The Oak Ridges Moraine Battles

 

The Oak Ridges Moraine Battles: Development, Sprawl, and Nature Conservation in the Toronto Region is a time capsule of events looking back from the year 2013, and a book that remains as relevant and important a work today as it was the year it was first put into print. Published twelve years after the passing of the 2001 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/020140) this information-packed read was also composed four years before the publishing of the 2017 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, (https://files.ontario.ca/oak-ridges-moraine-conservation-plan-2017.pdf). Historically it precedes the activism underway today to once again protect the Moraine and the Greenbelt from encroachment. However, this title has a wise voice that transcends the passing of a decade and its words continue as guidance to activists today. 

Printed in the year Kathleen Wynne stepped into power, as well as the year the ice storm and several earthquakes shook Ontario bringing climate to the fore, there was a different kind of STORM brewing in Ontario, the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition, and people were taking note. This comprehensive and detailed book was surely a welcome arrival as it would help delineate environmental action and policy. It also reinforced the astonishing breadth of support for protecting the Moraine. The writers, a smart and critically-minded team of environmentalist scholars, were also intrigued by examinations of power dynamics in coalition-forming and exposing imbalance in wider approaches to conservation. 

The book has eight chapters, each approximately thirty pages long. As we learn from our reading of Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario by Mark Winfield, (UBC Press, 2012) it wasn’t until the 1990’s that “the Moraine was ultimately declared an area of provincial interest, and in 1994 a series of reports on a strategy for the Moraine was completed by the Ministries of Natural Resources, Environment, and Municipal Affairs and Housing,” (Winfield, p 82).

The Oak Ridges Moraine technical committee seems to have been one of the last great things the nineties Ontario NDP government set up before it switched over, and established a much-needed first step in protection.

The Oak Ridges Moraine Battle: Development, Sprawl, and Nature Conservation in the Toronto Region functions like a sort of essential primer to these sorts of battles, and it is filled with social and political insight. Of interest to anyone wishing to learn about the history of the Moraine, the book is pertinent to any struggle against development sprawl. If you love stories of communities taking a stand, this is a book with soul. 

With plenty of fascinating historical background, high-stakes political tensions, unlikely alliances and examples of human courage in the face of adversity, The Oak Ridges Moraine Battle has one slightly unusual factor that makes it extra great. This is that the writers create a sense early on of the Moraine as an entity, and provide eloquent words of caution against simply seeing it as anything else. I think this was the most special element about the writing that made me read on. By making the Oak Ridges Moraine feel not like a landform and more like a slow-moving ancient and monolithic animal, an entity with its own agency that shifts, yields, provides, deflects and in a way even listens, the book engages reader interest from the first chapter. Once framed in this way, the effort of environmentalists to establish protections becomes a tale of people who share a relationship with earth. To this end, the book is also a bit of a toolkit for directly embracing rather than shying away from emotions in environmental causes while empowering them with facts. 

While the first chapter references Latour’s concept of “actor networks” and introduces the idea of a landform itself being an active rather than passive actor in “influencing socio-political outcomes,” (Gilbert et al., page 7), it also quickly offers some stark facts regarding sprawl and encroachment in the form of several useful charts. The following chapter, “The Surfacing of a Landform,” describes historic events involving the Moraine, its ancient function as a home to Indigenous people, the impact of European resettlement, and with a bit of humour, its only fairly recent identity as a “geomorphic feature,” (Gilbert et al., page 32). Reiterating the theme of landforms having “agency” (Gilbert et al., page 31)  it also presents the useful idea of the contemporary moraine as a “cultural construct” with “its own dynamic” (Gilbert et al., page 32), reminding us this is a place that will outlast humans.

While describing the Moraine as “shaping…human and non human destinies,” a section which asks “do moraines listen?” makes it evident the writers shared an intent to remodel our approach to scientific information with earth-centred compassion (Gilbert et al., page 33). In an age when many overly-technical books attempt to lead discussions of conservation, I found this refreshing and I believe it helped lay the groundwork for a more accessible writing style in the decade that followed. 

Further the book criticizes a dominant framework of thinking that had presided over the then-recent conservation campaign for the Moraine, cautioning against an entrenched approach (Gilbert et al., page 90). Remarking that the interrelatedness of nature and culture as well as the need to plan for biodiversity that includes humans was obscured by certain frames of thought (Gilbert et al., page 90) was courageous and, looking back, surely quite true.

The other thing I liked about this book was its thoroughness. I’m quite sure Premier Kathleen Wynne must have seen the value in owning this title and have ideally read and reread it, as I can imagine it greatly helping her in positively influencing her policy decisions and her position that the Greenbelt must be expanded.

The Chapter Nature Conservation Planning in South-Central Ontario: A Flashpoint describes the history of hearings and the involvement of Pollution Probe, Greenpeace and local action groups in defending the Moraine  (Gilbert et al., page 59). The history of conservationist science in studying the Moraine and the long history of public concern are also described in this chapter in a way policy-makers as well as everyday citizens would find accessible and informing (Gilbert et al., page 81). Charts regarding land use designation and on page 87 a list of 17 important technical papers regarding the Moraine by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of the Environment are further listed with care. 

The chapter Residents Speak for the Moraine taught me to visualize three phases of citizen engagement in environmental campaigns, that of citizens learning the tools of activism over small disputes, of broader-based coalitions forming and finally, of involvement of the ministries, private sector citizens and all stakeholders in the concern (Gilbert et al., page 126). Of course, no book with a title like The Oak Ridges Moraine Battle could not supply readers with the nitty gritty details behind the forming of STORM: Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition, and the growth of coalitions is an inspiring tale as well (Gilbert et al., page 128). While the authors have encouraged us to see these events through a critical lens, the book also gains momentum: the excitement of so many groups coming together and combining their clout is palpable. The photos are also great choices, such as the one of Raging Grannies (Gilbert et al., page 150).

The Taking a Stand chapter was perhaps the most exciting as it built on the previous chapters and made the book read a bit more like the action and adventure story it truly is. Taking a Stand, Preserving Place and Nature on the Moraine opens with a description of how homeowner groups united with environmental groups and organizations such as Earthroots and the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund. It presents both the history behind these at times unlikely alliances and the ways in which this “convergence” (Gilbert et al., page 120) occurred in real life. 

The chapters Conservation Planning in the Service of Growth and Producing Exclusive Landscape Aesthetics have some very good writing lurking within in the form of a critical examination of power issues in planning, “planning is a politics by other means,” (Gilbert et al.,  page 163) and the writing simply pulls no punches. I like that in a book, and the statement that “ the Oak Ridges Moraine is a privileged residential environment,” and that it is still “vulnerable to development pressures” underscored the issues involving classism and other buried concerns (literally in the case of Indigenous sites) that sometimes go unmentioned when coalitions combine. Both chapters were sobering after the excitement of large coalitions joining forces, and the adept writing shone a much-needed light on how much work is still to be done. The writing in the chapter Producing Exclusive Landscape Aesthetics quite brilliantly exposes the untruths behind the capitalist notion of “win-win ecology” (Gilbert et al., page 225) and the hypocrisy of aggregate companies presenting themselves as “good stewards.”

 In conclusion, this is a book that is successfully timeless and the authors write with skill. It contains a lesson in perceiving any geographic landform (and by extension our planet) in a wholistic and respectful way, and it is a book loaded with indispensable information. Highly recommended. 

Gilbert, L., Sandberg, L. A., & Wekerle, G. R. (2013). The Oak Ridges Moraine battles: Development, Sprawl, and nature conservation in the toronto region. University of Toronto Press. 

Winfield, M. (2012). Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario. UBC Press. 

 

An Introduction To Environmental Law and Policy in Canada

 

I discovered this book while checking out the required reading list for courses at York’s Environmental Studies program. It’s used in an Environmental Policy course, and I couldn’t resist buying it for study.

This opening chapter explains the law-making bodies in Canada, the reading of bills in the House of Commons and the process required for laws to come into force both in federal as well as in provincial systems. It moves forward to explain, “The Concept of Jurisdiction,” and it uses a case example. This was the first use of a real case example in the book. It created a reassuring sense we had moved beyond introductions and into the realm of actual legal textbook, and that this was one that is designed to equip that environmental law literacy so needed in our future courtrooms. 

The chapter end then provided a summary of key points. My assessment is that this chapter definitely met learning expectations. It also offered interesting discussion questions and it dished up enough suggested readings to occupy a keen student for quite some time.  

The next chapter, Aboriginal and Environmental Law, presented a case study example by the second page, something as a reader I found exciting. Case studies create for me an instant sense of connection to the legal process and the history of legal challenges. The chapter explains that Aboriginal law and environmental law are intertwined, and discusses terminology (such as the word Aboriginal) in a clarifying way. It also describes well the idea of treaty rights, thankfully explaining that they are wide in scope and that some land is also unceded territory. 

