Planning For Equitable Urban Agriculture In The United States

This open access book, building on the legacy of food systems scholar and advocate, Jerome Kaufman, examines the potential and pitfalls of planning for urban agriculture (UA) in the United States, especially in how questions of ethics and equity are addressed. The book is organized into six sections. Written by a team of scholars and practitioners, the book covers a comprehensive array of topics ranging from theory to practice of planning for equitable urban agriculture. Section 1 makes the case for re-imagining agriculture as central to urban landscapes, and unpacks why, how, and when planning should support UA, and more broadly food systems. Section 2, written by early career and seasoned scholars, provides a theoretical foundation for the book. Section 3, written by teams of scholars and community partners, examines how civic agriculture is unfolding across urban landscapes, led largely by community organizations. Section 4, written by planning practitioners and scholars, documents local government planning tied to urban agriculture, focusing especially on how they address questions of equity. Section 5 explores UA as a locus of pedagogy of equity. Section 6 places the UA movement in the US within a global context, and concludes with ideas and challenges for the future. The book concludes with a call for planning as public nurturance an approach that can be illustrated through urban agriculture. Planning as public nurturance is a value-explicit process that centers an ethics of care, especially protecting the interests of publics that are marginalized. It builds the capacity of marginalized groups to authentically co-design and participate in planning/policy processes. Such a planning approach requires that progress toward equitable outcomes is consistently evaluated through accountability measures. And, finally, such an approach requires attention to structural and institutional inequities. Addressing these four elements is more likely to create a condition under which urban agriculture may be used as a lever in the planning and development of more just and equitable cities. .

As people increasingly migrate to urban settings and more than half of the world's population now lives in cities, it is vital to plan and provide for sustainable and resilient food systems which reflect this challenge. This volume presents experience and evidence-based "state of the art" chapters on the key dimensions of urban food challenges and types of intra- and peri-urban agriculture. The book provides urban planners, local policy makers and urban development practitioners with an overview of crucial aspects of urban food systems based on an up to date review of research results and practical experiences in both developed and developing countries. By doing so, the international team of authors provides a balanced textbook for students of the growing number of courses on sustainable agriculture, food and urban studies, as well as a solid basis for well-informed policy making, planning and implementation regarding the development of sustainable, resilient and just urban food systems.

Full-scale food production in cities: is it an impossibility? Or is it a panacea for all that ails urban communities? Today, it's a reality, but many people still don't know how much of an impact this emerging food system is having on cities and their residents. This book showcases the work of the farmers, activists, urban planners, and city officials in the United States and Canada who are advancing food production. They have realized that, when it's done right, farming in cities can enhance the local ecology, foster cohesive communities, and improve the quality of life for urban residents. Cities of Farmers enables readers to understand and contribute to their local food system, whether they are raising vegetables in a community garden, setting up a farmers' market, or formulating regulations for farming and composting within city limits.

This Open Access book is for scientists and experts who work on urban food policies. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding the urban food system sustainability and how it can be tackled by local governments. Written by a collective of researchers, this book describes the existing conceptual frameworks for an analysis of urban food policies, at the crossroads of the concepts of food system and sustainable city. It provides a basis for identifying research questions related to urban local government initiatives in the North and South. It is the result of work carried out within Agropolis International within the framework of the Sustainable Urban Food Systems program and an action research carried out in support of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole for the construction of its agroecological and food policy.

Urban agriculture is rising steadily in popularity in the United States and Canada - there are stories in the popular press, it has an increasingly central place in the growing local food movement, and there is a palpable interest in changing cities to foster both healthier residents and more sustainable communities. The most popular form of urban agriculture, community gardening, contributes significantly to developing social connections, building capacity, and empowering communities in urban neighborhoods. Older, industrial cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo, with their drastic loss of population and their acres of vacant land, are emerging as centers for urban agriculture initiatives - in essence, becoming laboratories for the future role of urban food production in the postindustrial city. Because urban agriculture entails the use of urban land, it has implications for urban land-use planning, which is controlled and regulated by municipal governments and planning agencies. This PAS Report provides authoritative guidance for dealing with the implications of this cutting-edge practice that is changing our cities forever.

Undertaking a journey into the “hybrid governance” of urban food movements, this book offers an original and nuanced analysis of the urban milieu as epicentre of food activism and food governance. Through examples of food movements in the city-regions of Toronto and Brussels, the author highlights the critical governance tensions urban food initiatives experience as they develop in diverse ways and seek to change food systems and their related socio-political conditions. The author investigates urban food movements as they negotiate access to land in urban areas, build resilient food network organisations, and develop supportive policies and empowering institutions for urban food governance. Through the analysis of these tensions, the book effectively puts real-life challenges of urban food movements in the spotlight—challenges that are increasingly visible and pertinent in today’s converging climate, socio-political, and health crises. The author offers suggestions to improve alternative food practices and, ultimately, to design promising pathways to instigate food system change.

The integration of food into urban planning is a crucial and emerging topic. Urban planners, alongside the local and regional authorities that have traditionally been less engaged in food-related issues, are now asked to take a central and active part in understanding how food is produced, processed, packaged, transported, marketed, consumed, disposed of and recycled in our cities. While there is a growing body of literature on the topic, the issue of planning cities in such a way they will increase food security and nutrition, not only for the affluent sections of society but primarily for the poor, is much less discussed, and much less informed by practices. This volume, a collaboration between the Bartlett Development Planning Unit at UCL and the Food Agricultural Organisation, aims to fill this gap by putting more than 20 city-based experiences in perspective, including studies from Toronto, New York City, Portland and Providence in North America; Milan in Europe and Cape Town in Africa; Belo Horizonte and Lima in South America; and, in Asia, Bangkok and Tokyo. By studying and comparing cities of different sizes, from both the Global North and South, in developed and developing regions, the contributors collectively argue for the importance and circulation of global knowledge rooted in local food planning practices, programmes and policies.

Accompanying CD-ROM also has titles in French and Spanish.