Mateo Silva

The empty lot at the corner of my street has slowly become a dumping ground. People leave broken furniture and bags of trash there, and now most families tell their kids to stay away from it. The one change I would make is to turn that lot into a small community garden.

First, it would be safer. An abandoned space collects trash, rats, and broken glass; a cared-for space does not. When people use a place and look after it, it stops being somewhere to avoid. Second, it would give the younger kids on my block somewhere to be. Right now they play in the street between parked cars, which is exactly the kind of thing this assignment is about.

Some people will say a garden costs money and someone has to maintain it. But the lot already costs us something — it just costs us in safety and in how our street looks. A few raised beds and a shared watering schedule are cheaper than most people think, and families on the block have already said they would help.

One small change to one empty lot would not fix everything, but it would turn a place we avoid into a place we use. That is the kind of change a neighborhood can actually make itself.