Norris Square sculpture garden fosters community connection and creativity through food and art

The First Nations Garden, run by the Chi-Nations Youth Council, is a gathering space for the area’s 65,000 Native people, providing them with a garden and a highly-requested green space that hosts regular events and provides cultural resources and education while fostering community.

Urban farms across the United States are bringing affordable, fresh, and healthy foods to communities facing food insecurity and are forming connections with residents along the way.

More and more public libraries around the United States are creating seed libraries as a way to encourage gardening, combat hunger insecurity, and build community resilience. For example, the Jefferson Public Library in Georgia has seen the number of people using the seed library grow to more than 300 in 2021. It can be a lot of work to maintain the seed libraries, but some librarians see it as a way to engage the community.

On average, community gardens don't last longer than a decade, but Harambee Garden in Chicago is defying the odds during its 12th year in operation. A large part of its success lies in the involvement of local churches, library, firehouse, and multiple youth volunteer organizations, one which even paired local high school students with adult mentors.

In Phoenix's historically Black neighborhoods, community organizations have transformed vacant, heat-trapping lots into thriving urban farms. One initiative, Spaces of Opportunity, converted a 19-acre abandoned site into a community farm with 250 garden plots available. Spaces of Opportunity serves over 1,000 residents each month, and other community farming initiatives also help in providing food and jobs for participants, many of whom are formerly incarcerated or unhoused.

Multiple organizations in Philadelphia are joining forces, such as The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the new Office of Clean and Green, to transform the city’s several thousand vacant lots into green spaces. Even Temple University has executed a new "Verdant Temple" master plan, creating specific green spaces for the public. A University of Pennsylvania study found a 29% reduction in gun violence in neighborhoods where vacant lots were cleaned and restored, and the city is investing nearly $20 million annually in these efforts.

Organizations in cities across the United States, including Philadelphia and Tucson, are simultaneously combatting urban heat and hunger by planting fruit trees and edible plants that provide shade and food that community members can harvest.

A collaboration between tree-planting organizations in Washington D.C. helps Catholic church properties to plant and care for trees. The free trees are an effort to combat urban heat and benefit the local environment.

The city of Chicago is offering municipal bond investors — specifically those interested in ESG investing — opportunities to fund social projects like planting 15,000 trees in historically disinvested neighborhoods over the next three years, converting motels and single-room buildings into housing for people transitioning out of homelessness and replacing the city’s gas-powered vehicles with electric.

Volunteers of a nonprofit tree-planting initiative in Paris are planting pocket forests, based on Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki’s method, to increase biodiversity and combat extreme heat. These mini-forests are made of native species planted close together at random to mimic a natural forest.