GIS-Based Inventory of Potential Locations for Community Gardens in Seattle

AN INVENTORY OF POTENTIAL LOCATIONS FOR COMMUNITY GARDENS IN SEATTLE

UrbDP 422 Geospatial Analysis Final Report Rao Fu, Xiao Jiang, Ying Zhou, Xiaoyang Zhu March 18, 2014

URBDP 422 March 2014 An Inventory of Potential Locations for Community Gardens in Seattle _________________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction Seattle is increasingly recognizing the importance of food system and urban agriculture. Seattle Department of Neighborhoods provides programs and services that “engage people in civic participation, foster stronger communities, make government more accessible, and preserve and enhance the character of Seattle’s neighborhoods” (Department of Neighborhood website).

Department of neighborhood is the mainly policy department that designed to reach every member and keep vitality of community, by this way, department of neighborhood is trying to address the planning and design challenges faced by Seattle. Community garden, the main form of urban agriculture, is an effective strategy to address poverty and hunger. “urban agriculture offers many economic, social and environmental benefits to cities, including increased food security and equitable access to food, the beautification of previously vacant or under-­‐used sites, opportunities for training and employment of under-­‐skilled residents and youth, and the enhancement of community life” (Horst, 4).

Seattle has already established P-­‐patch program, a public community gardening program.

Seattle has existing 72 community gardens, or P-­‐patches, the Seattle local name. They are very popular with residents and a long waiting list at least 3 years. During this quarter, I and my team partners had the opportunity to attend inter-­‐bay community meeting about expand of their existing P-­‐patch garden. Specifically, inter-­‐bay p-­‐patch alone had about hundreds of people on the waitlist. Therefore, not only inter-­‐bay p-­‐patch, the population of Seattle keeps increasing on limited land area, there would likely be a demand for more p-­‐patch. According to the research on the city policy and future planning strategy, the city has already expressed its desire to create additional community garden spaces.

“DON [Department of Neighborhoods] is requested to work with Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light and other relevant departments and universities to conduct an inventory of public lands in Seattle appropriate for urban agriculture uses.”

-­‐ Local Food Action Initiative Resolution passed by the Seattle City Council April 2008(Horst, 2).

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Recognizing this, the Seattle City Council has passed a Local Food Action Initiative Resolution.

The Local Food Action Initiative is a series of actions meant to promote local and regional food sustainability and security. As a part of the food resolution, department of neighborhood need to “Identify additional locations and infrastructure for community gardens that would strengthen our community garden program and maximize accessibility to all neighborhoods and communities”( Local Food Action Initiative Resolution, 2008). According to the demand of additional p-­‐patch garden, our report is trying to identify and evaluate potential public owned open space as possible community garden site. With GIS analysis, we select sites for potential community gardens according to size, slope, accessibility and surrounding community. Our findings could be reference for department of neighborhood to build additional community garden sites.

Problem Definition The World Food Summit of 1996 gave a definition of “Food Security”, which is “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”.

Nowadays, the increasing number of people especially living in urban area starts to pay attention on food security. They are exploring different ways to improve access to fresh and local produce within cities. Seattle is a leader in this movement. There are about 80 P-­‐Patch community gardens located across Seattle. However, recent survey have suggested that between 12% and 20% of Seattle residents have experienced food insecurity, 63,000 residents could be classified as food insecure and 31,500 residents are hungry (Seattle Food System Enhancement Project 2006-­‐2007). Our team would focus on this topic and we would find potential locations in Seattle, which are appropriate for community garden in order to improve food security.

Our team interviews Eric Higbee, a Landscape architect practice in Seattle and his works mainly on urban agriculture and community gardens. According to the interview, we know that the existing P-­‐Patch (community garden) program in Seattle has helped different communities to

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utilize existing public lands for urban agriculture uses. Therefore, more and more residents want to involve in, more community gardens are required based on limited public open space in the city of Seattle. Our team project is responding to this civic request, the GIS analysis is a good inventory to let communities and Department of Neighborhood to know where would be best buy to establish community garden.

