing a high proportion of ethanol would lead to an increase in numbers of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations.

A series of computer model runs simulated atmospheric conditions throughout the US in 2020, with a special focus on Los Angeles, historically the country’s most polluted ‘airshed’. The models compared the pollutive effect of a vehicle fleet (i.e. all cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc., in the US) fueled by gasoline with that of a fleet powered by E85 (a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline).

E85 vehicles reduce atmospheric levels of two carcinogens, benzene and butadiene, but increase two others, acetaldehyde and formaldehyde. Consequently, cancer rates for E85 are likely to be roughly similar to those for gasoline.

However, E85 significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog and a factor in decreased lung capacity, inflamed lung tissue, aggravated asthmatic conditions and impaired immune systems. The WHO estimates that 800,000 people die each year worldwide from ozone and other chemicals in smog.

E85 increased ozone-related mortalities in the US by about 200 deaths per year compared to gasoline, with about 120 of those deaths occurring in Los Angeles. This represents increases of 4% nationally, 9% in Los Angeles, above projected ozone-related death rates for gasoline-fueled vehicles in 2020.

We’re all doomed. If they can’t get you one way, they’ll get you another. However, these findings are probably unlikely to influence would-be suicides’ choice of termination scenario.

“Effects of Ethanol (E85) versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States” Mark Z. Jacobson, Environmental Science & Technology

Last month, The Coffee House reported on the plight of Manor Garden Allotments (‘Olympic’ Allotments Bulldozer Threat). With their century-old site due to be erased by construction work for the 2012 London Olympics, allotment holders have started legal proceedings against the London Development Agency for reneging on promises to provide an alternative site www.lifeisland.org.

Phil Michaels, Head of Legal at Friends of the Earth’s Rights & Justice Centre, said:

“This is an important case about broken promises and local communities. The LDA made clear and consistent promises to the community that their allotments would be relocated so that they could stay together. They have now decided to break that promise. Public authorities must deal honestly and straightforwardly with the public. That is particularly the case where they are proposing to break up communities and take away their land. If the authorities are not willing to honour their promises then the Court has to step in.”

Baroness Miller, Vice Chair of the House of Lords All Party Group Food and Health Forum, expressed her concern about the plight of this national treasure in the House of Lords during a debate about Olympic land acquisition on April 23rd. She questioned why there had not been any parliamentary discussion about the permanent demolition of the allotments to construct a footpath needed only for the four weeks of the Olympics. Baroness Miller has subsequently visited the site and met plotholders, and has declared her intention to raise the issue during the Greater London Assembly Bill debate starting 8th May.

It looks as if some momentum is building, but is it too little, too late? I feel a non-violent protest coming on. Now, where did I put Swampy’s phone number?

I received an email from 10 Downing Street yesterday. A leaked memo from a source in the Cabinet Office? Not this time. Along with 7485 others, I signed an e-petition calling for the Prime Minister to “Incorporate rather than demolish Manor Garden Allotments within the 2012 Olympic site.” The email was Downing Street graciously informing me that they had issued their response.

For those who haven’t been following this story, Manor Garden is a 4.5 acre site in Hackney, East London, which has the misfortune to be in the middle of the master plan for the 2012 Olympics site. The gardens were established in 1900 by Major Arthur Villiers, director of Barings Bank and philanthropist, to provide small parcels of land for local people to grow vegetables. In keeping with the conditions of Villiers’ bequeathal that the allotments be maintained in perpetuity, the 80 individual plots have been tended for over a century by a tight-knit community. Many members belong to long-standing East End families, with some individuals present since the 1920′s. In the words of the e-petition:

“100 year old Manor Garden Allotments lies in the middle of the Olympic Park site. These beautiful, productive vegetable gardens are due to be demolished to make way for a four-week footpath during the 2012 Games despite the land being given in perpetuity. A campaign is underway to protect the allotments and encourage a more imaginative Olympic development which includes this special place with its healthy, green lifestyles and vibrant community.”

The 2012 Olympics are supposed to be the ‘greenest’ and most sustainable ever. In normal circumstances, sites like Manor Garden would be held up as a shining example of a local community resource with all the right boxes ticked: fresh air and exercise, biodiversity, local organic produce, low energy inputs, no food miles, the list goes on. The Government, however, has its colours firmly nailed to the Olympic mast and has rejected the petition.

