At first it sounds like a typical tale of gentrification: Spanish Harlem residents battle to save a community garden from being bulldozed to make way for apartments.

But the gardeners are fighting neighbors they’ve known for decades, not outside developers. The 116th Street Block Association, a nonprofit founded by locals in 1976, plans to build 55 apartments on the garden site for families making $40,000 or less.

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The battle to redevelop Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has been going on since the 1960’s. By then, the canal, once one of the state’s busiest waterways, had fallen largely into disuse. Many of the warehouses, factories and other industrial sites that lined the canal’s shores were abandoned.

Now, with residential real estate booming and the city’s population expanding, the area is on the verge of a new era of residential development. But as development plans go forward, every step requires a delicate balance of the city’s enormous need for housing, the environmental cleanup required on a century-old industrial waterway, and the ongoing needs of the businesses that remain in the area.

Click here for Matthew Sollars’ multi-media report.