Event Description
In New York City, urban agriculture is one of the most active areas for community healing, peacebuilding, and climate action. When communities grow food together, they’re also negotiating land use, rebuilding trust across difference, and creating space for collective agency. Gardens bring together people who didn’t choose one another—neighbors, strangers, different generations, different cultures—to share land, labor, and decisions. In ecology, this is called the edge effect: Where two different ecosystems meet, biodiversity naturally increases, resources are exchanged more freely, and overall yield is greater than either ecosystem produces alone. Community gardens work the same way. The friction between different people, perspectives, and ways of knowing isn’t something to smooth over. It’s the condition that fosters the most life.
Gardeners bring deep passion and strong opinions: about growing methods, land use, and who belongs. That friction is generative—but only when people stay in relationship through it. Community garden spaces are fertile ground to grow food and steward land while building communication skills, sitting with tension, and discovering what becomes possible when community holds together rather than fractures apart. Come together to explore what urban agriculture makes possible.
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. For more information, please visit the event webpage or contact Kjerstin Pugh at [email protected].
Hosted by the Masters of Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at Columbia University.
