Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

urban agriculture (however broadly defined) and hence not suitable as an auspicingorganisation. The embryonic group then decided to incorporate, with the help of a localfood activist with experience of setting up local groups.The newly incorporated group were offered two possible sites for their garden byCouncil, from which they chose one, and the Community Gardens support officeacknowledged the preferred site and suggested, ‘...it’s ready to go, you might need totalk to some of the users to say this is happening and if you can get some support fromthe community that would be great’. However, they were then told that the chosen sitewas no longer suitable. The group decided to search all other public parks in theneighbourhood in order to choose those that seemed to best suit their needs andpreferences.Having identified a preferred site, the group began to work with the support officer todraw up plans for the garden itself:‘..so we were looking at our site and X had helped us draw up our plan andeveryone was getting very excited , it seemed very real and we were told – youknow you have to go out and quotes for all the different parts of the garden – sowe’d formed sub-committees that were looking at the price of a fence and all thebits and pieces and then we were told – oh no, sorry, you can’t have this sitebecause its Q100 flood zone and therefore you can’t have any built structures inthe area at all’.The group then met with the Divisional Councillor and the latest support worker toreview all the parks in the Division and identified one that appeared suitable, althoughwith the added complication that it was a State park and would require a developmentapplication. As part of this process the Council wrote to local residents notifying them ofthe proposal to establish a community garden within the park:‘..the residents of X Park called a public meeting, which some of us attended, andthe residents were extremely aggressive and they were really feeding off eachother and getting very, very upset about the situation...[they were saying that] itwas going to bring down property prices and there was somebody there whoworked in a real estate agent’s saying this again and again so they really pickedthat up. And then one of our members was actually accosted [by someone] whosaid – you won’t get a garden there over my dead body, I don’t want you hippiescoming in selling your drugs and turning my kids into druggies – so that was veryhard for some of our members because most of them are older and retired…Most of them are not gardeners at all...a lot of the regular members are singlewomen, older, around 60 [Community gardener, Gold Coast].After this meeting it was clear to the group that this site was not viable because of theintensity of local opposition and they agreed instead to invite a council officer from GoldCoast Parks to attend one of their meetings to talk about what might happen next. Thishad not occurred at the time of the interview and the group now rents a plot at a siterun by Gold Coast Permaculture so that those keen to grow food are able to do so.The experience of dealing with the Council has not been especially encouraging for thegroup, although they recognise that support has been forthcoming from both officersand Councillors. The main problems appear to have been in relation to communicationand to joined-up local governance (or lack of it). It appears that a consistent messageUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 140