The Urban Agricultural Movement in Canada: A Comparative Analysis of Montréal and Vancouver

Figure 7: Modeling the Initiation of Urban Agriculture based on Vancouver and Montréal Case Studies

The Urban Agricultural Movement in Canada: A Comparative Analysis of Montréal and Vancouver

By Chandal Nolasco da Silva
Email: chandal.nds@gmail.com
A research essay submitted to the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, 16,000 words
Carleton University 2009

1. Introduction

Urban agriculture is a term used to describe both private and public agricultural activities that take place in urban and peri-urban areas. While regional examples practice urban agriculture differently, each will help to increase food security. Urban agriculture has the potential to increase a region’s food security by providing a local food supply system and successful examples of this situation have been documented in the Canadian cities of Montréal and Vancouver.

By documenting the birth of the urban agricultural movements in Montréal and Vancouver, this research has sought to understand how modern Canadian cities can adopt local food systems.

Montréal was selected as a model city for urban agriculture in Canada because it is home to over 75 community garden sites and because the City of Montréal’s Department of Recreation and Community Development maintains over 6654 individual garden plots (Cosgrove 2001). According to Davidson and Krause (1999a), Montréal also has the most extensive gardening network in North America. Vancouver was selected as a model city for urban agriculture in Canada because 25% of British Columbia’s food is grown within a half hour of Vancouver, because 40% of the people living in Vancouver maintain gardens (e.g., on balconies or roof-tops, in yards or community gardens), and because Vancouver is home to over 1000-community garden plots (IDRC 2007). Montréal and Vancouver maintain these significant statistics with the help of different social actors who are involved in the urban agricultural movement in their respective jurisdictions. This research was interested in contacting those actors to discuss why the urban agricultural movement is successful, in each of their cities, and to discuss how other Canadian cities can learn from their existing examples.

This research project first explores the history of the urban agricultural movement by looking at what urban agriculture is, by looking at what its uses and forms are and then by discussing urban agriculture at an international scale. The next section looks at some existing initiatives in Canada. After a brief look at the history of urban agriculture and its Canadian context, this research begins to focus on the existing urban agricultural movements in Montréal and Vancouver separately before bringing the conclusions from each together in the last section. Although the section that compares Montréal and Vancouver could be framed from many different angles, the angle taken here intended to uncover what factors facilitated the urban agricultural movement in Montréal and Vancouver after the first projects were initiated.

The municipal governments and the work of local non-governmental organizations (NGO) were sought as two important catalysts within urban agriculture in either Montréal or Vancouver. The City of Montréal and The City of Vancouver have facilitated the urban agricultural movements in their respective jurisdictions and this research explored the role played by municipal governments. Municipal governments are of interest because of by-laws that may facilitate urban agricultural projects and because of the role of the municipal planning department in approving agricultural development in the city. For example, if an individual wanted to convert their conventional roof to a green roof this new development would likely have to receive approval from the municipal planning department before it’s construction could begin and therefore the existence of urban agriculture may be interdependent with the approval of the municipal government.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were also of great interest in researching the urban agricultural movement within each city. For example, the role NGO’s play in facilitating individual participation in urban agriculture and in catalyzing the urban agricultural movements through the development of local food systems and associated processes, such as compost/worm distribution and winter greenhouses. It was hypothesized that the NGO’s in Montréal and Vancouver played a significant role in developing the urban agriculture in their respective jurisdictions.

The proposed research hoped to develop a comprehensive understanding of how Montréal and Vancouver adopted an urban agricultural movement. The research was intended to identify key individuals, organizations, actions or events that led to a successful urban agricultural discourse within the chosen cities and ideally, it will provide insights into the necessary components of urban agriculture in Canadian cities. Once the necessary components of urban agriculture are understood, this information could potentially be used to create a model to help Canadian cities promote greater use of urban agriculture.

Download the complete 16,000 word paper (4MB) here.