they live, work and play, thanks to the Edible Landscaping projects. This last concept represents, like many aspects of the contemporary green revolution, a return to origins, with the replacement of common ornamental garden plants with edible plants, thus grafting the concept of self-subsistence onto that of aesthetics. This kind of urban agriculture requires a good dose of creativity, recycling of materials otherwise destined to end up in landfills, and the goal of focusing on density. Here is how agrihoods are born, neighborhoods scattered with perennial food sources and shared gardens. Exemplary is the case of Chosewood Park, born in 2014 from the idea of a building contractor who provided an urban development area with fruit trees, which in 2018 became the protagonists of a peaceful invasion of the whole neighborhood. The idea of using perennials such as fruit trees originates from the awareness that the low maintenance and independence of these plants from assiduous care could be a pillar of local production. The products of the small food forest are distributed among the inhabitants, the excesses sold or – if too ripe – processed to be stored for a long time. Not only public and widespread orchards, the community is also reborn thanks to common gardens. Deserted lots between groups of houses become real invisible bridges over the gaps in modern society, because working together on a common project favors the development of solid relationships between the inhabitants of the community, it strengthens the collective spirit, it promotes solidarity and trust in others. As catalysts, neighborhood gardens have proven not only to be an answer to food deserts, but also a driving force for the rebirth of declining districts. Nonetheless, this rebirth can sometimes lead to an unexpected side effect: gentrification. It has been observed, in fact, that young white people moving their residence to predominantly African American agrihoods, motivated by a genuine desire to participate in these projects and to share the neighborhood with African Americans, can cause the increase in house prices and taxes, with the consequence that low-income residents are forced to move in turn, unable to sustain the rising cost of living. A boomerang effect that, however, can be stopped in the bud, rethinking the concept of agrihood within a project aimed at rehabilitating the economic fabric of the area. If the creation of common gardens is proving to be a source of attraction and regeneration, that of cultivating one's own vegetable home garden revealed an aspect of American society never enough considered: the U.S. domestic front yard as a status-symbol, as the identity card of the economic position of the family. In most cases, attempts to push individuals to create fruit and vegetable gardens in their front yard have convincedly obtained a flat refusal. A reaction based on classism, on the apprehension of being perceived as so poor that they cannot afford to buy food, which is accompanied by that of attracting people who need free food. And the idea is that those who need it shouldn't have it. The umpteenth battle being fought this time in Atlanta has the full and unconditional support of politics. It is thanks to the Urban Agriculture Ordinance dating back to 2014, in fact, that Atlanta aims to become the national leader in urban agriculture and to ensure healthy food within five miles to 75 percent of residents by 2020. The AgLanta Grows-A-Lot program, led by Groundwork Atlanta and the Mayor's Office of Resilience, offers plots of land belonging to the city and to the state of Georgia to urban farmers and community gardeners for five years, with the option of renewal for an additional three years. A total of twenty-five acres are, and will literally be, put to good use in the coming years. four workshops for the future Thanks to the AgLanta Grows-A-Lot program, some of the most successful projects have come to light. Bush Mountain is a piece of history of black America. In the dense forest where before the XIII Amendment – that of abolition – blacks fleeing from slaveholders were used to take refuge, today there is a neighborhood for a long time neglected during the urban development of the city. In the twentieth century the area would have become a predominantly African American district, divided only by Oakland Avenue, a physical but above all political border, from the neighboring Oakland city (a town annexed to Atlanta in 1910), a white-collar residential area characterized by the presence of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, the Bush Mountain community is reclaiming that forest and turning the brambles into fruit, while commemorating its own history. Thanks to the concession of the hilltop by the town administration, in fact, it is reborn as an urban vegetable garden and orchard, and at the same time it is preserved out there what was the playing field of the Atlanta Black Crackers, a local team that played in the Negro Southern League between 1920 and 1951. The intertwining of present and past, as well as of agriculture and politics, is today as dense as ever, like the forest that acts as an architectural backdrop. 156
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