Urban Gardening in Milwaukee

Today’s post focuses on Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee is a great example of federal, state, and local non-profit organizations coming together to solve the problems of pollution, abandoned buildings, food scarcity, and lack of economic opportunities in low-income and minority communities across the city.

Milwaukee has a long history of housing industrial and manufacturing facilities. As its manufacturing base has diminished, the city is left with a plethora of toxic, abandoned properties and communities steeped in poverty. The EPA has named Milwaukee’s 30^th Street Industrial Corridor a showcase community. The initiative seeks to work with state and local communities to redevelop Brownfields. The redevelopment efforts seek to improve the human, environmental and economic health of low-income and minority communities along the corridor through urban agriculture. To this date, EPA has provided the city with $1.3 million in revitalization funds, and has granted 4 brownfields assessment grants, totaling $800,000.

The city is working on converting the brownfields properties into urban gardens, which are leased to non-profit and neighborhood organizations.  These gardens instill a sense of purpose into these communities, and provide the residents with access to fresh food and jobs. A great example of this is the Victory Garden Initiative, an organization committed to creating urban gardens throughout Milwaukee to ensure everyone has access to fresh foods. The founder of this organization, Gretchen Mead, was chosen to have her idea included in Milwaukee’s application to the Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge, a contest/program that awards millions of dollars to the best solutions to problems faced by American cities. Her idea, in my opinion, is ingenious, and could help revitalize communities across the nation. Specifically her idea is to commit foreclosed properties and abandoned land to urban agriculture with the goal of farming the land for at least five years. Once a person farms the land for five years, the foreclosed home becomes theirs under a homestead law. This idea would provide incentive for potential homeowners to grow their own food, invest in and provide a resource to their community, and possibly provide jobs to others in the community. By tying the agriculture to home ownership, the city empowers residents and alleviates the ever-present problem of abandoned properties.  

More information on EPA’s showcase communities can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/grants/ej-showcase-r05.html

Information on the Victory Garden Initiative can be found here: http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/281127.shtml and here: http://victorygardeninitiative.org/