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See images of the school below from: https://www.phillypeacepark.org/

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Burnley, Malcolm. “Afrofuturism and the New Era for Sharswood's North Philly Peace Park.” WHYY, WHYY, 9 July 2018, whyy.org/articles/afrofuturism-and-the-new-era-for-sharswoods-north-philly-peace-park/.

Custom PolicyMap 3-Layer Map Race, poverty and food insecurity. PolicyMap, (based on data from 2010 Census Data; accessed December 1 2020).

Duchene, Courtney. “North Philly Peace Park Provides Free Food to Families during Covid-19.” The Philadelphia Citizen, 12 May 2020, thephiladelphiacitizen.org/north-philly-peace-park-covid-19/.

Estimated percent of all people living in poverty as of 2014-2018. PolicyMap, (based on data from 2010 Census and 2014-18 ACS; accessed December 1 2020).

Hoey, Joe. “Occupy Vacant Lots Promotes Urban Farming Initiative.” The Temple News, 27 Mar. 2012, https://temple-news.com/occupy-vacant-lots-promotes-urban-farming-initiative/.

“HOME.” Philly Peace Park, www.phillypeacepark.org/.

Patel, Rina. “Here’s the Story of How the Sharswood Community Fought Developers to Keep North Philly Peace Park Alive.” Generocity Philly, 18 July 2016, https://generocity.org/philly/2016/07/18/north-philly-peace-park-tommy-joshua/.

X, Pili, et al. “North Philly Peace Park.” 2020.

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The NPPP has a major DIY education project on the horizon. The project team has partnered with graduate students at the Penn School of Design to build an Afrofuturist-style building that will house an informal community school and spaces for educational programming. The school building's design draws inspiration from Western African landmarks, Afrofuturism and classic Philly architectural features such as porches. There are plans for significant environmental considerations in the design such as solar panels and water collection devices. The project team has also been building a team of teachers/community leaders to develop Afrocentric curriculum and workshops for the school. Though this school won't be an accredited institution, it will supplement what neighborhood youth aren't learning in underperforming local public schools and attempt to address the consequences of systemic education inequality in Philadelphia. This significant investment in community education will nurture young people in the neighborhood.

"And, with a lot of schools closing because a lot of the buildings are old and they [the School District of Philadelphia] just don't want to fix them. But also just to educate you know, Black children on with an independent curriculum provided by Black educators. It's really important to us because we know that a lot of the students that are going to the public schools aren't getting an education based on you know, our history, or true history. Teaching children, the knowledge itself, was really important to us with all of the schools closings and with the level of quality of education in Philly." -- Pili X

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There's a tidy way to tell the story of North Philly Peace Park - as a project that has unfolded in three acts: the past, the present, and the future.

After sprouting from the nothingness of vacant land in Sharswood in 2012, North Philly Peace Park - a fence-free, food-producing ecological center within one of the city's low-income food deserts - was displaced by a $500 million redevelopment plan by the Philadelphia Housing Authority. The park's early years at its original location, through this period of uncertainty, would be its "past."

The present dates back to about 2016, when North Philly Peace Park signed a lease for 7,000 square feet with PHA as its landlord, transplanting itself to another plot a few blocks away from the original location.

And now, the future: Groundbreaking is scheduled in the fall for the new park, which includes a high-concept architectural plan. This new phase was the focus of a Friday discussion at the Barnes Museum: "Designing for Light, Life, and the Afrofuture of North Philly."

But it turns out such a tidy, linear narrative is not the way to think about the evolution of North Philly Peace Park - not before, and certainly not today.

Among the design inspirations for physical interventions at the new park is a belief in polychronic time, as it relates to the ideas of Afrofuturism, a genre of art and philosophy that's had a popular resurgence of late.

"Polychronic conception of time is more circulatory. Your present is influenced by your past. [But] your past is [also] influenced by your future," Nyasha Felder, lead designer for the park's expansion, told an audience at the Barnes's Comcast Auditorium. "This collapse of space and time is a concept that can be used in architecture."

