Community members are invited to attend a town hall-style meeting Dec. 7 to discuss the future of Frida’s Rebel Garden in Buffalo’s Fruit Belt neighborhood.

The meeting will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Futures Academy, 295 Carlton St., Buffalo, and is being organized by UB’s Center for Urban Studies, part of UB’s Community Health Equity Research Institute. The center’s director, Henry-Louis Taylor Jr., professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture and Planning, will serve as moderator.

Frida’s Rebel Garden is a bellwether in the Fruit Belt, organizers say. But most residents can remember how the park looked just 20 years ago: an unsightly series of unkept vacant lots. Since 2001, the Center for Urban Studies, Futures Academy and numerous community partners have worked to create the park that exists today.

“The garden is threatened. Technically, the city of Buffalo still owns the land and could easily sell the land to developers or land speculators,” says Taylor. “We need to secure the future of the garden-park as a public space in perpetuity.”