Creative Community Cases LES

Parsons DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab is a research laboratory created in 2009 at The New School in New York City. DESIS Lab works at the intersection of strategic and service design, management, and social theory, applying interdisciplinary expertise in problem setting and problem solving to sustainable practices and social innovation. Parsons DESIS Lab promotes funded research projects with local partners resulting in workshops, studios toolkits, exhibitions and publications that articulate the practice of social change through design-enable sustainable community initiatives.

Statement of Purpose

Vision

DESIS Lab members explore the relationship between design and social change. Our goal is to advance the practice and discourse of design-led social innovation to foster more equitable and sustainable cities and practices. In a complex world facing numerous systemic challenges, DESIS Lab members rethink assumptions about cultural and economic environments, bringing nuanced approaches drawn from integrated design practices to communities of all kinds. In the DESIS Lab, service design is considered an advanced approach, one integrating many design disciplines.

Foundations

Three foundations guide our research in design strategies:

Bridging structural holes: Social settings often suffer from severe information asymmetries. We seek to bridge information gaps and find ways of sharing needed information more effectively.
Valuing tacit knowledge: People in a social system rely on both explicit forms of knowledge and “tacit knowledge”—information individuals and communities develop and share through habits and customs. The use of participatory design methods reveals and codifies this subjective knowledge.
Nurturing heterarchies: Whereas researchers have focused on social hierarchies and structural asymmetries, little attention has been paid to heterarchies—the lateral forms of collaboration through which social life is constructed. We promote such interdependent networks as it generates more opportunities for heterogeneous forms of collaboration.

For more, see DESIS Lab Website

11 BC Community Garden

Community Garden

4th St. Food Co-Op

A healthy mostly organic and local bulk dry goods/organic products shop. Anyone can shop here and the coop offer discounts to members (depends on amount of hours worked) seniors, low income, students, or even members of other co-ops. https://4thstreetfoodcoop.org/

6BC Botanical Garden

Community Garden

6th Street & Ave. B Garden

Community Garden

9th Street Community Garden and Park

9th Street Community Garden and Park was created from multiple plots that cover much of its block. In the 1990’s the city tried to reduce the size of the garden. For those in the neighborhood who came to its defense, one of the most important reasons to keep it together was the dramatic visual and safety improvement from the prior devastation that had been wreaked on much of the surrounding block of East 9th Street between Avenues C and D. Also the garden was already proximate to housing projects as well as a Mitchell-Lama development so that those who fought for the garden remaining together felt that there were enough low-income units clustered in that area and that what was most needed was safe green space. One of the turning points in this struggle came when a local developer rehabilitated a tenement which overlooked the garden. The fire escapes were turned into small porches and the developer advertised that the building had “garden views”. It is dominated by weeping willows but has more in the way of greenery and flowers as well as having a number of individual plot beds where people grow their own vegetables and herbs. This is balanced out by extremely well planned communal space which includes ponds, a casita, an area with open grass, barbecues, covered arbors, barbecue space, clever grottoes, and secluded spots for sitting, etc.. It also has an area with a Puerto Rican and United States flag as part of a memorial to 9/11. This garden like a number of others is a well known venue for concerts, particularly Latino music. It retains more of a Latino flavor than some of the other big gardens and its gardeners, like its gardens, are a representative mix of the neighborhood.

ABC no RIO

ABC No Rio is a collectively-run center for art and activism. We are known internationally as a venue for oppositional culture. ABC No Rio was founded in 1980 by artists committed to political and social engagement and we retain these values to the present. Facilities include: silkscreen PrintShop; our Darkroom; the ABC No Rio Computer Center; and a Zine Library. Each of these facilities is either free, or require very modest fees for use.

All People's Garden

Community Garden run by Manhattan Land Trust. It's got mature trees and a whole lot of songbirds and squirrels - both grey and black ones. It's a popular spot!

Auxiliary Services for High Schools @ P.S 91

School Garden tended by students (not so easy in this shady spot).

Blue Stockings Book Store

A "Radical Book Store" that also serves fair trade food, and functions as an activist center. Support and serve as a meeting space for "movements that challenge; hierarchy and all systems of oppression, including but not limited to patriarchy, heterosexism, the gender binary, white supremacy and classism". Promote topic research, meetings, events, educational programing. check it out at http://bluestockings.com

Bridad del Caribe

Community Garden

CAMPOS

Community Garden

Committee of Poor People of the Lower East Community Garden

Community Garden

De Colores Community Yard and Cultural Center

Community Garden

Dias Y Flores Community Garden

Community Garden

Earth Celebrations

Non-Profit group that seeks to raise awareness through theatre and an annual procession. Forms partnerships with schools, community centers, gardens and parks. Founded in 1991 to fight for the preservation of community gardens and raise awareness about environmental issues.

East Village Community Coalition

East Village Community Coalition

El Jardin Del Paraiso

Gardening on a very large site, the groups goal is to continue to develop a viable park, garden and discovery play area for the Lower East Side, working with city agencies and foundations. There are three basic areas park, flower & vegetable garden, and children’s area. The group presents puppet shows and films in the garden, as well as other seasonal events, performances, and environment education programs.

El Sol Brillante

Community Garden

El Sol Brillante Jr.

Community Garden

Fifth Street Slope Children's Garden

Community Garden

First Street Garden

The garden was first cleaned up and transformed into a community garden in 1983. Before the gardening group built the garden which is largely ornamental in style , the garden was an eyesore, a garbage dump and a magnet for criminal activity attracting rats, drug activity, rapists, muggers and thieves of all sorts. The gardeners have removed the filth and debris from the sidewalk in front of the garden, and at their sole expense secured the garden with fencing and gates and have planted numerous plants and trees including iris, violets, ferns, lily of the valley, black eye susan, ground cover and other wild flowers, birch, maple and mulberry trees. A small fish pond was maintained for many years by children among our gardeners for whom the garden is a vital resource as no similar verdant resource exists nearby. Birds are drawn to the lush greenery with nesting sites appearing seasonally. A lovely garden path has been constructed by recycling used bricks found at the garden site. A new planting bed was just installed in the front of the garden providing sunlit space for summer flowers.

Freegan Movement

(dumpster divers and scavengers). What do they do: Bring stuff to flea markets, Informal flea markets • Urban Foraging / Dumpster Diving – The practice of recovering useable items from dumpsters or street curbs that have been needlessly discarded. • Food Not Bombs – Food Not Bombs recovers food that would otherwise go to waste to serve warm meals on the street to anyone who wants it. • Squatting – Squatters find abandoned buildings and restore them into rent free housing and community centers with arts and educational programs for low-income communities. (contains blog) • Wild Foraging- find and harvest food and medicinal plants growing in their own communities. (pick from parks/gardens) "Wildman Steve Brill" Foraging events in NYC http://wildmanstevebrill.com/

Green Oasis Community Garden

Started in 1981 Normand Valle and Reynaldo Arenas began cleaning the garden. mission is to "provide a safe, green haven for all people, but especially for children who lived in an inhospitable environment."

Homesteading-UHAB

Sweat equity Homesteading- Work on housing find one particular case in the LES: we should contact Margarita Lopez (case study) Look also: Housing co-ops in existence - Identify buildings (city owned) (Become association do sweat equity, Get to licensed to bring to code, Group purchases it and forms co-op) Long history/story of how the building came to be. Formerly a building over run by drug addicts. Local residents rehabbed the building.