At the start of the event, a slide projected in front of the audience posed the question: "Can design empower a community?" Through a community-engagement and design process that took two years to complete, the founders of North Philly Peace Park believe the answer to that question could be a resounding yes for the legacy of African-Americans living in Sharswood - a historically black neighborhood ravaged by urban-renewal projects over the years, along with the crime and poverty that has beset it since.

"We're working on very minute problems. We're trying to feed a neighborhood, we're trying to provide STEAM-based education for young people, we're trying to stimulate local microindustries," Tommy Joshua Caison, the park's executive director, said during his opening comments Friday. "But there's also a bigger lens. It's the work - and if I can be as bold to say it - of the second founding of Philadelphia, the lens that allows us to see a distant object, which is a better city in the future."

The upcoming addition at North Philly Peace Park draws heavily upon influences of Afrofuturism to inspire this broader change. Felder, an alum of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, offered a quote from Mark Dery's 1994 essay, "Black to the Future," as a working definition of Afrofuturism: "Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history imagine possible futures?"

Functionally, the new structure - the Peace Park Pavilion - will be a dynamic, well-shaded space with multipurpose rooms, a kitchen, indoor and outdoor lighting, and extra storage on the park's premises. But its conceptual design borrows from past, present, and future experiences of the African diaspora. Most impressively, the pavilion's single roof casts an intricate sundial on the ground as a symbolic, shifting reminder of time that's reminiscent of open floorplans and lighting found within West African temples and mosques. The porch itself is an allusion to African-American Southern porch culture, along with the stoops of Sharswood rowhouses.

Early in the process, Felder - who led the project working in collaboration with local architecture firm Bohlin, Cywinski, Jackson - asked local artists to imagine Afrofuturism on a local scale. The designers also hosted a series of community meetings, in which neighborhood residents, including young children, weighed in on the park's expansion.

"As you can see in the current design, all of these concepts were brought together and integrated to create an experience not only for the community but also people who come by and visit the community, to learn about the spirit of a place, which is represented by the inner cleansing light," Felder said.

The project served as a launchpad for a broader discussion about the intersection of architecture, Afrofuturism, and equality in Philadelphia. Following her presentation, Felder was joined on stage by Frank Grauman, principal architect at Bohlin, Cywinski, Jackson; Sara Ozawa, a recent Haverford College graduate who wrote a thesis on North Philly Peace Park; and Tayyib Smith, a founding partner of Pipeline Philly and Little Giant Creative. The conversation was moderated by Natalie Nixon, principal and design strategist at Figure 8 Thinking LLC.

Although the vernacular of Afrofuturism might be foreign to some architects, there is the potential for overlaying its principles in the field. "Architecture is all about the future - building something is one of the most optimistic things that you can do," said Gausman. "[Architecture] is also the medium in which we often communicate with the distant future... As we do architecture, something like the Peace Park, we're doing something that communicates deeply into the future."

Though the next phase of North Philly Peace Park aims to be exemplary in its incorporation of Afrofuturist principles, the lessons learned from of the park's seminal experience - occupying abandoned lots in an overlooked neighborhood marked by divestment - can't be overstated, the panelists noted.

"Through urban renewal or the Highway Act, a lot of spaces that were once thought of as undesirable are now the most desirable pieces of land in the northeast corridor of the United States," Smith said. "Communities are never getting that land back. To a certain degree, it's not just brave and courageous for communities to take action, to take command of land, but it's wise."

As for what the pavilion project will mean for the Peace Park, it's a major step forward, no matter which kind of time you choose to pay attention to.

"I think the park is becoming a rooted institution. That's what's happening right now," Caison said.
This article has been updated to correct moderator Natalie Nixon's job title.

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Afrofuturism and the new era for Sharswood's North Philly Peace Park

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There's a tidy way to tell the story of North Philly Peace Park - as a project that has unfolded in three acts: the past, the present, and the future.

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Through advocating for the seizure of vacant land, developing a clean-up culture, establishing various food programs and promoting Black businesses, the North Philly Peace Park (NPPP) exemplifies a "DIY Development" approach that aims to reverse the tide of chronic disinvestment. This approach also serves to address both the psychological and material impacts of generational poverty. The NPPP's vanguard approach and myriad of programming sets them apart from other community gardens in the city and empowers people to have greater agency over their surroundings. Though the garden's experience is generalizable in the sense that it was developed in response to the systemic inequality that plagues Philadelphia, NPPP's work and approach to community building is distinct and illustrates the far-reaching impacts of the city's burgeoning urban agriculture scene.

