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Philly Police Shutdown Urban Garden Project
by
Andrew Gerlicz | 08.21.2008
In an effort to convert an abandoned lot into a working garden (without the permission of the owner or an idea of who the owner who would let such a property go to such waste could be) two Center City garden-squatters were stopped hours after the project had begun at the whim of a disgruntled onlooker who called 911 when he was ignored. A future note to community developers: Beware the unfortunate leverage of itinerant street hecklers. Yesterday, two gardeners, transitioning an abandoned, weed-and-garbage lot bordered by a cinder block enclosure between 17th and 16th on South Street, had their project cut short only hours after it had begun when a heckler from the neighborhood determined to begin a project of his own.
After demanding a detailed plan for the garden and after being reminded that the gardeners were under no obligation to deliver said vision to him, the pride-sore heckler decided that the situation had been elevated to a public emergency and dialed his cell phone accordingly. He repeated into his receiver and to passers-by his fear that the garden would present an imminent danger to the neighborhood.
It would be simple to close the issue as a mere matter of property and a lack of permission. But there is something in this clean conclusion that reeks of irrational Lockean fundamentalism. That is to say, that the principle of private property, no matter how absurdly, should be placed above all other principles, including community and utility. This theory would position the heckler as social hero and the gardeners as criminals.
If Locke would forgive an alternative view, we may more honestly interpret the occurrence as a triumph for an indifferent law and its blunt weapon teamed with frivolous spite. The Philadelphia police, who would presumably have ignored or even appreciated the effort, were set in opposition by default. And the message, also established by default, was that the removal of the criminal-gardeners was necessary lest our urban wastelands be put, ironically, to good use.
We are well aware that the law empowers abandoned-property-owners – a title that barely survives logic – and an occupied city government with the first and last say in which lots may be restored. The obvious result of such a position is that a slim minority of available lots will be converted and only after a slow navigation through the bureaucratic gauntlet.
Fortunately, the affair was handled more maturely by authorities. Whether their warning never to return precludes other groups from continuing the work-set-in-motion or whether it ensures each a free trial period of cultivation must be left to the discretion of the reader.
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