Greening Vacant Land in Cleveland

Starting a raised garden bed using lasagna layer gardening at Jess Levine’s Wonder City Farm in Cleveland, Ohio. Located on East 55th Street, it is the former site of the Hofbrau Haus Restaurant and parking lot. Photo by Morgan Taggart.

Urban agriculture projects bring hope — and food — to communities that have long suffered from a glut of empty lots.

By Arionna Brasche
Shelterforce – The journal of affordable housing and community building
Fall 2010

Excerpt:

Doing something with vacant land is a timely and urgent issue in Cleveland. In a city that has struggled for years with population decline, the foreclosure crisis only made matters worse, with approximately 22,000 foreclosures occurring since the beginning of 2008. These foreclosures have worsened the city’s problems with vacant lots and homes, of which it now has 20,000 and 11,500 respectively.

Frank Ford, senior vice president of research and development at NPI, sees the Reimagining pilot projects as attending to the “end problem” of vacant land and explains that the problems moving forward are a growing inventory of vacant structures, an even greater growing inventory of vacant lots, and the fact that both will keep growing.

Numerous benefits will come from the projects, says Zautner. They will “provide local food, provide sustainable land development, and also relieve some of the stress on the city of Cleveland … these lots that are being transitioned and leased into these projects are going to be maintained by neighborhood folks, which is a big weight off the city’s back in the long term.” The grantees are a diverse group, varying in education, race, ethnicity, income, and age, but, Zautner says, “one thing they all have in common is passion and motivation to create something great within the city.”

Read the complete article here.