"When it comes to like organizations, we [NPPP] are a vanguard organization. We feel as though a lot of the work that we do and the moves we make, um, influences other organizations and influences city officials/city agencies and offices." --Pili X

*Special thanks to Pili X for his time and patience*

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To address a multitude of needs, the NPPP has coordinated a multitude of programming. Their programs aim to address food insecurity in the community and build wealth through supporting small, Black-owned businesses.

Though the Peace Park is known for it's fence free garden, which gives people unrestricted access to the food grown there, offers an entry point into garden work and brings families together; it has arguably been most effective in helping the local community through its extensive programming. Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the project team has navigated barriers with innovation and output. For example, the NPPP hosts a "Bring Your Own Bag" event. NPPP volunteers buy wholesale staple goods/produce and then people come to collect groceries in an assembly style fashion. Initially this program was run quarterly basis, but since the start of the pandemic, the team has increased the program to run on a monthly basis.

In response to the systematic lack of investment in Black-owned businesses, the NPPP also launched the African American Marketplace/Black Market and Green Wall Street programs. Providing a space where entrepreneurs with no "brick and mortar" locations can vend their products for free helps them grow and profit.  Green Wall Street has a similar economic concept, but with a wellness-themed product list.

1. Food Programs

"Because what happened when COVID hit, was that a lot of organizations kind of went offline and they stopped programming, they stopped services. A lot of people who were being serviced by a lot of community organizations or city agencies kind of were out left in the cold. We felt as though, you know, we couldn't stop our programming... We kind of like started doing it [our food programming] every month [instead of] just doing it four times a year... And it was like a great help for a lot of people." -- Pili X

2. Black Market and Green Wall Street LLC.

"And, you know, in the Black community, a lot of the stores are not Black-owned. So our Black dollars that we make, doesn't stay like in our community for very long because we're spending it at stores owned by people that are from different races or nationalities. At the same time, a lot of Black businesses don't have brick and mortar storefronts. So, with COVID happening and a lot of businesses taking hits, we opened up our space, and we called it the Black Market, or African American Marketplace. And it's a space where once a month, Black businesses can come vend for free, which is unheard of. Because usually when you vend at a space or an event or somewhere, you need to pay a vending fee. Um, we felt as though a lot of Black businesses need the help, needed the space." -- Pili X

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Farming

The park has grown into a popular charitable eco campus and passive park that provides free programs to the greater Philadelphia community. The free produce program is supported by the garden and local donations. Since 2018 the park has given away more than 3,000lbs of fresh healthy produce. During Covid-19 the park stepped up its efforts to provide masks.

Green Wall Street LLC.

The program is a popular weekly local entrepreneur market of natural products. Most products are manufactured from the harvest of the garden and include items like soap, candles, and natural healing herbs.

The park has several school partnerships that provide curriculum units for K-12 students and hosts school group visits to provide ecologically-based programs that include planting, harvesting, landscape design and construction, composting, pollinators, plant identification, and art. The park has provided lectures and tours about our work to local universities and college students.

Health And Wellness

The park provides free health and wellness community programs including therapy, yoga, fitness, and cooking classes as an apart of the monthly Self- Care Saturdays program. The North Philly Peace Park advocates locally for the community and will engage in a voting registration campaign this fall.

The park has adopted an Afro-futurist approach for the design of the pavilion that will merge and highlight continuities between ancient African architecture from countries of the western coast of the continent and modern African American architecture typologies. The building's green systems and structure complement and supports the programs that occur outside seamlessly.

"You can't build the neighborhood by destroying the popular development in the neighborhood. The North Philly Peace Park is a start to envisioning a new neighborhood around here." - Tommy Joshua, Founder, North Philly Peace Park

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Farming The park has grown into a popular charitable eco campus and passive park that provides free programs to the greater Philadelphia community. The free produce program is supported by the garden and local donations. Since 2018 the park has given away more than 3,000lbs of fresh healthy produce.