The 1990 R. vs. Sparrow case, a study of the Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia case in 1997, The Taku River Tlingit First Nation vs. British Columbia case (2004) and the Haida vs. British Columbia case (2004) are all presented here, as is Tsilhqot’in Nation vs. British Columbia in 2014. It was great to see the extensive presentation of these case studies, in most cases important precedent-setting wins. Studying even a rudimentary description of these cases helps any reader better frame compassion for Indigenous people’s struggles in a legal light and these are written in a helpful and compassionate way. 

The chapter then returns to the discussion of treaties and presents the Grassy Narrows challenge in 2005. Here I did feel that, although the description emphasized expectations regarding the duty of the Crown and of the Province of Ontario, because the pollution concern at Grassy Narrows is far from resolved, it seemed an omission to only describe the “duties” aspect and have no mention of recent failures of duty as Grassy Narrows is still an ongoing battle for environmental justice today. Excepting this feature, the chapter is a very good introduction to the issues and a very useful explanation of how these challenges occurred in court. The chapter also conveys the importance of consultation and accommodation, and how these are key to and work alongside environmental law. Again the chapter-end discussion points were useful and the suggested reading list and notes are extensive making it a very good introductory chapter that fulfils its goals for learners.

The next chapter, Chapter 3: The Relationship Between Canadian and International Law, has three learning objectives. The first is to grasp the meaning of International Law, the second is to learn key components of both conventional and customary International Law, and the third is to know the history of Canada’s involvement in the development of International Law. 

The chapter begins by emphasizing the complexity of International Law and that there are many types. It explains Conventional International Law clearly and usefully. Conventional International Law involves conventions or treaties between nations with carefully set out (and specific) terms, and their arrangement is formal. Negotiations can take years and have many stages. Agreements regarding a change to details in a convention or treaty, legally termed protocols, are a much less formal process. Protocols allow for developments to formal conventions or treaties and draw attention to specific parts. While protocols also can take years and must be entirely agreed to by participating nations, their terms do come into effect upon ratification. The chapter also explains how Customary law is different than Conventional law, as Customary laws are based upon long-standing laws recognized to be binding and abided by. The book then discusses several case histories, and presents examples of times Canada has played a role in development of International laws. Here I appreciated that the book included the fact that Canada has recently been seen as obstructive in the case of international Environmental laws.

This chapter concluded, consistent with the others, with discussion questions and ample numbers of notes and suggested readings.  

The final chapter, Environmental Assessment, begins with a frank introduction that explains assessments as controversial and outlines how they meet resistance, although assessments often serve to make great progress in protecting the environment as well. The book outlines some useful background history to environmental assessment law. Progress in this area has definitely included better public participation and prevention rather than corrective action, meaning the pushback is less from communities and more from companies hoping to exploit a location for resources without reasonable restraint. This chapter also describes the history of assessment law in Canada, and describes it quite accessibly, making it an interesting piece of writing to any student intrigued by the field. Finally, it also provides a chart breaking down the differences between basic and more advanced assessment law in Canada, and reviews newer concepts of sustainability in law.

 All in all, I found this final chapter entirely readable, building well upon what was covered in earlier chapters, and creating for the student a feeling of accrued ability. Notes for this chapter run for three pages and the chapter’s suggested reading list and discussion questions are intriguing. As well as having key terms list at the end of each chapter, the book concludes with an extensive glossary, The glossary is also worthy of study and is eight pages long.

 I really enjoyed the offerings in this (75 page student version) textbook and I’m glad I purchased it. It contains a comprehensive introduction to the field and is well-written in its aim. An excellent understanding of not only Canadian environmental law but international law and the history and development of treaties and environmental laws between nations is within its pages. For any student ardent about environmental justice, An Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy in Canada is an indispensable primer.

  Muldoon, P., Williams, J., Lucas, A. R., Gibson, R. B., & Pickfield, P. (2020). An introduction to     environmental law and policy in Canada (75 page. Student edition). Emond Montgomery Publications Limited. 

Recycling the City: The Use and Reuse of Urban Land

 

This book offers policy ideas and asks questions regarding underutilized urban land. Although it was published in 2004, it is entirely valid today. The editors, Rosalind Greenstein and Yesim Sungu-Eryilmaz, wrote this as a publication of a Cambridge, Massachusetts think tank called The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which has existed since 1946. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy currently lists as its goals: Low-carbon, climate-resilient communities and regions, Efficient and equitable tax systems, Reduced poverty and spatial inequality, Fiscally healthy communities and regions, Sustainably managed land and water resources and Functional land markets and reduced informality (Wikipedia, 2023). This large, oversized paperback with full colour photos is divided into three parts, and each one of these sections has three to five articles by contributors under their topic. 

