Love Where You Live and Farms at NYCHA – GCF’s flagship initiatives – come together in a new vision we are launching and implementing between 2020-2022: Eco-Hubs powered by Green City Force.

Eco-Hubs are a reframing of the GCF farms to affirm the vocation of these spaces as closed-loop systems supporting sustainability and health in NYCHA developments.

Over the three years of this plan, building on a design developed with the support of Professor Nicholas DeMonchaux of University of California Berkeley and team, we are co-designing elements of the hubs with resident and partner input, building out features at the farms to support and implement deep education and engagement with residents through the Love Where You live methodology.

Eco-Hubs align local green service for food, water, waste and energy behavior change and neighborhood transformation strategically with local, city, state, national and global goals for climate and equity. Eco-Hubs powered by GCF affirm the “people power” often left out of visions of sustainability and systems change in cities.

They affirm the GCF Corps Members – a force of young residents in service and training – as the energy source powering change in community: activating physical features for the closed-loop systems to function with person-to-person engagement through education, outreach and ongoing feedback loops and iterative design. The hubs speak to “eco” as “ecology” and “economy” and create a platform for continuous effort towards both climate resiliency and equity at the level of a NYCHA development.

Resident engagement and involvement are a key component of the hubs. Over a three-year period, building off of our ambition to reach 50% of residents on a sustained basis, we will co-create specific targets in partnership with NYCHA, residents and related City partners to achieve deep and ongoing impact in developments. This model is replicable across NYCHA and in affordable housing, and transferable to other cities in the US and beyond.

Contribute Your Ideas

Imagine a resilient future NYCHA with us:

Share Your Ideas

The Vision:
Eco-Hubs

GCF worked with partners at NYCHA, public housing residents, community-based organizations, and academic researchers from the University of California Berkeley to collectively imagine resiliency in NYC public housing.

Download the presentation here