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Definition: Obstacles for Vacant Lot Redevelopment 

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Definition: Obstacles for Vacant Lot Redevelopment 

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Even if community members come together to clean up a vacant lot like Pili and others did in North Philly, there are many other obstacles they face. The most significant is a lack of legal land tenure, or ownership. Their sweat equity does not translate to decision making ability, as Jenny Greenberg from the Neighborhood Land Trust pointed out. Most abandoned lots are privately owned but long neglected/forgotten or held in a land trust so community members need to go through many channels in hopes of obtaining tenure. This is a frustrating process.

"People have went through the process of trying to do something with a lot of these vacant spaces properly by trying to find owners or going through the city and going through the land banks. But there's a lot of bureaucracy and people were getting held up for months and years, and aren't able to do stuff with the land because they're trying to go to the different agencies or owners. So we've been advocates of immediate seizure of vacant land." -- Pili X

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Because of challenges associated with secure land tenure, the slow pace of legislative change and their desire to address the psychological impacts chronically vacant land has on residents, NPPP has been an advocate of immediate land seizure and "clean-up culture", where community members take matters in their own hands, improving their blighted surroundings out of a sense of neighborhood pride and duty. However, the Peace Park volunteers have faced pushback from higher powers (like local government leaders and developers) for their actions.

1. Land Seizure

"So we've been like a big advocate of the seizure of land. And we know that due to advocating that, we've been told by, you know, people high up in a city that they don't want to set that precedent, because if that spreads, then you have thousands of people [rather than developers] taking over thousands of vacant lots that have been left to just decay and exist in a blighted state... On that vacant land, people should do a fence free garden and independent institution building-- so that could be anything." -- Pili X

2. Clean-up Culture

"Yeah, so at the park, we have two houses that are adjacent to it. And for years, we kind of been complaining and putting in reports to the city and to PHA who owns them, about these houses, because they're falling apart. There's a lot of drug activity in these houses, homeless people, prostitution, and it was bringing like a lot of bad energy and negative activity to the park. And for years, these reports have all been ignored. So early this year, we went into the houses and we cleaned them, because they were basically like cesspools of trash and filth... a homeless encampment. Then there were protests in the city over the summer, about the homeless encampment in North Philly. And we suspect they [PHA] used this as a reason to you know, raid the houses. When I say raid, I mean, like, they kicked in the doors and busted the windows." -- Pili X

IMAGE: A map depicting the status of vacant lots in Philadelphia
South, Eugenia & Hohl, Bernadette & Kondo, Michelle & MacDonald, John & Branas, Charles. (2018). Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults: A Cluster Randomized Trial. JAMA Network Open. 1. e180298. 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.0298.

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The material impacts of systematic neglect and racism include a wide range of countable issues from food insecurity to education access. People need more than just pleasant surroundings to thrive in a modern environment; they require tangibles goods like money and food. NPPP is located in the Zip Code Tabulation number 19121 which has a population of about 30,000 residents. According to Policy Map's report of the 2010 census, 48.69% of people living in this Zip Code were in poverty (see the attached table from Policy Map comparing poverty rate from zip code to city, county, state, and country). They made $15,844 per capita in income which was almost half the national average. Every fifth person doesn't have a high school diploma or above. And citywide, 20.1% of people were classified as food insecure.  NPPP's programming does not shy away from addressing these wounds in the neighborhood.

"The obstacles that have been put forth against us only makes us go harder with the work. You know, COVID and the lockdown was an obstacle for a lot of organizations... But we just doubled our work. I think over the years, the obstacles that have come up come our way, we just use that as fuel to keep going to work." -- Pili X

GRAPH: PolicyMap

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Philadelphia consistently tops the list of big cities with large numbers of chronically abandoned lots. The unused, trash-infested empty spaces are the most visible signs of deindustrialization in the city. According to the City of Philadelphia, there are only 40,000 vacant lots now. But NPPP members like Pili note that just a decade ago, that number was almost 80,000. Despite that significant reduction, there are many obstacles for converting vacant lots to useable spaces. Because of continued disinvestment, the lots become environmental hazards and sites for illicit activities. But lots also negatively impact local residents who are surrounded by them.

