Neighborhood gardens are an ancient cultural heritage of Anatolian cities and other cities in the world. They aim for creating communal areas for the purpose of food production at the neighborhood scale.

Community gardens are mainly created to mitigate the effects of social exclusion and poverty that occur mostly in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The products grown here serve the dual purpose of both providing food and income to participating citizens.

In order to support equality among neighborhoods and different social groups, we promote the use of communal urban spaces for food production with community-based practices.

Kadifekale Neighborhood Garden, which was built for these purposes, was established in 2022 in line with the vision of building a circular city. Kadifekale Neighborhood Garden aims at facilitating access to good, clean and fair food locally. With this pilot project, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality strives to combine agricultural production activities with urban living. 

The residents of the neighborhood, who produced their first products in July 2022, meet some of their culinary needs from heirloom seeds. In May 2023, planting activities were carried out in the garden under the coordination of the “Mercek: Kadifekale Project” of the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Youth and Social Projects Directorate.

Currently, at the Kadifekale Neighborhood Garden, a total of 170 citizens, 80 women and 90 students benefit from the project. Neighborhood gardens strengthen women’s role in respective neighborhoods and offer children an outstanding opportunity for learning by doing. 

Immediate Solutions Team, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Youth and Social Projects Directorate and IZPA work collectively to open new neighborhood gardens in disadvantaged areas of Izmir.

MTK Altındağ, Fırat Living Park, Buca Mustafa Kemal Neighborhood and Limontepe will be the new neighborhood gardens of Izmir.