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Viet Village Urban Farm
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Landscape Architect: Spackman & Mossop
Location: New Orleans, USA
This project has was undertaken overseas in New Orleans, Louisiana USA, It was awarded the ASLA Award of Excellence – Analysis and Planning Category Award in 2008, and was designed by and under the supervision of Elisabeth Mossop of Spackman & Mossop
Viet Village Urban Farm is an urban farming project located in New Orleans East, an area hard hit by Katrina. The design team assisted the community with the design of the environmental infrastructural systems needed to support an organic urban farming operation, the design of a market area to serve as a community resource and economic catalyst for the community and the development of a flexible, strategic plan for seeking funding for the project and incorporating various labor resources.
Viet Village is a thriving Vietnamese-American community located in New Orleans East that was established in the mid-1970’s. One of the first activities of the early Vietnamese in New Orleans was the establishment of home-based gardens to grow the traditional fruits and vegetables that weren’t available locally. These gardens were informal and widely scattered across the community: in vacant lots, along the edge of levees, in backyards, anywhere that had decent soil and access to water.
Before the devastation of Katrina, there were over 30 acres being farmed throughout the community. There was also a well-established tradition of informal markets in the community, developed as an outlet to sell produce the local growers did not consume in their homes.
The Viet Village Urban Farm project represents an effort to reestablish the tradition of local farming in this community after Katrina. New Orleans East was one of the most damaged areas of the city during the storms of 2005.
In response to the devastation, the community has organized around the idea of creating an urban farm and market as the center of the community. The farm, located on 28-acres in the heart of the community, will be a combination of small-plot gardening for family consumption, larger commercial plots focused on providing food for local restaurants and grocery stores in New Orleans, and a livestock area for raising chickens and goats in the traditional Vietnamese way.
The proposed market on the site will provide a location for the individual farmers to supplement their income as well as serve as a central meeting space for the larger Vietnamese community along the Gulf Coast. Based on the history of the markets in the area before Katrina, as many as 3,000 people are expected to come to the site for a Saturday market, perhaps more on traditional festival days. Specialty vegetables and foods used in Vietnamese cuisine will be sold at the market. Local Vietnamese restaurants will have a space to sell prepared food during market days as well.
The site, a portion of which was donated by the City of New Orleans, has significant water and soil issues. It is located in an area with a high water table and frequent flooding during storm events.
At the beginning of analysis for the project, the movement of water across the site quickly became one of the key considerations for how the site is to be developed. Water for irrigation of the crops needs to have multiple access points, especially in the areas of small community garden plots where 40-50 individual access points are needed.
The runoff from irrigation must be drained back to the central location through a series of bio-swales to aid in water cleansing. A secondary system for stormwater runoff during heavy rains must be established to prevent the farm sites from flooding and ruining the crops.
In addition to site issues, the project has a complex array of funding and labor resources that it must coordinate to complete the project. Understanding the different sources of funding the community was pursuing and the nature of the funding agencies was a key piece of analysis in this process.
The group had resources ranging from high school students that wanted to volunteer a weekend to work on the project to large foundations and government organizations with sophisticated applications and funding rules.
The community needed to develop a strategic plan that could integrate these resources in a way that was complementary.
intoduction / overview / images / booklet / pdf / Projects
2008