"If you come out of your house and you see vacant lots filled with trash every day that does something for your mental health. So even if you don't recognize it, um, you shouldn't be living like that, in those conditions, seeing vacant lots of trash." -- Pili X

IMAGE: A vacant lot for sale in North Philadelphia
https://www.point2homes.com/US/Land-For-Sale/PA/Philadelphia/North-Philadelphia.html

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Philadelphia is overall one of the poorest and most food-insecure major cities in the US. The screengrab attached is a 3-layer set of data powered by Policy Map using data from the ACS and Census Bureau. The purple shaded tracts are areas where over 45% of residents are Black, over 15% (the national average is 14.05%) live in poverty, and are food insecure. NPPP is in Census Tract 139, circled in yellow on the map. The Peace Park was established to address some of these conditions.

Some of these patterns emerged due to redlining between the 1930s and 1960s. Redlining was a process that drew maps with literal color-coded lines designating "undesirable" and "desirable" neighborhoods in every major city. These maps were used to determine housing loan eligibility and disproportionately, segregated neighborhoods where BIPOC people lived were deemed "undesirable", leading to disinvestment that was exacerbated by white flight to the suburbs and deindustrialization. As a result, poverty became concentrated in areas of the city with large Black and Latinx populations.

"Our official mission statement is you know, we're an intergenerational, neighborhood managed and campus championing, food education and community. And our work is largely to provide  reliefs to a lot of these social issues because you know, the solution isn't gonna come overnight but our programming is relief site programming to these issues." -- Pili X

IMAGE: Policy Map

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The North Philly Peace Park is a prime example of a community reclaiming agency in the face of systemic neglect through a vanguard “DIY Development” approach; whereby individuals or small groups take decisive action to change the environment in their community. This approach is informed by an understanding both the psychological and material impacts of generational poverty/ disinvestment.

"So, we [NPPP] were like big proponents of local development and people being developers. We call ourselves developers, um, because we have plans to develop our own community, and we call it Peace Town. You know, developer or development has like a negative connotation to it... But we are using reverse effect where as though we're telling people go out and come up with plans to develop you know, your block into better neighborhoods or whatnot." -- Pili X

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IMAGE: Google Street View
https://www.google.com/maps/place/North+Philadelphia+Peace+Park/@39.9776334,-75.1722237,3a,75y,158.96h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3rNCfVCxB_ydSDiw1Tq7sQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D3rNCfVCxB_ydSDiw1Tq7sQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D224%26h%3D298%26yaw%3D158.95695%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!4m7!3m6!1s0x89c6c7c1aba181df:0x599eba8556abc4ca!8m2!3d39.977472!4d-75.172155!14m1!1BCgIgARICCAI?hl=en

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IMAGE: Google Street View

http://www.farmingphilly.com/2017/01/02/big-plans-little-cash-for-new-peace-park/

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It emerged as an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street and was a major proponent of urban gardening in Philadelphia; facilitated by the seizure of vacant or underutilized lots.
*See link for more details*

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Whenever I've had friends from out of town visit Main Campus and the surrounding area, one of the first things they notice is how incredibly absent "green" is.

I've heard Temple be described as a "concrete jungle." This is perhaps most noticeable when walking by Anderson and Gladfelter halls. Much of the area surrounding Main Campus, and much of the Philadelphia is missing the green that suburbanites and country folk have come to know and love.

What many people don't know is that Philly actually has a rich history of urban farming, urban gardening and green parks. The city is home to a considerable number of parks, and as one of America's first major cities, it has a history of agriculture. However, as with many American cities, industrial growth led to a decline in both space and greenery. Fortunately, a slew of community-oriented groups have been looking to help foster a greener future for Philadelphia.

In recent times, Philadelphians have been drawn back to the concept of urban farming and gardening as an effective way to provide healthy and natural food for communities. Urban farming has helped foster community in various types of neighborhoods. While many urban farms have traditionally been set aside by foundations and organizations, in recent years Philadelphians have tried to take advantage of the vast body of vacant lots within city blocks.

Vacant lots are often seen as a sort of "unknown territory." Residents are not sure of the legality of using vacant lots, as the lots are usually someone's property. However, absentee landowners often make for blighted land plots. Vacant lots can become messy and overgrown with time.

