Our Strategy
Environmental gentrification, or the phenomenon of an influx of wealthy residents to newly green yet poor neighbourhoods, is an important factor to consider when planning community gardens. While this project is focused on the sustainability side, our strategy acknowledges this necessary pairing of housing and greenspace in order to secure buy-in and long-term benefits for the community. For this reason, our first trial location for the garden is a parking lot with an active development application. The parking lot is currently underutilized and will remain accessible for a long time before any construction begins. Once construction begins the garden can be relocated to another nearby site. In this sense, the Cooksville Garden is both temporary in each iteration and permanent for the neighborhood.
Our Governance
Inspired by the Edible School Project, we are positioning the main beneficiaries of our garden as students in the neighborhood, notably those from T. L. Kennedy Secondary School. Due to the upfront capital costs and legal work required, this project uses a model of governance classified as top-down with community help in the implementation stage. This addresses the issue of low-income residents lacking time and resources to secure the land and initial materials. School administrators would receive start-up funding from developers as part of a new community benefits fund. As the project moves into the management stage, it would transition to a more bottom-up community governance between Ecosource and students with continued administrative support.
Why Cooksville?
Cooksville is a neighborhood located in the City of Mississauga, and it is one of the most diverse areas in terms of population and housing options. According to Cooksville’s 2016 census profile, it is home to approximately 120,205 people where 59% of which are first-generation immigrants and 62.9% earn below $39,999 in annual income.
In effort of addressing Vision Cooksville’s vision principles and community recommendations, this community garden project will generate avenues that facilitate more a vibrant public realm (see Principle 1, Vision Cooksville Report, 2016), a better connected and engaging public open space (see Principle 2, Vision Cooksville Report, 2016), as well as advance local and unique businesses (see Principle 5, Vision Cooksville Report, 2016).
Stormwater Runoff Benefits
For our first site, we recommend using 50 raised planters with specifications of 1 x 2 x 1m giving a total volume of 6m3. Soil depth would be 75cm with a 25cm gravel bed. Using these specifications in the National Stormwater Calculator, it is estimated that 100% of run-off could be prevented on 300m² area of planter coverage, shown in Figure 1. The environmental benefits of on-site capture will remain regardless of whether the garden is moved to another impermeable site.
Figure 1: Baseline scenario of 300m² of impermeable surface using and current scenario with 50 planters installed over that same area