Conceptual Model

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Methodology

Criteria and assumptions for the model Variables Remnant Parcel.

Open Space, Park Ownership

Assumptions/Reasons The sites should be vacant, low-­‐development cost and well-­‐ connected to natural system.

The ideal overall size of a P-­‐Patch community garden is 4000 square feet.

If the land is publicly owned it is easy for the existing P-­‐Patch program to work with the relevant government agency and help community access the land. If privately owned the negotiation process for a long-­‐term lease is long and complicated.

Slope

The sites should be reasonably flat. If it slopes, the grade should not be so steep that level beds could not be created, for example by terracing. There should also be access for delivery of materials.

Existing Community Gardens

The sites we proposed should not be overlapped with existing community gardens and not be within 1500 ft. of the P-­‐Patch layer. It should serve for communities currently lack access to healthy and fresh food accessibility.

Population Density

We believe community garden will preferentially work for the area with high population density.

Household Type

We assume that multi-­‐person households are more likely than one-­‐ person households to use community gardens. Because they’d like to use the gardens to educate children and to share the fun of growing plants and learning about them through family activities.

The sites should support the opportunities for community gardening in low-­‐income housing; and should be easily accessible for low-­‐ income family.

The sites should be near the minor arterials, because minor arterials with low traffic volume and low noise level can effectively distribute traffic from principal arterials to lower level streets, and to community services like gardens, parks, and community centers. The Euclidean distance to minor arterials should be 1000 feet.

Income Accessibility

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Model

To analyze the variables, raster data model, vector data model and aerial photo are used for evaluating the potential for community gardening according to particular variables. The vector data are used in the “garden” part, because most of them are polygon to show the spatial information. The measurement level of population density, income and slope, etc. is continuous numeric. That’s why the “community” part is best performed with raster data model. Aerial photo analysis helped us to recognize the site reality. The following is the step by step methodology:

We selected >= 4000 square feet open spaces, which are owned by public. The way to find publicly owned vacant land remains unchanged in this model, since the requirements (vacant land, ownership, size of the garden) in this step are fairly inflexible.

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This step we focus on census data as well as slope data. We intend to make this step more reliable by using raster data model. By reclassifying the values to a common scale, we could analyze variables as whole. The criteria for reclassification are the lower number being more suitable and higher number less suitable. The previous mode we created mainly does vector analysis and makes selection based on exact thresholds, which may eliminating some communities that do not cross the thresholds but still should be provided with opportunities for community gardening.

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The raster calculator tool outputs a new raster that allows us to analyze the slope, population density, household type and income reclassification as a whole. Extracts values to points tool extracts the cell values of the suitability grid based on the point features and records the values in the output feature class. This is actually an alternative approach to analyze raster and vector data together.

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Data dictionary Data layers

Data link

Sources

File date Used attributes

Data type

Parcel Boundaries Delineated by King County (Land Use)

https://wagda.lib.w ashington.edu/data /geography/wa_citi es/seattle/data/pro perty/parcel.zip

City of Seattle

02/2012 PRES_USE_D,

TAXPAYER

Polygon shapefile

Neighborhood Districts

https://wagda.lib.w ashington.edu/data /geography/wa_citi es/seattle/data/nei ghborhood/neighdis .zip

City of Seattle

02/2012 OFFCL_NAME

Polygon shapefile

Steep Slopes

https://wagda.lib.w ashington.edu/data /geography/wa_citi es/seattle/data/terr ain/steepslp.zip https://wagda.lib.w ashington.edu/data /geography/wa_citi es/seattle/data/co mmserve/ppatch.zi p http://www2.censu s.gov/geo/tiger/TIG ER2013/BG/tl_2013 _53_bg.zip http://www2.censu s.gov/geo/tiger/TIG ER_DP/2011ACS/20 11_ACS_5YR_BG_5 3.gdb.zip

City of Seattle

02/2012

Raster

City of Seattle

02/2012

Point shapefile

United States Census United States Census

2013

Polygon shapefile

2011

http://gis.ess.washi ngton.edu/data/ras ter/naip2009ccm_w a/king_ccm/ortho_ 1-­‐ 1_1n_s_wa033_200 9_1.sid https://wagda.lib.w ashington.edu/data /geography/wa_citi es/seattle/data/stre ets/arterial.zip

National Agriculture Imagery Program

2009

B11016 Household File Type By Household geodatabase Size B19113 Median Family Income In The Past 12 Months (In 2011 Inflation-­‐ Adjusted Dollars) B01001 Sex By Age

Image file

City of Seattle

02/2012 ArtClass

P-­‐Patches (Community Gardens) 2011 TIGER/Line Shapefiles 2007-­‐2011 American Community Survey 5-­‐year estimates

2009 NAIP Aerial Photography (County Mosaic) Street Arterials

Line feature

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Maps:

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Analysis & Interpretation Policy

As a main form of urban agriculture, community garden p-­‐patch program is improving within recent year, supported by city policy and partnership.

In 2008, the Seattle City Council passed the Local Food Action Initiative, "which aims to improve the local and regional food system. Since then, the City has advanced this goal in a number of ways, including convening the Food Interdepartmental Team to coordinate food system work across departments, updating the land-­‐use code to support urban agriculture, making more city-­‐owned land available for food production." (Seattle Food Action Plan, 2013). Based on our research, creating new community gardens and expanding current activities is a main way to make urban landscape more productive. From building and managing p-­‐patch community 20

URBDP 422 March 2014 An Inventory of Potential Locations for Community Gardens in Seattle _________________________________________________________________________________________

garden to working with residents, to share and donate fresh food, the serial activities are supported by city food policy and Department of Neighborhood.

According to our project finding, most potential community garden sites targeted in low income and under-­‐served communities, than supplemented by Seattle food policy. In Seattle Food Action Plan, "… The P-­‐Patch program enjoys strong interest. Support ongoing P-­‐Patch operations and continue to expand community gardening to under-­‐served areas of the City and reduce wait times in densely populated areas. .." (Seattle Food Action Plan, 5, 2013). Therefore, our project finding envisions the development for under-­‐served community in Seattle. These locations could be the inventory list to Food Action Plan.

Food Action Plan has outlined four goals for achieving a healthy food system in Seattle: health food for all; grow local, strengthen the local economy, and prevent food waste (Seattle Food Action Plan, 3). According to our research method and selection criteria, expand new community garden is an effective way to realize the "fresh future". With our project findings, several strategies can implement.

1. Increase affordability of healthy, local food for low-­‐income Seattle residents.

2. Promote healthy food, especially in low-­‐income communities and with youth, through education and collaborative efforts.

3. Prioritize food production as a use of land.

4. Develop and support programs to produce food on City-­‐owned land.

Limitations Timeliness: The data we found has different file dates and some of them do not represent the current conditions. This will affect the accuracy of analysis results.

Other potential land type/space: We only used open space as criteria for community garden locations; however community garden can be located on other land types/spaces because of the land limitation based on dense urban development.

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Right of way potential area for community – street ends, electrical transmission line, trail Rooftop: Buildings with flat rooftops have their benefits for sustainable urban agriculture, such as stormwater collection, infiltrations and treatment.

Green wall: Increasing multi-­‐functional development for vertical urban spaces, which GIS cannot represent and analysis.

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URBDP 422 March 2014 An Inventory of Potential Locations for Community Gardens in Seattle _________________________________________________________________________________________

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Natural conditions: Since natural conditions are key elements for urban agriculture, we need to consider their influences, such as sunlight, wind, precipitation and pollution, etc.

Infrastructure: Related infrastructure is necessary for supporting sustainable urban agriculture, including drainage system, water supply, public transportation and enough parking space, etc.

Household type: We only consider family households as potential users for community gardens; however some non-­‐family households may also want to be gardeners or participators. For example, there is an urban agricultural area in Mercer Court, which is a student apartment. The space is managed by students and volunteers.

