There grows the neighborhood: partnership with the Sweet Water Foundation transforms students’ understanding of urban renewal
The space now hosts a vibrant urban farm planted across formerly vacant lots, and foreclosed and abandoned structures have been turned into meeting, workshop, and educational spaces through the collaborative work of the foundation and local residents.
By Molly Sheridan
Cornell Chronicle
December 19, 2022
Excerpt:
When students first arrived in Chicago for an immersive, four-day learning experience hosted by the Sweet Water Foundation (SWF), cofounder and Executive Director Emmanuel Pratt (B.Arch. ’99) challenged the group to immediately unpack their perspectives through their first task: shoveling soil into containers. It was perhaps not quite the transformative community-building work they had been anticipating until he helped them make the connections across scales. “How many seeds can you plant in a pot?” asked Pratt.
“How many households now are relying on this garden bed because they just closed the Whole Foods they put some $20 million into over the past six years for proposed development? And now there’s a domino effect of scarcity due to the war in Ukraine and COVID-19, which affects our agricultural industry.” It was a shift in viewpoint and, ultimately, a perfect place to begin.
