Integrating Technology and Community Engagement in a New Look at Urban Gardens
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) on Urban Food, Energy and Water (Urban FEW) held one in a series of workshops on urban gardens at NJIT on November 21st and 22nd. Comprised of researchers from several institutions of higher education, the Urban FEW has explicitly coordinated and applied its networked expertise to address the challenges and questions associated with food, water and energy security in the urban context. RCN members, professors Roberto Rojas-Cessa of NJIT and Ziqian (Cecilia) Dong of NYIT, who is also an alumna of NJIT, took the lead organizing, with the aim to connect researchers and technologists with the urban gardeners and food systems networks in Newark and throughout New Jersey.
HIGHLIGHTS
Workshop participants reflected roles in governance, academia and community, and included Nicole Hewitt-Cabral, Chief Sustainability Officer of the City of Newark, Huanying (Helen) Gu, '99, Professor of Computer Science, Associate Dean for Research, College of Engineering & Computing Sciences, NYIT, and Humberto “Humby” Baquerizo, EdD, ’96, Program Development Specialist, Office for Diversity and Community Engagement, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. The workshop opened with Dr. Chip Small, University of St. Thomas, who defined the ecoservices of urban gardens; such as urban cooling, storm water retention, nutrient recycling, carbon sequestration, pollinator habitat and of course, food. Invited speakers throughout Day 1 included: Raymond Figueroa, Pratt Institute, NYC Community Garden Coalition, who presented on the sociopolitical origins of urban gardens in the context of ‘urban renewal’, Carlos Martinez, Director of NYC Parks GreenThumb, who gave an overview of the largest community gardening program in the nation, Wen Zhang, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, NJIT Civil & Environmental Engineer who gave a view into nanobubble technology and applications for transforming agriculture and environmental management.
With the objective of making sure that the connections and collaborations between researchers and NJ based urban gardeners was realized, Hillier College Newark Design Collaborative fellow Petia Morozov tapped into the local network of organizations to invite them to present and participate: Newark area gardeners Charmaine LaFortune of Giving One Tenth, Tobias Fox, Newark Science and Sustainability, Inc., beekeeper and garden manager Marcellis Counts, Apiary in the Sky, were amongst other community members who joined for the discussions.
BOUNDARY SPANNING AND THE CONVERGENCE OF COLLABORATORS
The workshop brought together experts who measure the environmental ecoservices of urban farms and gardens, who deliver food security to their neighbors in Newark, who integrate regenerative systems into urban design, who apply advanced technologies to developing sustainable agriculture, and practitioners who have developed the kind of networked urban food systems that will result in greater food security for urban dwellers.
Amongst the group was Gareth Russell, who represented the breadth of faculty and student engagement in the Urban Ecology Lab at NJIT and their work, William Pennock, assistant professor who works on water treatment in Civil and Environmental Engineering at NJIT, environmental sustainability planner Carrie Martin from the Center for Community Systems (CCS) at Hillier College, who shared a number of ways that CCS provides technical assistance to environmental justice communities, supports community redevelopment of brownfields, while also working to enable clean energy infrastructure and access to it in underserved neighborhoods.
On day 2 of the workshop Ce Yang, University of Minnesota, moderated a panel on sensor and technology applications with Peter Marchetto , Conservify, Stephen Hsu, IT Director for NY Environcom, William Pennock, Ph.D., E.I.T., ENV SP and Wen Zhang, and discussed strategies for integrating technologies into garden operations, followed by Michael Bobker, CUNY Institute for Urban Systems, who prompted participants to think about governance and planning for a smart garden.
The effort taken in this workshop to converge this broad group of experts; to integrate research, technology, community and policy for sustainable and resilient urban development across these domains, was an inspiring example of boundary spanning. Subgroups have emerged out of the workshop who are developing further connections, collaborations and funding opportunities.
WHY REVISIT URBAN GARDENS?
The history of urban gardens in the US goes back to at least to WWI; at the time referred to as liberty gardens, growing food to address shortages was considered a civic duty. During WWII they were known as victory gardens, also serving to counter food shortages. In the 50s and onwards urban gardens became spaces of community resistance to the displacement and disinvestment of urban renewal, the same spaces that are now also known to be environmentally overburdened given the proximity of major transport infrastructure and industry that replaced what were once viable residential communities. Today practitioners like Peter Marchetto of Conservify and others make it their business to measure the important data about the soil and water in our food systems; on lead in soil and the effectiveness of phytoremediation, on the salinity of fresh water being used for farming, and metrics for the presence of microplastics, perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and pesticides.
Nevin Cohen of CUNY’s Public Health and Urban Food Policy Institute pointed out that for technical and social interventions to improve and expand urban agriculture, it must be recognized that access to resources and power is not equal, and that goals, even when shared are not always synchronous. Moreover, when it comes to policy for the governance of urban agriculture, the different centers of governance that need to be connected, for example those who manage storm water, those in charge of sustainability, and those who manage land use.
Other RCN network members are affiliated with New York University, Arizona State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, The City College of New York and Hunter College, Stanford University, Louisiana State University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Geodesign Technologies, Inc., Illinois Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, Concordia University, University of St. Thomas, and Reutlingen University.
To be on the notification list for the next workshop in the RCN series please contact Amy Stinchcombe Hillier College of Architecture and Design, or Roberto Rojas-Cessa, Electrical and Computer Engineering. Registration for Prof. Zhang's upcoming workshop on nanobubble technology and applications can be found here.
