France: Urban gardens sprout hope in Marseille projects
From publicly funded city-wide initiatives to residents taking it upon themselves to start cultivating the land around them, urban farming is changing the landscape and creating a space for community.
By Daniel Cole
AP
Nov 6, 2021
Excerpt:
When Yaizid Bendaif moved to the Cité SNCF public housing project seven years ago, he got permission to turn a patch of grass outside his home into a garden. Today, the small communal plot between a block of concrete apartments and a high-speed railway in Marseille, France is full of zucchinis, radishes and cabbage rows.
Bendaif, 62, is among a growing number of residents reimagining life in the French city’s troubled northern neighborhoods through urban agriculture.
From publicly funded drives to residents taking the initiative themselves, urban farming is changing the landscape and creating a space for community in an area long marred by social neglect and drug-related violence.
“I want people to be able to provide for themselves, to not have to depend on the state or on an outside structure,” Bendaif said. “Farming our own food is exactly that. When we bring this back, we also bring back all kinds of social bonds that have been quickly disappearing.”
Mahdi, an Egyptian immigrant who works as a painter at a Marseille cinema, serves tea to his garden neighbors after spending the morning digging.
His neighbor Mustafa only has time for his garden on weekends. He dresses for gardening in a tracksuit stained with oil from his car repair work. And while he loves growing vegetables, he grumbles about the rats.
