Urban Agriculture or City Farming is not a new concept, but it certainly is one that has been gaining momentum and exposure in recent years. What is Urban Agriculture you ask? The RUAF Foundation Resource Centers on Urban Agriculture and Food Security has a pretty good explanation for you. The short of it is growing fruits and vegetables or raising animals within city limits for harvest and consumption. If you are an urban dweller these days it’s quite likely that you know at least a friend of a friend that has yard chickens, or participates in a thriving community garden. I live mere miles from the Georgia Capitol Gold Dome in downtown Atlanta, and have numerous urban agriculture experiences within a very small radius from my home. Through most of the year my neighborhood sponsors a Farmers Market where we can pick up seasonal vegetables, fresh baked breads, local honey, cheeses and milk every Thursday night. Just a mile down the road another market happens every Sunday. There are community garden plots in the City park just blocks from my house. In the past year alone the Freedom Park Conservancy, of which I am a board member, has had multiple requests to allow community gardens into the park – one is in, another is in the works. I have a friend with chickens in the backyard of their neighborhood bungalow; I don’t have to look very far to find local food.
It’s encouraging to see such growth in City Farming and an emphasis on local food. Who hasn’t heard the stories of children and even adults that simply have no idea where their food comes from before it landed on the grocery store shelves? The widening acceptance of urban agriculture is also encouraging because it can bring so many people together. Urban farmers come in all shapes, sizes, and from different backgrounds. Certainly the explosion of organic foods and the ‘high end’ markets or grocers that sell them at a premium has created a variety of perceptions; too many to get into here, but the advent of growth in urban agriculture is bringing the disparity in food back down to earth and equalizing it once again. Food is a basic need of everyone, from the well-to-do city dweller with carts full of organic food purchases to the city’s homeless – everyone needs to eat, and urban agriculture can help.
What role do I, as a landscape architect, play in urban agriculture. For one I can, and do support it, but any citizen can do so by getting involved. I, like many other landscape architects, am in the position to influence people, particularly city leaders, to support and include places and programs for Urban Agriculture to take place. Resources abound for Urban Agriculture supporters; these are just a few of the more interesting and valuable internet resources I have found.
City Farmer News is a great blog out of Vancouver, Canada filled with stories about city farming in Canada and beyond. City Farmer News actually started back in the summer of 1978 and has been running continually online since 1994 as Urban Agriculture Notes by City Farmer – Canada’s Office of Urban Agriculture; it’s easy to get lost in the troves of information found on these two web sites.
Fallen Fruit is a great concept; an activist art project, which started as a mapping of all the public fruit in LA neighborhood’s. Fallen Fruit brings communities together to forage for fruit in public spaces, to plant fruit trees on the fringes of public lands, and to use the fruit in fruit jams where citizens are invited to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making!
Right here where I sit in Atlanta we have ALFI – no, not the infamous landscape architect and UGA professor – ALFI is the Atlanta Local Food Initiative, a group that envisions a transformed food system in which every Atlantan has access to safe, nutritious, and affordable food grown by a thriving network of sustainable farms and gardens. I am looking forward to including the ideas of ALFI in public spaces in Atlanta when the opportunities arise.
Whatever you call it – Urban Agriculture, City Farming, Community Gardening, – it’s a good thing. What are your Urban Ag experiences? What terrific resources have you found?
