No vacancy: Unleashing the potential of empty urban land

March 27, 2012, www.grist.org | Tia Jackson’s family has lived on the same block of Halsey Street in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for five generations. Kristen Rapp is a newcomer. Jackson is black. Rapp is white. In a part of town where the gentrification process has been grinding along painfully for years, the two might never have met if not for a sign on a fence on a vacant lot, left there by the members of a group called 596 Acres.

Now Jackson and Rapp have keys that let them into that vacant lot at 462 Halsey. They are shoveling dirt and planting seeds. Together with a dedicated group of neighborhood residents, they are turning an abandoned scrap of urban soil into a garden.

Lindy Rose shared a link.

March 27

“Reclaiming unused city land for gardens!”

http://grist.org/cities/lots-worlds-unleashing-the-potential-of-vacant-urban-land/

No vacancy: Unleashing the potential of empty urban land

grist.org

A group of volunteers in Brooklyn mapped all the vacant properties in the borough, and discovered a remarkable amount of unused real estate. Now, they’re giving residents the tools to reclaim the…

Comments:

• • Robert Brothers ‎~ Here’s a map by the main group organizing this in BROOKLYN, named 596 ACRES because that’s how much PUBLICLY-OWNED VACANT LAND THERE IS. http://596acres.org/

    Follow them at http://www.facebook.com/596Acres

    596 Acres: Home

    ‎596acres.org

    Public vacant lots in Brooklyn. Find the lot in your life. Contact the owner. Grow something. We can help.