Spotlight on Urban, Vertical and Indoor Agriculture

Should food be grown in cities? If so, how? These questions have a long history, with the last few hundred years taking in the Garden City movement where towns were designed to include homes, industry and agriculture, the ‘Victory Gardens’ of the First and Second World Wars and, more recently, the food miles debate.

Doria Robinson on How Urban Agriculture can Heal a Community’s Imagination

The goal is to actually draw out some kind of a map.  What are the physical infrastructural needs?  How do things work together?  How do we feed millions of people as opposed to – even if we’re starting with small amounts of people in communities at a time – how does that add up to the millions that are out there that need to be fed? 

How Artists and Neighbors Turned a Bomb Site Into a Medicine Garden

It was a fenced-off World War II bomb site that had rewilded, and a team of London artists decided it was the perfect place to grow a medicine garden. The site is in the middle of a social housing complex in the Bethnal Green neighborhood of Tower Hamlets, a London borough that has become the U.K.’s second most densely populated local authority, the basic unit of local government.

Madrid’s Community Gardens

In common with other critical social movements, the community gardens presented their demands under the umbrella of the right to the city, understood not as a legal claim, but as citizens’ right to intervene in the city, to build it and transform it.

Cultivating Place: Refugees and Urban Gardening in Baltimore

There’s a difference between simply settling somewhere and finding a home. Refugees are faced with this reality every day — among new neighbors in a new city, building a sense of belonging is no small task. Working to create a place for oneself is a bold act of hope for a new life. So, what can public spaces do to help create a sense of place for refugees?

Urban and Small Farm Agriculture

I have always believed that wherever climate and conditions favor it, local food production on small farms, in backyards, community gardens, and empty urban lots will become an increasingly important source of fresh food.  And if one uses season extension or poly covered tunnels and drip irrigation we can expand the growing area to much wider climate conditions. 

Urban Agriculture and Forced Displacement in Iraq: “This Garden is my Kingdom”

The Lemon Tree Trust is a United Kingdom-based nonprofit organization which facilitates greening innovation and urban agriculture in refugee camps in Iraq, Uganda, and Jordan. “People are arriving with almost nothing and are literally making home, so the garden becomes representative of a space that people have control over, some ability to be creative, and a space to just be in after they’ve undergone this process of forced migration,” says co-founder Mikey Tomkins.

The Future of Urban Farming

Sustainable and long-term change includes ongoing education. It also requires a strong mindset, one that not only asks and answers important questions, such as, “How did we get here?” and “Where are we going?” but also envisions a new path and future of what is possible. What would it mean if nearly 100% of your home waste was turned into soil that grew most of your food? And what if this became true for you and for more than half your neighbors? I am humbly optimistic that this is what is next for urban farming.

Diet for a Small Polder

Traders have to communicate and mediate with all kinds of people. And we have a tradition of “polder politics” because we live in low-lying land (polder) that is always in danger of being flooded if the dykes don’t work. If you live with people in a polder, you have to work things out, or you’ll all drown. You need to talk with everybody. You need to get everybody on board.

Stop the Leakage: How Food-centered Urban Design Solves Economic Challenges

What happens when you eat the wrong food over and over again? We call it “leakage.” Leakage is when capital exits the economy rather than remaining in it.  Our current food system as designed (or left un-designed) is a constant source of leakage for our cities and a missed opportunity for urban planners.