Is the grass greener in Lambeth? We think it could be..
One thing we are all agreed on these days: we need green spaces. Recently, London residents rated their parks as the most loved spaces in the City – and Lambeth came out top in a poll of London’s parks and open spaces; we are fortunate to have such beautiful parks but lockdown has shown us that we just don’t have enough of these lovely green spaces.
Can you imagine a Lambeth where these spaces are cared for in a similar way to our parks? – where we create bountiful spaces on our estates and street corners that everyone wants to be in, with consideration for wildlife, birds and bees and with abundant food growing everywhere? We know that there are many unloved spaces that could be transformed but we need you to help us identify them.
We are very excited to be working in partnership with Arup, who will be facilitating research mapping to identify the existing and potential food growing spaces across the whole borough, building a comprehensive food growing map.
We will draw on Arup’s GIS and Landscape Architecture expertise to map and analyse these spaces (i.e. car parks, housing estate lawns, vertical walls, rooftops etc) using free available datasets to identify potential food growing open spaces.
The gaps in the mapping will be filled by Incredible Edible Lambeth’s and other local groups’ food growing knowledge. The insights on potential food growing spaces will also be verified by Incredible Edible Lambeth members and partners.
The end result of this work will be a digital map with existing and potential food growing spaces in Lambeth, informed by on-site verification by you! We will end up with a foldable printed digital map of Lambeth’s existing and potential growing spaces which we hope will support and enable all of us in our ambition to have food growing within 100metres of every Lambeth home.
Why are we doing this work?
- We are striving to end food poverty by increasing people’s access to healthy, affordable and locally grown and produced food.
- We hope this map will help to reconnect deprived communities to healthier eating and affordable fresh food
- A clear visualisation of the green spaces and potential food growing sites will serve to strengthen the local food system resilience
- The mapping will assist in identifying strategic local food growing and biodiversity restoration locations for communities, landowners and developers in the future, serving as an important spatial database for boroughs and city officials
- The methodology of this project offers the opportunity for scalability and replicability across different boroughs in London and aligns with London’s food strategy while supporting Lambeth’s goals and community aspirations.
Finally – the opportunity to increase people’s access to healthy, affordable and locally grown and produced food is the mission. We hope this insight can contribute towards informing local authority’s future development plans and food resilience strategies.
Would you like to be involved in this citizen-led research project and help contribute to the mapping?
First:
Catch up on our first crowdsourced mapping experience by watching our Lambeth Food Story entitled 2021: The State of our Food. You can find it here.
Then:
Find existing spaces – Explore your community and keep your eyes open for community gardens. Did you find some? Check to see if the garden is on our member map. If the garden isn’t on our map yet, reach out to us and let us know.
Discover new spaces: In your explorations did you come across an ideal space for a new community garden? Let us know and we will investigate it as a potential new growing space. If it passes muster, we will add it as a potential growing space on our map.
Start a community garden: Have you earmarked a perfect spot for a community garden and are ready to start growing? Get in touch and we can help provide information on how to get started.
Mapping research to be undertaken in partnership with:
