Urban Resources Initiative
195 Prospect St.
New Haven 06511
203-432-6189
Yale.edu/uri/index.html
Director: Colleen Murphy-Dunning
No. employees: 5
Can’t see the city for the trees? You must be in New Haven
The Urban Resources Initiative, run through the Yale School of Forestry, is organized as a clinical learning opportunity for students and works with about 50 community groups each year. As a result, neighborhoods in New Haven are prettied up.
“It’s what we call mutual pathways of learning,” says Greenspace Manager Chris Ozyck. “The community is able to help the students work with different community groups and the community gets some of the knowledge that the students bring to the project each year. The people in the community envision the work, and we provide materials and expertise.”
The Community Greenspace program provides material supplies, technical advice and classroom and hands-on training delivered by URI staff and Yale graduate student interns to inner city residents who wish to beautify their distressed urban neighborhoods.
Since 1995, the group has completed more than 225 restoration projects with an annual participation of more than 500 New Haven residents.
Explains Ozyck, “We talk with them about what they’d like to improve about their neighborhood and figure out what we can and can’t help them with. We work on things like beautification, screening and crime.”
The work URI does with greenspace improvements often stems from a block-watch or other neighborhood issues residents are trying to work on. In turn, it creates a nice chance for members of the community to come together over a neutral topic like cleaning a vacant lot or improving a park or planting street trees.
“When people work together, they build trust in each other and social capital,” Ozyck says.
The URI holds the street tree planting contract for the city and it is used as a job-training program for high school students. Last year, 400 trees were planted citywide and 2,000 trees will be planted in 2010.
It’s part of a larger effort to plant 10,000 trees in five years, says Ozyck. “It’s part of something called the Urban Tree Canopy Goal. New York City is doing one million trees and we’re doing 10,000 — an appropriate scale for a city of our size.”
The group has planted more than 45 different species with an overall tree survival rate of 85 percent. Any New Havener can call to request a street tree, typically planted within 12 months. The city reimburses the URI for a portion of the trees and the group relies on the United Way and the Greater New Haven Community Foundation for funding.
As a result of ongoing affiliation with Community Greenspace, city residents have reported heightened membership in civic and voluntary organizations, rejuvenated feelings of neighborhood ownership, and lasting visible improvements in their environment. The project brings more than just greenery. It brings neighbors who don’t normally interact into contact with one another.
One issue facing urban neighborhoods is the growing number of abandoned, derelict open spaces. These abandoned lands pose a current and future threat to the quality of life. They are patches of urban land — each less than one acre but, in New Haven, totaling hundreds of acres — that create great gaps in the landscape, or sinkholes where environmental, economic and community potential is wasted.
With that in mind, the URI has three goals: environmental restoration, community building and stewardship. Who can go wrong with those goals in mind?
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