Vacant lot urban farming gives community members an incentive to keep a lot clean. After cleaning the lot itself, community members get a space that can give back in a slew of ways. Children can play in and around the lot, healthy, natural food can grow in the lot and the neighborhood can develop both a better image and a stronger sense of community.

Perhaps the most buzz-worthy vacant lot gardening organization in Philadelphia today is actually an offshoot of the "Occupy" brand. However, vacant lot urban farming has actually been in the works in Philadelphia for a while now. While the "Occupy" label has helped gather momentum, energy and awareness around the movement, it's hard to claim that the so-called Occupy Vacant Lots' gardening goals are super innovative.

Still, Occupy Vacant Lots is clearly beneficial to Philadelphia's urban gardening movement, and its more spontaneous nature is certainly enticing. More so, it's hard for Occupy opponents to claim that Occupy Vacant Lots "doesn't have clear goals."

What Occupy Vacant Lots should be lauded for is arguably renewing widespread interest in what some were concerned was a "dying" trend. In his 2008 University of Pennsylvania report on urban gardening, Penn professor Dominic Vitiello found a 50 percent decline in the number of active urban gardens in Philadelphia. Vitiello contributed this to both the aging of dedicated gardeners and a decline in institutional assistance. Occupy Vacant Lots represents an important part of growing a new generation of urban gardening devotees.

For those who either dislike or have simply grown weary of the "Occupy" label, there are quite a few other organizations to engage in. A cursory review of other organizations engaging in vacant lot development urban farming includes Urban Tree Connection and the New Growth Project. Additionally, various neighborhoods have run their own gardens for countless years. Other related projects include Philadelphia's large body of flat roof farming groups and urban tree planting organizations.

While these urban farming initiatives may sound wonderful, there are some practical challenges. As previously mentioned, many vacant lots have actual owners. If not, the city may decide it has a desire to sell lots as areas develop and value rises. Neighborhoods often have trouble challenging the city in instances of sale.

One of Mayor Michael Nutter's goals is to make Philadelphia the "greenest" city in America, and part of his green plan is providing a high level of access to local food. However, the mayor and the city must often weigh the value of a lot with its development. Likewise, because all of their hard work could be lost with a sale or claim, vacant lot advocates must pick and choose their locations for now.

However, the city government has used more subtle methods to promote urban gardening. Philadelphia recently raised private lot licenses from $30 to $300, but this fee can be waived if the lot is being used for a garden. While Nutter seems to favor the idea of community gardening and vacant lot gardening, there are a lot of politics to navigate. Still, with so many newly dedicated community gardening advocates, it's hard to believe that progress won't be made sooner than later.

It can't go unmentioned that Philadelphia's urban farming and gardening scene is far more vast than I can possibly describe in one column. I haven't even mentioned Main Campus' own Temple Community Gardens, which is well worth looking into for any student interested in engaging in urban growing practices.
Joe Hoey can be reached at joe.hoey@temple.edu.

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Occupy Vacant Lots promotes urban farming initiative

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Columnist Joseph Hoey discusses the urban farming initiatives to promote a clean city and a sense of community. Whenever I've had friends from out of town visit Main Campus and the surrounding area, one of the first things they notice is how incredibly absent "green" is. I've heard Temple b

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In 2015, the NPPP was displaced from its original location on Bolton Street as a result of the Philadelphia Housing Authority's (PHA) plan to build 57 affordable housing units on the site. Despite the fact that community members put up a significant fight, the NPPP ended up in its current location on Jefferson Street after PHA offered them secure land tenure for two lots.
*See link for more details*

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To thrive in the face of adversity, communities need a supportive space where its members can grow and learn from each other. Tommy Joshua learned that lesson 10 years ago when, for a short time, his North Philadelphia neighborhood was riddled with randomly set fires.

Joshua realized that the kids who were setting them had no after-school programs or adult guidance. So, he created a standalone basketball court in his backyard for them. From that, a mentoring program grew. The boys in the program started calling him "Brother Tommy." The fires stopped.

