Written by Rotem Ayalon, for the Rooftop Garden Project
December 2006
(full document attached as a pdf below)

Ce projet crée un espace dans ma vie où je me permets de “jouer dehors, sous le soleil” tout en consacrant de mon temps à quelque chose de plus grand - lʼentraide au sein dʼune collectivité.(Commentaire d'un bénévole du jardin).

This is a world-changing concept, everyone eating their fruits of labour and returning to the source of their daily meals. ... Patrick, 28

Throughout the process of evaluating the environmental benefits of rooftop gardening, we kept realising the impossibility of separating the social benefits from the environmental benefits. A city is made up of the people who live in it. So if any changes are made to the city, ideally
we should first ask, how does it benefit or harm the people?

Of course, cleaner air and cooler temperatures in
the summer help people, but in order to create a noticeable
change in the environment, we would need to cover
most of the roofs, roads, parking lots, sidewalks and other
paved surfaces in Montreal, which make up 85% of the
area of Montreal(!), with vegetation. Hopefully, someday
that will be the case. But for now, we have half a dozen
gardens sitting atop the cityʼs skyline. Rooftop gardens
bring positive benefits to the people in the city, but how
much and what kind? This is what we want to find out
if rooftop gardening is to become a widespread reality in
the city.

All of these thoughts led us to this social and environmental
impact study, with the goal of discovering

How much of an impact the Rooftop Garden Project
(RGP) has on the Montreal community and
What is the nature of the impact of the RGP?

More specifically, we want to assess the impact of the RGP on the Montreal community, the organisations and individuals involved.

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Submitted by rotem on Fri, 22/12/2006 - 1:16pm.