Category — Policy

This month’s issue of ‘Planning’, a magazine produced by the American Planning Association, has an article that touches briefly on urban agriculture under the title ‘food security’. (page 32) The article is ‘Saving the World Through Zoning - the sustainable community development code comes to the rescue.’

“…The vast expanses of vacant lots in cities also have enormous potential for urban gardens. Surveys show that Chicago has over 70,000 vacant lots and Detroit 60,000. Not only can these lots help provide healthy food at low cost to city dwellers, but as the national Urban Agriculture Report observed, urban agriculture has a regenerative effect … when vacant lots are transformed from eyesores – weedy, trash-ridden dangerous gathering places – into bountiful beautiful, and safe gardens that feed people’s bodies and souls.” Zoning regulations can help push this transformation…”

Link to Planning magazine. The article is available to subscribers only.

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My unsung hero of urban agriculture is the Canadian organization, the IDRC (International Development Research Centre) based in Ottawa.

“Through more than 90 research projects in 40 countries over the past decade, IDRC has helped the cities in the South develop urban agriculture policies and methods that are increasing the food supply, raising income levels, and protecting health — and at the same time improving management of urban waste, water, and land.”

And my unsung urban agriculture hero within that organization is Luc Mougeot. From the early 1990’s, he and others in his department have created and funded innovative projects that have literally changed the world.

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