Part One, The Vacant Land Phenomenon, encourages readers to see vacant land as opportunity and challenge. This creates an optimistic tone that is an excellent lead-in for the rest of the book. The section defines Vacant land, and asks why such land is found abandoned in cities. It raises several questions. Why do these underutilized urban spaces appear in city landscapes? Why do they remain unused for long stretches of time, despite an obvious need for their deployment as gardens and community spaces? 

Leading into Part two, The Vacant Land and Brownfield Redevelopment process, the book discusses the assessment tools required to determine if an unused parcel has a history of being contaminated, always a first step before redevelopment can get underway. We learn that there are considered to be at least three classes of brownfield sites involved in assessments, at least in American cities. In my own internet search, other environmental assessments seem to have six or more Tiers, but the Tier system is always an important assessment feature. This is also perhaps a window into the problem of the gentrification process, as the Tier process seemed very linked to the salability potential of any land. As found in this (American) book, Tier One abandoned sites, regardless of their location or the better purpose a community may see for them, are sites designated as the most attractive to the private sector. Tier Two sites are those classified as below the threshold for development viability. Typical Tier Two sites seem to include spaces such as waterfront sites in cities with low economic prospects, defined as Tier Two when they have some risk of contamination, and so will require work to bring them into a marketable category. 

This process is also clearly outlined at the website https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/overcoming-obstacles-brownfield-vacant-land-redevelopment, which is produced by the same Lincoln Institute of Land Policy that published this book and so has consistent information in both places. Sites with a Tier Three status are sites that require considerably more effort and investment as they have a proven contamination issue that is not easily resolved. Once sites are assessed and are redeveloped, Innovative uses for Vacant Land as described in Part Three, can really take on a life of their own. Innovative uses for Vacant Land can include community playgrounds as well as community gardens, fruit tree orchards, gathering spaces, spaces for theatre, workshops, concerts and other performances, Tiny Forest sites, and many more. Greenhouses, small outdoor cinemas and outdoor galleries also can be included here. 

I found this book fun and useful. It has action in mind, and it’s difficult to read it and not feel like the expertise accrued must be put to good uses. I hope this book stays in print, as the 2004 publication date only shows it has been a well-spring of knowledge for several decades  of vacant lot repurposing, and is in fact, a bit of a hidden classic. 

Sungu-Eryilmaz, Y., & Greenstein, R. (2004). Recycling the city: The use and reuse of urban land. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario

 

This book has beautiful clear maps and charts, and is an under-discovered gift to the people of Ontario. Whoever decided to create a free download option for avid readers has done a great service, and I can only hope that as many Ontarians as possible are reading this volume. Blue-Green Province is a go-to read-and-reread reference book, and not a book intended to be absorbed by skimming through once. The author is a meticulous scholar, and has an understated nonpartisan style while placing successive Ontario governments under a brilliant environmental lens. 

Winfield addresses his potentially vast topic with scrupulous diligence and his professional approach includes extensive and specific notes to important events that would have otherwise been lost in the archives of government data. His authority is indisputably the product of an exacting writer devoted to the merits of his work. Blue-Green Province as a history book divides its sections into a intriguing and entirely readable study of Ontario government eras. Turning point moments in Ontario's environmental policies are described by Winfield  in a compelling and coherent way. Environmental scaffolds in place today are suddenly made stark for the readers as the efforts of years of laborious process on the part of environmental advocates who have fought for decades, and fought in decades past to create accountability in this province. 

The preface reminds us of Ontario's record of great environmental achievements as well as several historic calamities, transporting us as far back as the 19th century which marked some of the beginnings of action on the part of policing the environment (Winfield, xiiv). Winfield also goes back to the forties and even thirties and references the governments of Frost, Robarts and Davies, and successfully creates needed continuum regarding the history of Ontario in the process (Winfield, page 6).

The book, as an environmentalist history, but rather than being structured around time periods, it is structured around specific government eras in Ontario. The effect of this approach allows readers to slowly build upon their Ontario environmental issue literacy, and use it to contrast the management and policy decisions of Ontario today. This creates for readers a sense of the urgency in past times, when Ontario’s environmental realm was entirely unregulated, and a look at how legal loopholes were left behind by successive governments that placed production above protection. Blue-Green Province gives an overview of past environmental records from each government era, beginning with the long PC "Dynasty" period, a daunting process something Winfield has written in a fairhanded manner and researched extremely well. The entire book is accompanied by footnoted text, providing several footnotes within each paragraph throughout. It is reassuring to read a book by an author so dedicated to ensuring academic sources are present and in place.

