New Haven's Urban Agriculture
New Haven, CT, USA
By Emily Sloss
community gardens, urban ag, farmers' markets
This project explores the many different types of urban agricultural spaces in New Haven, their density and relation to race and income.
New Haven has a long history of urban agriculture, with many of its community gardens starting in the 1980s. Since then, many different groups, on over 70 sites, have reclaimed vacant land and turned the land into productive spaces to grow fresh food as well as means to improve their neighborhoods. In particular, tNHLT has a network of 50 community gardens and 6 nature preserves. I worked with NHLT to improve their online map for the benefit of their 1000+ gardeners as well as for the organization to more easily manage their land resources.
In addition to NHLT, there are another dozen organizations working with urban agriculture in the city, in particular farmers’ markets and urban farms. While all of these organizations work together under the umbrella of the NH Food Policy Council there was no one place the public could find out where and how to access these different spaces. The map compiles all of that information in one place.
In addition to creating maps for the organizations’ websites, I also investigated the race and income makeup of the neighborhoods in relation to the gardens. The highest concentration of the gardens tend to be located in the lowest-income and most racially diverse neighborhoods. These two dot maps show neighborhood race and income data by block. In order to get the most accurate data, using city parcel data, non-residential areas were removed which highlights how much of the city is uninhabited, either due to industrial spaces, parks, water and highways. These maps also clearly illustrate how racially and economically the city is divided.
This map shows every urban agriculture space in the city (community gardens, school gardens, urban farms, farmers’ markets and resources) with a half mile buffer around each. Using the block level census data, individual residences can be located at a fairly high level of accuracy. From this data I was able to calculate that 80% of residents live within walking distance of an urban agricultural space.
Every 3 years, the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) conducts an in depth health survey in the six lowest-resource neighborhoods in city, which also happen to be where urban ag spaces are most concentrated. The survey asks questions around individual health, community health and neighborhood safety. Since the main goals of community gardens is to improve these same areas, working with this data seemed relevant. However, since the the survey is limited to only 6 neighborhoods, it gives an incomplete picture of how these neighborhoods compare to the rest of the city.
