Neighbourhood Food Gardens in Amsterdam

Gabi Murillo and Toby Jones made these maps with the intention to raise awareness on the precarious situations of many invaluable neighbourhood food gardens in Amsterdam. We also wish to encourage conversations and address the factors which impact their risk of disappearing.

We fully acknowledge that the map is limited in many ways and that each garden’s situation is distinct and far more complex. However, from our research listening to more than 15 gardens primarily in Nieuw-West and from an internship with the Gemeente we identify and share common factors that are impacting the long-term security and flourishing of food gardens.

Ultimately, we believe that the community food gardeners themselves know their situations best and are capable to assess their own risk to losing access and stewardship of land which is not legally owned by them. We calculated that 80% of gardens are at high risk of disappearance by 2024. Therefore, there is great value in joining forces and lobbying together to secure long-term access and nourishing rights for community food gardens in Amsterdam.

The map below combines Gemeente Amsterdam’s Main Green Structure ( Hoofdgroenstructuur ) with neighbourhoods that the Gemeente has legislated for rapid urban development.

If your food garden is located within the green structure it has longer-term security because it is part of the minimum required amount of greenery the Gemeente has decided to safeguard. Although the green structure has no legal status or protection, building on these green spaces is deterred by the  Technical Advisory Committee  (TAC) who have the power to decide if changes or exceptions are made to the green spaces and land use plans ( bestemmingsplannen ) of your neighbourhoods.

The TAC decision-making process is lengthy and expensive so developers prefer to build on green space that is not safeguarded. Click on the following link to see the Main Green Structure and use the legend to locate TAC advice on requests made to build and construct on green spaces ( https://maps.amsterdam.nl/hoofdgroenstructuur/?LANG=en ).

If your garden is located in development neighbourhoods (ontwikkelbuurten) there is a higher risk of disappearance because construction is incentivised and deregulated by the Gemeente. The development neighbourhoods are only in the districts (stadsdeel) of Nieuw-West, Noord and Zuid-Oost. Many community food gardens are located on green space that is administered/managed by housing corporations (woningcorporatie) that lease (rent) public land from the Gemeente.

Usually the corporations prefer to redevelop whole streets including new green spaces for higher income renters. This is when community food gardens are most at risk, with the displacement, at best temporary, of neighbourhood gardeners and the renewal of housing and adjacent green areas to promote gentrification.

The Social Garden, in  Slotermeer , is witnessing a process of urban renewal and is under the administration of the Rochdale housing corporation. Residential buildings are planned for renovation in 2-10 years time and the food garden group is in close contact with Rochdale to ensure that after renovations the gardens stay. You can use this link to check if your garden is administered/managed by a housing corporation ( https://maps.amsterdam.nl/afwc_2019/?LANG=nl ).

This map makes calculations from public data on the Gemeente website to represent the increase in property values across Amsterdam. This gives an indication of how fast house prices are changing in different neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. From this data, it is also possible to get a basic indication of where gentrification is taking place. Increasing house prices also motivate landlords to increase rents. This promotes the displacement of local people who usually have lower incomes than the new people who replace them.

We generalize that your garden could be more at risk of displacement if it is located in a neighbourhood with fast increases in property values. We learned that from gardeners’ stories and research articles. There is more pressure from real estate developers in partnership with the Gemeente. Renewing green spaces is then only to facilitate the increase of developers’ profits by the development of housing for people that can pay higher rents.

We wish to clarify that this risk assumption is a generalisation and there are noteworthy exceptions in Amsterdam. For example, in Bajesdorp neighbourhood the social renters and alternative community were evicted and their houses demolished, but the community garden stayed with an idea to benefit newcomers.

Furthermore, the old Gemeente ‘Groenvisie’ asserts the ‘hard’ economic value of green areas and food gardens for attracting highly skilled expats and increase adjacent house prices. Therefore, neighborhood gardens can sadly be used to promote gentrification. So we believe it is important to legally and socially transform residences into  Community Land Trusts  and  Housing Cooperatives  to prevent gentrification and ensure sustainable and affordable housing for local communities, especially for people with lower incomes.

This map visualises the risk of community food gardens disappearing by 2024. We make a basic calculation that incorporates three factors that we identified as important and that we were able to access as data.

 We acknowledge that there are many more factors that influence the risk such as how well a garden group is networked with the Gemeente and/or housing corporation, how many people actively support the garden and if the garden is organised into a legal entity such as an ‘verenging’ (association) with great rights. We also found differences where the garden is owned or managed by a housing corporation, a foundation (stichting), broedplaats or directly by the Gemeente, which invite further research.

 The three factors we combined to make a low, medium or high risk calculation are (1) if a garden is in or out of Gemeente’s Main Green Structure, (2) if a garden is or is not located within an officially recognised Development Neighborhood and (3) the type and length of agreement or contract that the community food gardeners have with the landholder.

We learnt that the agreement with the landholder is the most important factor in deciding a gardens’ risk of disappearing. Worryingly, many gardens have informal agreements that give no legal protection for long-term access to the land and flourishing of sustainable communities that connect around food growing and sharing. Furthermore, many gardens have short-term contracts that are renewed each year, one even being every 3 months. There are few gardens that have a contract for longer than 3 years which means most gardens are in precarious situations with high-risk of disappearing.

Only one garden reported having a land access contract with the municipality for an indefinite period of time. The contract is under the condition that the neighbours must take full responsibility for the maintenance of the public food garden without public resources.

 We thank the participating gardens in our initiative to form a solidarity network between community food growers and sharers in Amsterdam. If you would like to join the network and share your situation with us so we can add to this risk map please e-mail toby(at)aseed.net. Let’s join forces and lobby together for the long-term security and flourishing of community food gardens in Amsterdam.