Field work: Because of the limitation of data, the results are only locations for community gardens and some of them may be too large to be built and managed. We also did not consider existing habitats. Site visits are necessary for further selection of specific community garden areas.

Suggestions Originally we found 38 locations for community gardens, 20 of them are overlap with or closed to the existing community gardens. Bases on this fact, we can expand the existing community gardens in order to serve the surrounding neighborhoods better.

Local governments, organizations and private land owners can corporate together to use private lands, have financial support, raise project funds and improve maintenance for community garden development.

The locations for community gardens are low income area. We are considering bringing more benefits to them. First, low income gardeners can increase income and promote economic development through food business.

Updates after the project presentation on March, 13 2014 • Steps to address the accessibility issue: 1. Use raster calculator to combine Population, Income and Household grids.

2. Extract cells of the output raster by using “Extract by Attributes” tool. These cells with low value are residential areas that should be considered as high priority. Then convert the output to polygon.

3. Extract values of Slope raster to Remnant Parcels shapefile (converted to points) by using “Extract Values to Points” tool.

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4. Select and export points with lowest value (i.e., the flattest remnant parcels).

5. What we have now are two polygon shapeflies-­‐the high priority areas and the flattest remnant parcels. Create 0.5 mile buffers around high priority areas. Select and export the remnant parcels with in these buffers.

Then the suitable locations we select will be within a 10 min walking distance of residential areas. This change will includes more sites since we do not set the rules that the sites should be very close to small arterials.

• Waiting list of existing P-­‐Patch Seattle P-­‐Patch Gardens and Parks Waiting List, created on Nov 13, 2011 by Alicia, UW Transportation Services, indicates the waiting time of 73 existing P-­‐Patch gardens in Seattle. We could use this valuable information for determining the high priority locations.

Slope limitation in analysis During our presentation we received some questions about the reasons we consider slope as one of variables. It is mainly because the accessibility and budget. The landform of Seattle is featured by slope,

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if we exclude slope we will lose a lot opportunity for potential locations. However, in consideration of ADA access and planting bed requirement, we decide to exclude slope area for possibility. First, planting beds on slope have a big problem of soil/water runoff and mulching run away. Second, most community residents are old people who has hard time to climbing slope, or even harder with planting tools. At last, outdoor public space required at least one circulation with ADA accessibility.

On the other hand, project budget is another consideration for slope limitation. If propose a community garden on the slope, the grading work and post-­‐maintenance cost will hold the project down. We landscape architecture students’ personal experience of slope design during this quarter is that grading work is not cost effective. While, community garden is more likely the grass-­‐root community gathering, which need to keep low budget and involve more people.

Therefore, these two reasons make us to consider slope as a limitation element to choose potential locations.

Reference "P-­‐Patch Community Gardens." City of Seattle. Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/ppatch/start.htm#Gardensite Horst, Megan. Growing Green: An Inventory of Public Lands Suitable for Community Gardening in Seattle, Washington. , 2008. Print.

Philips, April. Designing Urban Agriculture: A Complete Guide to the Planning, Design, Construction, Maintenance and Management of Edible Landscapes. , 2013. Internet resource.

"URBAN AGRICULTURE AND COMMUNITY GARDENS." Policy Link national research and institute. http://www.policylink.org/site/c.lkIXLbMNJrE/b.7634267/k.C841/Policy.htm Retrieved on Mar 8, 2014.

Seattle Food System Enhancement Project. Program on the Environment Certificate in Environmental Management, Prepared by: Richard Cook, Daniel Morgan, Heidi Radenovic , Stephanie Renzi. 2006-­‐2007. Vanderbilt University. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ees/images/morgandj/Cook_Final_Food_Report.pdf "SEATTLE: CITY COUNCIL ADOPTS FOOD ACTION PLAN" City Council, Seattle Office of Sustainability & Environment, State News Service, April 29, 2013. http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OSE/Seattle_Food_Action_Plan_10-­‐24-­‐ 12.pdf

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