From this experience, Joshua learned that proactivity is essential in empowering communities to mobilize themselves. A community organizer since he was 16 years old, the lifelong Sharswood resident comes from a family of builders and farmers. As a young man, Joshua believed in waking up neighborhoods to spring into action and self-organize. His work took him to Baltimore, New York, New England and other cities along the East Coast where he worked alongside a variety of organizations and people in the pursuit of social justice.

Eventually, he decided to come back to his roots: "I wanted to go local and organize," he told me as we sat under a tree in a North Philadelphia garden, shielded by the afternoon summer sun.

Organize he did. Joshua is the cofounder of the North Philly Peace Park, a community garden and gathering space at N. 25th and Jefferson streets, which this spring was forced to move from its long-held spot on the 2400 block of Bolton Street in Sharswood after a long battle with Philadelphia Housing Authority.

The park was planted by community members during a time the city was facing issues with food deserts, cuts of social service programs and a shutdown of two schools in the neighborhood. But in 2014, a fter three and a half years of distributing more than three tons of locally grown vegetables, creating educational programs, and constructing a school house, the project came to a pause when PHA's plans to construct 57 affordable housing units on the land was introduced.

By that time, the park had over 1,400 volunteers, an operating budget of over $230,000, and a staff of eight people, according to Joshua. The construction of the school building alone had been a nine-month process, and by the end, the group had hired their own teachers and had enrolled 160 children. On Saturdays, they had a community-run academy for the children and youth. That year, they organized the Philadelphia Urban County Fair which gathered 600 people from Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

PHA around the time of the park's harvest. Community members took the fence down and stood their ground.

"When I see the underutilization, poverty and devastation of human beings, and then I see lots with trash, it blows my mind," Joshua said. "It can't be. Something has to give. How can we make end roads to these big institutional challenges we face? Do we wait for politicians to pass legislation that will create quality schools? Do we wait for politicians or developers to actually address human needs? This is not going to happen unless the people take proactive action like the Peace Park had to do."

After they refused to give up the land, PHA offered the group a one-year contract for two lots, and e ventually, the park was forced to shut down its operations. Although the constructed school house still stands, the group is unable to use that piece of land for the North Philly Peace Park.

"We loved that land on Bolton Street," Joshua said. "Even though it saddened us to leave, we didn't feel welded to a piece of land. Every piece of land is our home."

The community banded together and geared up for a at the new space at 22nd and Jefferson. On June 15 , the group collaborated with local community members, the and Hip Hop Party to revive the park.

"We need to let the soil and plants recharge our DNA," Joshua shared, with a smile on his face as he looked out into the garden. "We need to create a new paradigm of how we need to live and exist based on the land. This is the future of what we would like to see for Peace Town."

Peace Town is Joshua's vision of an ecologically focused "new city" made up of people who respect and work with the land that will include Sharswood, Strawberry Mansion, Francisville and other neighborhoods clustered in North Philadelphia, he explained. He hopes to actively work with the city of Philadelphia and other major cities across the United States to replicate the model of what North Philly Peace Park is now becoming.

"This is what I'm trying to tell the developers," Joshua said."You can build schools, you can build houses, you can build roads, you can build nice, shiny avenues with stores, but it's all about the people. So let's revitalize and help develop the people."

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Here's the story of how the Sharswood community fought developers to keep North Philly Peace Park alive - Generocity Philly

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To thrive in the face of adversity, communities need a supportive space where its members can grow and learn from each other. Tommy Joshua learned that lesson 10 years ago when, for a short time, his North Philadelphia neighborhood was riddled with randomly set fires.

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The North Philly Peace Park (NPPP) was founded in February 2012 by Tommy Joshua (a native Philadelphian), community organizers that were part of the Occupy Vacant Lots movement, educators, artists and folks in the Sharswood neighborhood. According to Pili X (a founding member of the Peace Park and its current Communications Director), frustration with chronically vacant and underused plots of land in the community led people to start clearing a parcel of land across from the Blumberg Housing Projects. 8 years later, the Peace Park is going stronger than ever and has successfully expanded to West Philly.
*For our project, we interviewed Pili X extensively and unless otherwise noted, most of our analysis/description of NPPP is based on the information he gave us*

"Each Sunday, people (mothers, seniors, children) just kept on coming out, cleaning [the lot] up. Until it was clear of all the trash and mattresses and tires and drug paraphernalia and everything else you could probably think of that would be like in a land dump. And that was the start of the Peace Park." -- Pili X

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Kids playing at the Urban County Fair. Original Peace Park location 2014.

