Amsterdam’s Farming the City

This map shows the location of urban agriculture projects, volunteers and available space.

Bringing city dwellers together to explore inspirational ways of producing, storing, cooking, preserving, distributing and sharing food.

Excerpts:

In Amsterdam, Farming the City has brought together, for the first time, representatives from the ever-expanding range of players involved in local urban and suburban food production, including community activists, local politicians, computer geeks, planners, policy-makers, farmers, gardeners, shopkeepers, social workers, developers, landlords, engineers, designers, health professionals and academics.

FarmingtheCity.net provides detailed information about current trends and local issues such as land ownership and land use designation, economic and planning policies and city-wide urban design initiatives. It offers advice, ideas, practical know-how about and a knowledge-sharing forum for urban farmers: what should I grow on a vertical wall? How can we reclaim polluted land for food production and green uses? What would grow best on my balcony or on my windowsill?

Phase one of Farming the City is complete in spring 2011 with the launch of a free online resource featuring and mapping a diverse range of city farming projects across Amsterdam. This is the first step towards the creation of a major new city asset for Amsterdam: a local food system.

FarmingtheCity.net has been launched at the Amsterdam Architecture Center with an exhibition in March 2011, through a 6 weeks show. (For an overview of the exhibtion, please download our press pack)

FarmingtheCity.net maps and showcases an initial 19 key city farming projects on an interactive online site. Case study information includes location, type of project (commercial, community, innovation), status (start-up, on-going, completed) and position within the developing local food system (sourcing, preparation, distribution, consumption).

From March 2011 onwards, groups and individuals will be able to upload information about their own projects to the FarmingtheCity.net database and map.

12 of the initial 19 projects have been selected to create an urban agriculture route for bikes in Amsterdam. This route can also be found on the UAR (Urban augmented reality) application for Iphone and Android, developed by the Netherlands Architecture Institute in collaboration with Amsterdam Center for Architecture.

Website here.