Planning Magazine - ‘Saving the World Through Zoning’ - January 2008

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.

These important urban agriculture report are available on-line.

Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States:
Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe
Prepared by the Urban Agriculture Committee of the CFSC
February, 2002
Principal Author: Katherine H. Brown
Contributors: Martin Bailkey, Alison Meares-Cohen, Joe Nasr, Jac Smit, Terri Buchanan
Editor: Peter Mann

Farming Inside Cities (Working Paper)
Entrepreneurial Urban Agriculture in the United States
Author(s): Kaufman, Jerry and Martin Bailkey
Publication Date: September 2000

Urban and Agricultural Communities: Opportunities for Common Ground
Note: use ‘urban agriculture’ to search when you arrive at their publication page.
Task Force Report, from CAST, 2002
The changing role of agriculture in urban settings is considered in this comprehensive report written by a twelve-member task force. The report frames “urban agriculture” in both historical and contemporary American society, providing a picture of geographic, demographic, and economic changes in rural and metropolitan life. Policy issues such as land preservation, alternative market opportunities, sprawl, taxation, and food security are considered. Research and educational challenges are presented for consideration by those at institutions of higher education, including land-grant universities. Cochairs: Lorna Michael Butler, College of Agriculture, Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Iowa Sate University, Ames, and Dale M. Maronek, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. R138, May 2002, ISBN 1-88783-20-4, 124 pp., $50.00; Interpretive Summary, 2 pp., free.