Can New York City become a 15-minute garden city?

Abstract

The spatial distribution of urban agriculture in cities is not well studied, and scholars have tended to overlook localized effects and physical access issues when contemplating urban agriculture (UA) futures. To address this gap, we ask: what is the current spatial distribution of community gardens in New York City (NYC), and what land-use policies will enable more accessible garden futures? We adopt the concept of the 15-minute city to map the future of community gardens in NYC. We analyze garden distribution in NYC using remote sensing and spatial regression and design an optimization-based spatial planning approach to evaluate the feasibility of turning NYC into a 15-minute garden city. Our results indicate that more than half of the city residents have access to a garden within 15-minute walking distance, and that neighborhoods with lower income, lower rates of white residents, lower rates of owner occupancy, and higher rates of educational attainment have higher rates of access. The most costeffective increases in household access to gardens arise from developing new gardens on vacant parcels, which outperform modeled gardens sited on all other land uses, though a strategy of siting gardens on a range of land uses is required to maximize household access. By mapping gardens, analyzing their distribution, and modeling how to scale-up UA, this paper presents a novel spatial planning approach to expand urban amenities and ecosystem service benefits for a more just, sustainable, and resilient city. This spatial planning approach enables participatory planning processes for UA futures in a variety of urban contexts.