Another plot in the book is the tug-of-war between Ontario's private sector, who wanted to extract resources and pollute with a free hand, and environmental lawmakers, who wanted them to comply to environmental regulations, which were developing in response to a greater understanding of the harm pollution caused. Winfield uses the term "incremental" to describe the incredible slow pace and deliberately stalled progress and exemptions-making route that basic environmental regulations and their enforcement took in Ontario (Winfield, page 32). The book is also great at identifying key moments in time, such as the establishment of the Environmental Assessment Act in 1976 which resulted in the government being willing to actually consider prosecution for hazardous waste pollution by 1980 (Winfield, page 32). Blue-Green Province effectively recreates the controversies and challenges of the time and makes understanding these important historical events much more interesting as Winfield is a writer who is skilled at removing obsfucation and letting facts speak volumes.

For me there were many interesting moments and parts in the book, including the acid rain battle (Winfield, page 65) and Winfield's description of the Harris government, and the ways in which Harris sought to undermine past regulations, as well as the legislative and other responses to his attempts (Winfield, page 106). 

I highly recommend this book as there is great inspiration between its pages. Anyone who wishes to develop their literacy regarding the evolution of Ontario's environmental protection policies, the history of how they came to be in place and a sense of what more must be done will find Blue-Green Province unparalleled.  

If there is a term for dog-eared favourite in the electronic realm, I highly recommended this essential volume become a dog-eared go-to for all Ontarians. The contents are easy to grasp and important for every Ontarian to become versed in. It is an important work of outstanding academic calibre accessible to all. 

Winfield, M. (2012). Blue-Green Province: The environment and the political economy of ontario. UBC Press.

Facing The Climate Emergency

Facing The Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth is a book with an ambitious intention. Authored by Margaret Klein Salamon with an introduction by Molly Gage, the book is written to create climate activists. A slender volume, the first few pages are packed with praise from twenty-eight reputable editors, authors and directors of leading organzations addressing climate change today. Among the added remarks on the back cover, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion writes, "This work is not optional. Read it, use it, and rebel." The book's introduction is indeed extremely readable, and, like the rest of the book, it has a therapeutic tone, frankly discussing the challenge our society is facing regarding painful climate change truths. Such an accessible opener invites readers at any stage in their understanding to drop in and join the larger conversations in the book. This book also pulls no punches. The author presents the opiod epidemic and other mind-numbing addictions our society partakes in, remarking, "It is hard work not letting yourself feel your fears. When you avoid the truth, you put the energy that could be used towards preventing the climate emergency into safeguarding the fiction you've created for yourself."

While I was immediately impressed with the connection I felt to the writing, it was the breakdown of psychological factors involved for humans looking at climate change that really hooked me to read on. These factors included those of "Willful ignorance" and, my favourite, in true activist style, "Regression: We need the experts to handle this." From the first pages this book also names CEO's and specific corpoprations associated with blocking efforts to stop climate change, as well as making clear just who are the heavy hitters in working to stop climate change in various fields. Following an activist-rousing introduction, the book is divided into 5 sections, titled Step One, Step Two, etc., while the concluding Step Five, "Join the Climate Emergency Movement," offers detailed advice in a direct address to readers. It was an open invitation to all those seeking roles, purpose and action.

Step One also compares our curent lack of emergency response in comparison to "Allies entering emergency mode when mobilize to win WW2." This is a strong case, and I hope people take much inspiration from the example. As the authors remind us, "faced with the prospect of annihilation, Americans and Britons were expected to pull together by working in war jobs, growing victory gardens, contributing to scrap drives and -in Briton- volunteering as Air Raid Precaution wardens." I've heard the comparison before, and I welcomed encountering it in this book. Today, the book remarks, "this sort of necessary response is required but has yet to be engaged." I have to agree with the authors. This book is toned as an action call throughout, and I find it excellent. Any shortcomings have to be assessed given the purpose for which it is written. The author is brilliant in describing the way that movements can bring social truths to the fore, such as the #Metoo movement, or the civil rights movement, and other movements that allowed society to address injustices that were in some cases sensed but denied. They also discuss the "gradualist movement" which wants change done the books argues in such a gradual way that it is useless. It presents instead the climate emergency movement: "this movement demands what is necessary- a ten year transition to zero emissions plus drawdown." After such a strong opener, we wonder what is next. What exactly is "Step 2?"