Kids playing at the Urban County Fair. Original Peace Park location 2014.

The North Philly Peace Park was founded in 2012 on several vacant parcels of land directly across the street from the Blumberg Housing Projects. The founding members were a socially engaged group of Blumberg and neighborhood residents, activists,

designers, organizers and educators, who formed an ecological campus that sought to collectively solve many of the neighborhood's critical issues. The group utilized their collective resources, knowledge and skills and designed a campus that included a fence-free organic farm, an earthship-style pavilion and created after school and community programs like the Urban County Fair. In 2015, the North Philly Peace Park was displaced by PHA development plans and fought these actions aggressively from 2015-2017, resulting in a move to its current location along Jefferson street and gaining land security. From 2016- 2018 the Park has been engaged in the redevelopment process with partners from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, student group Diverse Design, Habitat for Humanity, Haverford College and Youth Build. In 2018 the park will finalize this process with completing an off-grid facility to further complement its programs and prove a proof of concept/ model for an equitable design practice.

Current Activities and Site Plan The park has grown into a popular charitable eco campus and passive park that provides free programs to the greater Philadelphia community. It is a grassroots

organization with a dedicated volunteer staff and a membership base strongly rooted in surrounding neighborhoods. The programs are supported by strategic partnerships that strengthen the four main program areas.

These community park programs areas provides the following:

Organic + Sustainable Urban Farming

STEAM based educational programs

Community programs & partnerships, which include fairs, festivals and health and wellness activities.

Green Wall Street: a local entrepreneur incubator, green workforce development program, makerspace & marketplace.

Benefit corporation: a burgeoning community design + equitable development corporation- which aims to repeat the parks success in other neighborhoods facing high lot vacancy rates, gentrification, poverty, food insecurity, displacement, and violence.

Community design session led by Diverse Design students of PennDesign, 2016.

Park members, staff and the general Sharswood community have been working with graduate design students for two years in a design /build process. Phase 1 of the redevelopment process began with the landscape design which was completed in 2016 with partners Habitat for Humanity and Lowes Home

Improvement. For Phase 1 of the pavilion construction process, the community along with students, professionals, facilitated tours,

conferences, raised funds, and several planning workshops towards construction. This process has produced three versions of concept design

documents which collectively represent the parks vision for a sustainable building and educational facility on its campus. The project has grown from a student led initiative to a professional design project in partnership with Bohlin Chywinski Jackson Architects. The final design is based on the following overall ideals that were established during the student led phase of this project.

The park has adopted an Afro futurist approach for the design of the building that will merge and highlight continuities between ancient African architecture from countries of the western coast of the continent and modern African American architecture typologies. Past technological or design innovations from ancient and modern west African culture are embedded within the design context. The primary roof structure and open floor plan is inspired by The Oshun Temple located in Osogbo Sacred Grove in Niger. The framing of solar progress that animates and illuminates religious symbology along the east axes of the Temple of Edfu. The porch became an American architectural form following the shotgun houses built by African slaves imported from traditional homes in West Africa. It provides a place for leisure, gathering, socializing, and contributes to the life of American urban areas. These typologies are integrated by the African concept of polychronic time, which places one at the center of the experience to move with time. Light metaphorically becomes the source of knowledge and becoming. Sunlight passes through the roof onto the porch and extends into the landscape merging the African with the American and architecture with the landscape. Light cast onto the porch to at marked intervals to commemorate historical events of African American history, Philadelphian history, and the history of North Philly Peace Park. ​

Sacred Grove of Oshun, Niger.

Phase II Peace Park Pavilion. BCJ Architects 2019.

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Kids playing at the Urban County Fair. Original Peace Park location 2014. Kids playing at the Urban County Fair. Original Peace Park location 2014. The North Philly Peace Park was founded in 2012 on several vacant parcels of land directly across the street from the Blumberg Housing Projects.