With support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other grant-making organizations, a nonprofit called the South Dallas Jobs Project is developing arboriculture, urban agriculture, and other projects in some of the city's most economically depressed neighborhoods. The government is launching a plan to promote the bioeconomy. This project gives Dallas the chance to solve unemployment, climate inequality, carbon emissions, heat islands, malnutrition, diabetes, food deserts, and urban beautification with a green salvo. It's a virtuous cycle proven in global cities from Singapore to Philadelphia, and one we should all follow.
Sounds too good to be true? Admittedly, this type of urban planning requires significant funding and a clear vision. Farming is a tough business, even in rural locations where the land has been cultivated for generations.
But the benefits to south Dallas' dire economic, health, and sustainability situation are not theoretical. And as demonstrated in a webinar hosted by the South Dallas Jobs Project organization on January 16th, funding, volunteer power, and federal agencies are all helping to make some of Dallas' most blighted neighborhoods more affordable. It exists to transform into a center of production and production. biodiversity.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently selected Dallas as one of 17 locations for a new urban service center aimed at educating and funding rural city-based farms.
please think about it. South Dallas is home to a large number of “brownfield” sites, disused paved land that once housed factories, shopping malls, and electrical substations. If the city reclaims even a small portion of that land, the entire nature of the area could change.
Through the magic of biology, even heavily contaminated areas can be reintroduced into the food chain. One way to accomplish this is through “phytoremediation,” which uses plants to leach heavy metals and other pollutants from the soil.
The South Dallas Jobs Project argues that urban farms could become a major local employer in south Dallas if the land is reclaimed.
One such brownfield, the infamous “Shingle Mountain” area in southeast Dallas, has already been reclaimed as a park. And the much-lauded Bonton Farms proved that the concept works just as well in the arid South Dallas food desert as it does in the Sahara Desert.
Bon-Ton taps into the “local food” trend by selling its own produce at markets, providing local communities with healthy options that don't have to be shipped across seas or land like food from big-box grocery stores. doing.
“We basically asked the question, could we use urban agriculture as a food catalyst for perhaps even more profound change,” said the founder of Restorative Farms, an urban agriculture initiative in Dallas. said one, Brad Bore. “Our vision was for Dallas' agricultural system to create jobs, feed the community, provide markets outside of Dallas, and bring money back to Dallas.”
Dallas estimates it has 15 acres of urban farmland within its limits and aims to quadruple that area to about 66 acres by 2030, according to Carlos Evans of the Dallas Department of Environmental Quality. It is said that there is Evans believes Dallas' environmental struggles are inseparable from issues of racial justice and malnutrition.
Cultivating trees and plants is another simple but effective way to reverse some of the most harmful trends in large cities.
As much as 35 percent of Dallas' land is “impervious surface,” said Janet Monier of the nonprofit organization Texas Trees. She said: “We see flooding there, we see urban heat islands, we see complex thermal issues. [variation]”
Perhaps the most successful example of reclaiming “brownfield” space in Dallas is Klyde Warren Park. It's hard to imagine soccer kickarounds, lively playgrounds, outdoor cafes and food truck picnics happening in places like the pedestrian Woodall Rogers Freeway overpass. Is there anything more dystopian than the concrete of a Dallas freeway, or more idyllic than Klyde Warren?
The Colombian city of Medellin was little more than a giant smog-ridden shantytown when the central government left sustainability-minded urban planners and architects on the loose after the end of the region's drug war. . Today, disused buildings in Medellín have been transformed into giant flowerpots known as “vertical gardens.” Parts of the city look like vast greenhouses with skyscrapers tastefully embedded in miles of green space. Meanwhile, the gondola moves through a continuous belt of greenery and dense housing.
This comparison may sound grandiose, but the idea is the same. Land that has been misused or neglected can be reclaimed and contribute to sustainable and beautiful cities. It's a project that all of Dallas should support.
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