Step 2 turned out to be a bit unexpected. It phases readers into a twenty-three page discussion of emotional work and of skills required for dealing with the fear that arises from facing climate emergency. It's a surprise to encounter this in a book of this sort, but an incredibly cool feature. The author also openly discusses how they sought psychotherapy for their own anxiety around climate crisis, an honest tone for a difficult topic. And, as in every chapter, a series of questions about the text are available at the end. For Step 2 the questions were personally challenging but excellent and I hope that personal emotional skills structured around Step 2 will help quell conflicts within the movement in a way that other movements may have overlooked.

Step 3 "Reimagining Your Life Story," is a chapter for people revising their personal script. It talks about heroic models and "saving the planet" in a way that addresses the reader's new information, cautioning against personal gradiosity contrasted with the need for everyday heroism.

Step 4, "Understand and Enter Emergency Mode" posits that human responses to crises, "fight, flight or flee," as well as writings on PTSD "contribute to collective paralysis." This is an example of a point in the book when I feel it is perhaps directed at a white middleclass readership. The statement is used to present the argument that, "these are not our only options. We can also be inventive and collaborative in our response." I find this opener a bit objectionable, even though it is building into a pitch for emergency action which is worthy, as it could stand to have been a bit more nuanced. It's not as if people simply choose PTSD, as much PTSD occurs to children, and the PTSD movement itself involves an army of inventive people who, for the sake of society, have accepted both diagnoses and drugs before recent healing breakthroughs that serve us all.

There were a few other points in the book where I thought the authors were lacking sensitivity, and I don't like "forgiving" anything I read as I go, but I did understand the message and intent were also well-intended and good. Because of the urgent message, I wish there weren't these points I object to, because ultimately, it is a super cool book.

Step 4 offers an historic distillation of some of the emergency responses (such as the Allies's rally to win WW2) but is perhaps my favourite chapter because it presents Larry Kramer and the ActUp! movement of the Eighties as a prime example of citizen action when "gradualism" isn't effecting change. This and other examples of emergency movements that created effective and lasting social change are what make the book great. It's an inspiration and call-to-action tome and very effective in its purpose.

I enjoyed this book and I actually cant reccomended it enough. Five stars, it was a dive into a cool and refreshing ocean of like minds engaging their democratic citizen duties by stepping up.

Public Gardens and Livable Cities: Partnerships Connecting People, Plants, and Place

Authors Donald A. Rakow, Meaghan Z. Gough and Sharon A. Lee have compiled a series of studies of public gardens broken down into six parts. The introduction addresses the urbanization of the future world, and the need to define and prioritize livability as distinguished from sustainability. It presents public gardens as "anchor institutions" just like libraries or parks, rooted in their physical location. Emphasizing the importance of partnerships between public gardens and organizations outside the gardens, the book explains types of partnerships in communities. Cooperative examples would be a garden shared by a school, while collaborative partnerships are those that share resources and decision-making while remaining independent. Collaborative partnerships are generally considered to be the strongest type. The final stage for any type of partnerships is collective action, which includes a shared committment to collective impact and a common agenda for moving forward.
The first chapter, titled, "Promoting neighbourhood safety and well-being," examines cities across the United States where there is a demand for more livability while introducing the idea of placemaking, a strategy that uses public spaces to promote social interaction and, of course, partnerships. The book examines many public gardens, and I will mention a few of my favourites here. In Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Greenest Block Competition is a gardening initiative that has created an enthusiastic following and has improved public spaces throughout the borough. The Ambassador Program at the Queens Botanical Garden in NYC, like the Greenest Block competition, has powerfully developed community and built trust. However, I found the description of vacant lot programs particularly cool. Chapter one describes the Philadelphia vacant lot situation and the initiative of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in setting up a LandCare program in the 1970's, now one of the biggest vacant lot land programs in the US with over 12,000 properties. PHS has partners around the country, and participants come to Philadelphia to seek assistance from the PHS staff in designing a vacant land strategy for their own city. This chapter concludes with a topic I always look for data about, the issue of gentrification and the "long-term implications" of "beautification vs potential for resilience" regarding those newly-greened communities that have surely earned the right to hold onto their neighbourhoods and resist displacement.
The second chapter, titled, "Improving the quality of science education," addresses the job opportunity, safety and environmental sustainability spin-offs generated by community greening projects. It describes project Green Reach, which has helped Brooklyn kids grades K-8 access science information and observe nature's cycles first hand. This type of project was repeated in many other cities, including Chicago, where science class gets awesome as Chicago Botanical Garden students extract DNA in mentorship with research scientists. There has been a huge upswing in interest in urban gardening as a result of these efforts. By 2013, 2 million more households report involvement in some way in community gardening than those in 2008. In the case of Bronx Green Up, participants are awarded certificates for learning levels and skills gained, as well as practices implemented. Green Corps in Cleveland also does this, involving local teens while bringing fresh, organic produce to underserved neighbourhoods and selling produce at local farmer's markets each week. Green Corps is in an interesting partnership with the Cleveland baseball team, and maintains raised beds at the team's stadium as well as in the player's parking lot, with produce used by the team chef to prepare healthy dishes for the players.
Access to healthy food and promoting healthy lives through urban gardening partnerships are discussed in Chapter three, while Training and Employment programs are addressed in more depth in chapter four. Public gardening job training programs for veterans and an examination of the Riker's Island greenhouse program are included. The RIGP is a partnership with the department of corrections and the department of education, and develops horticultural skills while citing a forty percent reduction in recidivism as a spin-off of the program.
Chapter five explores initiatives to promote ecosystem and human health, while "strategies for the development of successful partnerships" is explored in depth in chapter six.
This is an amazing book. I truly enjoyed reading this volume and the enthusiasm regarding gardening partnerships shifted my own thinking in positive ways. The epilogue supplies a look at the future of public gardens and the book is made yet more accessible with extensive appendixing. Recognizing public gardens as anchors and the key to healthy communities is one of the most important message of our times. This energetic, reader-friendly book with many photographs shines a persuasive and motivating light.

