Collectivism in "community gardens"

[Declan McCullagh]

On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 10:32:03PM -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>     Sounds like a very poorly administered community garden. The
> only big city gardens I've seen were in Portland, OR, and they were
> fenced and gated and locked at night. The gardens themselves looked
> very productive and well tended. As are all the ones I've ever seen

I don't claim that all community gardens are decrepit, of course. If
a city chooses to spend enough money on high fences, security guards,
and locks on gates, they can pull it off.

The gardener-activists have every incentive to lobby for that because
of the standard public choice reasons: distributed costs and
centralized benefits -- hundreds of thousands or millions of people
have their taxes raised by perhaps a dollar, even though only a few
dozen or a few hundred at most people benefit from the garden.

And when that happens, because the small number of gardeners are
getting the garden plot at below market cost, they do have an
incentive to take advantage of it. Getting the government involved
interferes with the price signals that a market approach would have.
Because it's not their money, governments tend to funnel money
into politically-connected friends -- the fence-building contractor
will turn out to be the mayor's brother-in-law's son.

Once the garden is established, though, the municipality does not have
the same incentive to take care of it as a private property owner
does. The same with my muddy, dirt soccer field that's become an
illegal dog run (I can see three dogs there right now). Also, as the
political supporters of the garden move out of the city or retire from
activism, or their friends in government move on to cushy private
sector jobs, the garden tends to receive fewer resources. Politicians
prefer to campaign on bold platforms like "creating more community
gardens" as opposed to "maintaining status quo."

At the very least, it's reasonable to weigh the costs against the
benefits of community gardens. Where I grew up, my family had an acre
of land, more than enough for a garden, but for whatever reason one
year we used a community garden that was set up by a local large
manufacturing company on its own land. Worked out well, and was a nice
gesture.

-Declan