My Front Yard Garden

I participated in a workshop a week or so ago with Tom Low and Guy Pearlman of the architectural and planning group, DPZ.  Any workshop about place-making gets me worked up, and I especially looked forward to this one with Tom Low.

Low has been advocating for form-based development codes for many years, in particular transect based planning, which looks at the entire span of development from city core to rural and wild areas. The standards are based not so much on the particular activity on a piece of land, and encourages mixed uses, scattering housing and stores and restaurants and offices, parks and schools in patterns that encourage walking and biking. The design of the buildings, and the number of buildings allowed changes as you get farther from the city center. Buildings in different contexts--urban to rural--should look different, as row houses differ from single-family homes. Low and Pearlman used the metaphor that the transect begins in the urban core and feathers outward. The codes allow for great place-making, as communities can decide what areas will be densest and what areas will be protected open space.

But even the transect, Low said, has become somewhat outdated. These days, folks want more local food; farmers markets have proliferated significantly in the past few years. So in addition to design standards, green space designation, and density regulation, the new transect should include areas for growing food.

What does a garden look like in the city core? How about in the first ring of suburbs? Some communities now allow residents to grow gardens in the right of way between the sidewalk and the street, which is often prohibited to allow for utility work. New community designs, new infill developments, indeed all developments, should include plans for community gardens, for example, and the zoning regulations should allow for them by right. Cities like Detroit already allow community gardening on city-owned vacant lots.

I like to plant food, and have for most of my adult life. I’m not an expert, and my favorite plants are those that don’t require a lot of tending, but I like picking lettuce, or Swiss chard, or tomatoes, or herbs from my yard for dinner. I tried a garden in my current home’s back yard, but it proved to be far too shady. So I dug up some more grass in the much sunnier front yard, and I plant there. I’ve had reasonable success, with two plantings last growing season, and have managed to have fresh produce over a period of quite a few months.

I try to keep my garden neat, and it’s small, and many of the plants are pretty. Tomatoes can get out of control, though, and I try not to let that worry me.  I left the hot peppers on the plant the past two years, after Quinn and I tried a couple, and they turned orange and red, dangling like ornaments.

I don’t plant there to be rebellious, though in this neighborhood there aren’t a lot of front-yard gardens. I plant there because growing some of my own food has always been comforting, and rewarding. I’ve had a number of conversations about the garden with passers-by (this is a very walkable neighborhood). I’m not quite sure what the others think.

Earlier this spring, a couple walked by with their dog. They stopped to chat as I weeded or otherwise puttered about the unplanted garden. “What are you planting this year?” they asked. My wife works in retail, and one day someone she was helping said, “I know you, you have a garden in your front yard.”

Built Environment 101

Despite calls to exercise more and eat healthier—which many have heard, as the running and aerobics crazes show—obesity rates in the United States have tripled over the last 30 years. Obesity rates among children have also tripled, with rising rates of adult-onset disease like Type II diabetes being diagnosed in children as young as 7 years old.  Poor and underserved populations are disproportionately affected.

These frightening statistics have led public health leaders like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to target community design as one of the culprits, and have sought to make changes in policy and in the way we build. 

So now we hear new words slung around, words generally reserved for city planners and engineers, like “built environment,” “environmental change,” “connectivity,” “complete streets,” and “food deserts.” But what do these words mean?

The built environment is made up of all the stuff we build to meet our needs: roads, sidewalks, sewer rights-of-way, buildings, parking lots, and all that kind of thing.

 As I’ve said before, since World War II, the patterns of the built environment have favored automobiles travel, with interstates, wide roads with no sidewalks, and buildings set back from the street behind massive parking lots designed to hold Black Friday traffic. 

We’re seeing examples of environmental change in cities around the world as we try to retrofit the built environment to allow for pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass-transit users safe passage. We’ve added sidewalks, reduced the number and width of travel lanes, and increased the mileage of bike lanes. In many areas, renovations of defunct shopping areas have included more pedestrian friendly designs to create the types of neighborhoods many of our planners grew up in.

These renovations and additions have the goal of making our communities more connected.  Connectivity is the degree to which the amenities of a city are accessible by foot, bicycle, and mass transit. Can you walk to school? Can you get to a grocer by bike? Is there more than one exit from a subdivision? Many studies show that if a neighborhood has sidewalks, more people will walk.  Many of these changes are based on the “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” idea, but research and evidence shows that these changes result in a healthier community.

But roadway renovations are not always immediate. In that case, a Complete Streets policy, in which the body that owns the road makes a commitment to include sidewalks, bike lanes and transit stops in all new road way development and in any major renovations. This type of policy allows for changes in administration and staff without losing the commitment. The South Carolina Department of Transportation, the City and the County of Spartanburg all have resolved to build complete streets.

While physical activity is one element of the obesity problem, eating is the other. Many communities are becoming aware of a dynamic of the built environment called food deserts. A food desert is a neighborhood where unhealthy food options, like fast food restaurants and convenience stores, significantly outnumber healthy food options.  When that ratio exceeds 5-1, we call that a food desert.  The City of Spartanburg’s ratio is 8.5 to 1. In other words, for every grocery store or year-round produce store, there are 8.5 fast food restaurants and convenience stores. If you put eight plates of cookies and one plate of carrots out at a party, which one will folks fill up on?

The food desert problem is complicated with free market capitalism, private property rights and “this economic climate.” But many cities, counties, and states are using incentives to attract new grocery stores and other fresh food outlets, and are working with existing convenience stores to offer more healthy options.