Rakow, D. A., Gough, M. Z., & Lee, S. A. (2020). Public Gardens and livable cities: Partnerships connecting people, plants, and place. Cornell University Press.

City of Forests City of Farms: Sustainability Planning for New York City's Nature

Lindsay Campbell is a Research Social Scientist who received a close-up view of the massive PlaNYC 2030 and its accompanying MillionTrees Project roll-out from her job posting within the US Forest Service's NYC Urban Field Station. Sustainability plan PlaNYC 2030, which began in 2007 with great fanfare under the mayorship of NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, included a $400 million commitment to plant one million trees in NYC. This colossal project, under the direction of the NY Department of Parks and Recreation, inspired tree planting campaigns around the world.
In contrast, "urban greening practices such as urban agriculture, community gardens, and other interventions into local food systems received no mention in the 2007 version of PlaNYC." This omission occurred despite the fact that New York is home to "one of the largest networks of urban community gardens in the world."
Campbell asks, "why were urban forestry and agriculture treated so differently in the sustainability plan?"
While there are parts of the book that suggest Bloomberg was willing to leave the urban gardening movement high and dry, the real reasons and the politics at play in urban greening are more complicated. Certainly, from the onset, decision-makers involved in PlaNYC had a commodified view, describing the value of trees from an investment standpoint, while there was a perceived gap in any metrics regarding the value of urban farms and community gardens. Campbell was able to document how, over a number of tense seasons and against considerable odds, activists, researchers and everyday citizens replaced that gap with the measurable science and data that was missing.
Because of the "sales pitch" approach by advocates of PlaNYC 2030, the stakeholders in this form of "green growth" were very distinct, and the process of deciding who gets to set the agenda was considerably influenced by NYC's business elite. In the context of this difficult onset, grassroots activists, urban farmers and community gardeners throughout NYC organized and prepared a successful challenge to the forestry-led agenda by 2011. Campbell's journalistic book shines an intense light on various developments in PlaNYC2030 from 2007 to its more urban agriculture-friendly revisal PlaNYC 2.0 in 2011 to its continuing implementation up until 2015.
Urban agriculture while "entirely absent" from the first PlaNYC, was not at rest, and until there were serious and ratified goals set regarding the production of local food, activists were agitating for change.
Campbell found this touchpoint interesting enough to carry the book, and I think it does. The book is a very thorough biopsy of a time period in which a gargantuan effort was undertaken to transform a city. Without a strong challenge from social justice and grassroots urban agriculturalists, the Bloomberg legacy might have resulted in a very different picture.
The book supplies excellent charts in this book before even the close of chapter one, extensively comparing the urban forestry network in chart-form with that of the urban agriculture network. "I pay particular attention to how ideologies of environmentalism, sustainability, and neoliberalism overlap or compete," the book"s author declares in the introduction, and I believe she bears this claim out.
In examining the absence of food policy and planning in the PlaNYC 2007 strategy, we learn that food policy in those days was seen as something too vast, complex and too controlled by the private sector for any city government to bring under their jurisdiction. At the time, small-scale community gardens were not the only ones who felt leery of Bloomberg's plan. By the time the revised plan PlaNYC 2.0 rolled around in 2011, it was however positively influenced by food policy goal-setting changes. However, it was a hard road to arrive at that juncture. As well, some of the more mainstream critiques of Bloomberg's "sustainable city" initiative during the establishment of PlaNYC 2.0 insisted that the sustainability planning did not consider "the hinterlands and global commodity food chains" on which the cities were dependent. Other critics felt that sustainability plans in their current form did not challenge the political-economic structures of cities sufficiently to create real change. While PlaNYC pandered to commercial interests and received a huge amount of funding from NYC's business elite, it was also a model of independent municipal problem-solving and in many ways ahead of its time by tackling climate change and urban heat issues head on.
