Productive-Scape: An urban food mechanism for New York City and New Rochelle
Health issues have reached epidemic levels all around the globe and accessibility to fresh food has become critical. To improve the city health of East Harlem and New Rochelle in New York, we advanced our understanding of what ‘health’ means to these communities through extensive community engagement programs and data collection.
From our study, we found that 'urban health' has three key components: Social, Human and Economic.
Addressing the concerns of economic, human, education and social health, we created an alternative cycle of food system that will reconfigure and stimulate the social and physical fabric of the city. Creation of a comprehensive system of food related program in an urban space could be an effective strategy to rebuild community connections and relationship with the physical environment of the neighborhood.
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The proposal sees the existing landscape as an opportunity which is translated into performative and productive landscape. This novel productive-scape links the sites with programs and in a whole, forms the chain of food production, consumption, sorting and decomposition. The identified issues like waterfront access, fresh food accessibility, food education, destination spots are answered by varieties of programs in productive-scape. Also the potential underutilized sites are activated by bringing education, social cohesion, and recreation prospects.
The productive-scape not only provides fresh, healthy, and organic local foods to schools, restaurants, and hospitals, but also creates job opportunities; the use of vacant spaces between buildings as a place for health food vendor or food festival during lunchtime or weekend creates social interaction in a way to strengthen the sense of community; a mixed use facility with farming, eating and educational base built near the marina in New Rochelle creates a destination for both local residents and outsiders.
The project can be used as a module to redefine the ‘city health’ and can be adapted to various cities.
The productive-scape not only provides fresh, healthy, and organic local foods to schools, restaurants, and hospitals, but also creates job opportunities; the use of vacant spaces between buildings as a place for health food vendor or food festival during lunchtime or weekend creates social interaction in a way to strengthen the sense of community; a mixed use facility with farming, eating and educational base built near the marina in New Rochelle creates a destination for both local residents and outsiders.
The project can be used as a module to redefine the ‘city health’ and can be adapted to various cities.
