From toilet plungers for bike lanes to community gardens on vacant lots to locally sourced incremental development, citizens are finding creative ways to make urban space while bypassing traditional bureaucratic systems.
Seed bombing is one of my big projects this year. The city has a lot of spaces where there's either grass, unmaintained pasture, or bare soil. With equal parts native wildflower seeds/clay powder/compost, all those areas will become blooming flower gardens that support native biodiversity. Every city can become a garden city if not urban forest if people treat plants like Huey P Newton treated stop signs.
It takes good timing and periodic maintenance with a water bottle. I do it along paths I regularly walk my dog right before a rainy stretch and near bodies of water. This area is a high desert/shortgrass prairie so establishing them can be difficult unless it's well planned. If you can get dense germination or do it where the water table is high though, they evolved to be hardy in those conditions.
Seed bombing is one of my big projects this year. The city has a lot of spaces where there's either grass, unmaintained pasture, or bare soil. With equal parts native wildflower seeds/clay powder/compost, all those areas will become blooming flower gardens that support native biodiversity. Every city can become a garden city if not urban forest if people treat plants like Huey P Newton treated stop signs.
I wish local wildflowers grew that easily for me :(
It takes good timing and periodic maintenance with a water bottle. I do it along paths I regularly walk my dog right before a rainy stretch and near bodies of water. This area is a high desert/shortgrass prairie so establishing them can be difficult unless it's well planned. If you can get dense germination or do it where the water table is high though, they evolved to be hardy in those conditions.