Not surprisingly, PlaNYC 2030 began with an idealistic but uniformed leadership driven by Bloomberg's dream and the project's considerable funding. In the early days, "sites were viewed by decision-makers as just green spaces on the map that could receive hundreds of thousands of trees." As a result many advisors quickly "took issue with the numerical tree planting goal and correctly argued that emphasis should be placed on creating healthy, native, multistory forests" because many sites for these early tree planting proposals had "nothing to do with feasibility."
By chapter six, Campbell has led us through some interesting years and forward in time beyond the Bloomberg years and into the de Blasio mayoral era. The de Blasio era was a time when the emphasis on social programming became more central than the trees. However, by this point in time, NY's urban grassroot's gardening movement had gone into gear. Here Campbell describes in detail the establishment of vast and entrepreneurial rooftop garden operations in NY. The demographics of the gardeners, the backyard chicken program participants and the beekeeping programs in NY are well-chronicled and reassuring reading regarding how some of these sustainability initiatives are playing out.
However, the impression that poor neighbourhoods and the people who live in them can be upgraded en mass did take its toll on NYC. It is well-known that treeplanting can beget gentrification. A number of ground-level garden sites were negotiated sites, for instance planted in movable beds, with the understanding that the site was not able to be affordably developed at that time but in the future would be turned into housing. This discussion is to me the most interesting, because the idea that the urban poor are intended to improve and move, or to continually shift to make way for development as a sort of civic duty, is highly problematic.
Fortunately, over the years of the PlaNYC 2030 sustainability implementation, there was a lot of emphasis on research. As well as research groups, activist groups such as 596 Acres sprung up, assisting in the visualization of those hundreds of vacant urban acres that required farming. Rooftop farm entrepreneurs as well played a role in urban food agriculture and their gardens were also included in the 2011 PlaNYC 2.0 revision.
Ultimately the urban agriculturalist won their point, and urban agriculture became ensconced within the 2030 goals. These goals included the assessment of land availability and suitability for urban agriculture, the creation of citywide urban agriculture program, and the ensured permanence of community gardens. The development of rooftop agricultural greenhouses, a determination of the capacity of the regional foodshed, and the development of state strategy for farmland and food production were also included. Barriers to food composting in community gardens were eliminated and agreed-upon goals to expose all city students to farms and gardens were also established. By cultivating student and citizen access to agriculture and relationship with an urban farm, a generational literacy in food production is today fostered. These were only some of the changes and goals set out in the document, many of which have been implemented, and their positive impact is clear.
The final chapters including one titled "Constructing the "greener, greater city" describes how there is no longer a lack of data now but "a proliferation of academic research and citizen-led science on urban agriculture..." and examines how much the planning implemented under public health rather than competitiveness functioned as programs for the sake of social justice. Soil testing, contaminant-free healthy and fertile soil and other ensconced PlaNYC 2030 sustainability values are also discussed.
How have things fared post-Bloomberg? The millionth tree was inevitably planted with great volunteer engagement. Even though de Blasio moved away from tree planting and slated over a dozen garden sites for development, "urban agriculture is on an upswing" regardless of city governance.
In closing Campbell looks to the urban farm movement future with hope that this movement can achieve "the critical mass necessary to scale up and affect citywide policy and natural resource management." Her challenge lingers long after the last page of the book.





Campbell, LK. (2017).City of forests, city of farms: Sustainability planning for New York City's nature. Cornell University Press.