Therefore the Institute of Bionomic Urbanism has decided to create a program that helps the environment, the community and the landowners of vacant parcels to create a temporary solution for the land for the mutual benefit of all.
The Whitley Gardens will serve as the first template project. With it, we are creating a concept structure (proposal) as well as a legal document that may be used with some local adaptation by teams throughout the city and across the country. Each team using this structure will want to use the concept structure as a guideline to make their own proposal, integrating key elements and adapting others to their own situation and wishes. Some teams may wish to set up a community garden instead of an urban farm. This will need some adaptation and also require a second legal document that sets up the structure of the community garden itself. At a later point we will post a template legal document for the community garden version also, but in the meantime many community gardens exist already and their structures are usually posted on their websites and can be used for reference. The legal document we will be posting here shortly and will serve as a template agreement between the landowner and the farming tenant. It will outline the contractual understanding, responsibilities and obligations between the two parties. Because local codes vary from place to place, this legal document will have to be verified and possibly modified by a local lawyer in each case. But it will help minimize legal costs for each team as the template will be provided to the interested parties by the IBU for free.
An Urban Infill Template Project
Whitley Gardens will serve as a template project for transforming privately held, vacant land into a temporary urban organic farm and art garden. It will bring together food, art and community.
There are hundreds of vacant land parcels in every city that cause negative impact on the community and hardship on the land owners. The negative impacts on the community include attraction of criminal activity due to lack of presence of people (natural neighborhood watch) and lack of nighttime lighting, the dumping and accumulation of debris and general blight, causing a decline in safety, walkability and a drop in real estate values of the surrounding properties and the surrounding community. It is safe to say that the land owner undergoes similar hardship, as he is responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the property, bears the liability of what happens on the property, is required to pay fines to the city if the property is not maintained well and of course owes property taxes and often other fees and bank interests to keep the property. In other words, it is not usually in a landowner’s best interest to keep a property vacant, as there are a lot of costs involved and no returns on the property until it is developed. Nevertheless a lot of landowners are forced to keep their land vacant for many years and sometimes decades, due to various factors, the main one usually being financial feasibility of the development project.
In times like these where real estate values have been on a steady decline and financing has become incredibly challenging, many construction projects have been put on hold and are not projected to be implemented for several years to come.