Allotment sites are a precious resource. Manor Gardens is the product of over 100 years of hard work and dedication. To say that plot holders will be provided with new land is completely missing the point. All the work that has gone into soil improvement will be lost, as will all the social, historical and emotional connections that make allotment sites very special places, to say nothing of the amazing biodiversity on the site. All in the name of some ghastly, bloated, pointless global jamboree.

Last month, the Royal Commision on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) published a report, ‘The Urban Environment’ , expressing astonishment that “on the eve of the new phase of urban regeneration and expansion, we lack an over-arching urban environment policy to coordinate the provision of housing, transport, energy and other vital services”. It makes a number of important recommendations aimed at developing environmentally sustainable urban environments. This requires a robust planning framework, and it is vital that the current planning system, however flawed and timid, is not dismantled, particularly during a period of major urban development when it is most needed. Since 80% of the UK population lives in towns and cities, there’s something here for most of us.

The report has 232 pages, and we don’t have the space here to cover all of it. One thing that caught my eye was the section on the continuing trend of paving over front gardens to provide off-road parking space. This issue has been getting regular coverage in the media, but for those of you who’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, here’s a brief overview of the reasons why it’s a Bad Thing.

Currently, the highest profile problem caused by hard surfaces is that of flooding. Rain water no longer has a quick and easy route back into the ground, but goes straight to the nearest gutter. Ancient drainage systems are overwhelmed, leading to headlines about sewage in the Thames. Pollutants such as oils, chemicals and heavy metals that would normally be filtered by the soil go straight into water courses. Runoff disrupts water catchments, leading to empty aquifers and reservoirs, and hosepipe bans.

Removal of vegetation means a loss of wildlife habitats, greater urban heat effects and reduced resilience against climate change and extreme weather events. Dry subsoils increase the risk of subsidence. There are many social and sustainability implications: loss of privacy and amenity, reduced property values, increased traffic volume and speed in residential streets, increased danger for cyclists and pedestrians, the devaluation of the streetscape as a social space.

The RCEP report points out that such small-scale changes have an important cumulative effect:

• An area 22 times the size of London’s Hyde Park has been lost as a result of converting many of London’s front gardens to hard-standing.
• Even greater proportions have been lost elsewhere in the country, with an estimated 47% of front gardens in North-East England being more than three-quarters paved.

The RCEP recommends that “local planning authorities use supplementary planning guidance to minimise the use of hard-standing, and require the use of permeable surfaces for paving and car parking.” Which is pretty wishy-washy really, and is a joke to anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of the UK planning system. In 2003 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) published a “Review of Permitted Development Rights“ which recommended that planning permission should be required for any hard surfacing where the total area of any existing and new hard surface would exceed the lesser of 15 square metres or 50% of the garden area. This report was quietly shelved. Magnificently detailed research conducted by Local Agenda 21 in the London Borough of Ealing was ignored by everyone except a few journalists. A subsequent document by the London Assembly (‘Crazy Paving‘, 2005) is an excellent source of information on this problem, but contents itself with calling for “consultation” and “seminars”, and recommending that planning law be amended to enable local authorities to require planning applications for pavement crossovers. It ducked the entire issue with the words “There is nothing in planning or any other law to prevent a homeowner from covering their front garden with concrete or any other surface. Nor should there be – it is for individuals to decide what to do with their own gardens”.

It seems that, while everybody accepts this is a major environmental and social problem, nobody has the courage to do anything about it. Meanwhile, the hand-wringing and the destruction continue.

My mate Jim Kunstler’s at it again. In a typically forthright article for Envirohealth, he describes, for all those who obviously haven’t been listening, the implications of a post-oil economy, and tells us what we can do about it.

All we have to do is:

1. Start thinking beyond the car
2. Produce food differently
3. Inhabit the terrain differently
4. Move things and people differently
5. Transform retail trade
6. Relocalise industry
7. Say goodbye to canned entertainment and make our own again
8. Reorganise the education system
9. Reorganise the medical system
10. Downsize virtually all everyday activities

Sounds easy doesn’t it?