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Urban
Farming
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While farming is often perceived as something
going on only outside the city, a study made
by City
Farmers
in 2002 showed that 44% of households in the
Vancouver area were involved in some kind
of food growing on a balcony, in the window
still or in an allotment garden. Urban public
space show very little signs of this as urban
planners and landscape architects tend to
avoid fruit trees and edible plants and it
is quite rare that land is set apart for food
growing when cities are planned or developed.
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In
Sønderborg, Denmark the city gardener decided
that one in six new trees would be fruit trees. We inquired
if he had any problems he said the only complaint was
from people who couldn't get to the trees because they
were planted too far away from the street.
There seems to be an untapped potential for public involvement
in city spaces, for building community and not least,
for getting fresh vegetables and fruit to urban dwellers.
Following are some examples by artists, NGO's and community
gardening groups who show that farming in the city is
indeed possible and a great way of making the city a
more livable place.
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Wheatfield:
A Confrontation,
by artist Agnes Deans from 1982 is still
today one of the strongest images of urban
farming. Deans planted 2 acres of wheat
on Battery Park landfill, Manhattan. The
twin towers seem to rise straight out of
the field.
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On
a small scale Ken Ehrlich + Brandon LaBelle
in the summer of 2005 made a project on
Ginger, seeing the city as a giant circulation
system of food and waste they planted ginger
in the city, cooked and also visited the
waste center to see where it all ended up.
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On a similar line
of thought the group "Food Not Bombs" thinks in terms
of circulation, using perfectly good food that is thrown
away from supermarkets, they remake and distribute food
for free, and thereby reverse the excess of contemporary
consumption.
In cities where living standards are low, urban food
production is not a leisurely luxury but a deep necessity.
In many Eastern European countries, allotment gardens
in the city or its perimeter served as a buffer to have
food on the table or things to trade on the local market
when economy was low or the monetary system failed all
together. St.
Petersburg urban gardening clubs
were building on some of
these experiences, making rooftop gardens and growing
food in a prisons.
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On a walk in
Berlin, corn and tomatoes were growing on
the sidewalk, making an ugly architecture
almost forgivable, the size of gardening
being not necessarily the most important
factor.
While
urban farming often happen where there is
a surplus of space or in run down neighborhood,
the reverse also happens. In 2005 a group
of artist Jesper Dyrehauge, Marie Markman
and myself introduced urban farming
to a gentrified area in the center of Copenhagen,
the urban plan, made by one of Denmark's
most praised architects had left the place
unused and empty. A small vegetable garden
doubling as a bench changed that for the
duration of the summer, and served a a point
around which to discuss the planning of
the area. See website
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In
2006 the
free soiler Nis Rømer made the exhibition "Hot summer of
urban
farming in Copenhagens off spaces to put focus to other cultural and
agricultural uses of city spaces, as well as to put a
concentrated
focus to the topic from an artists point of view. Amy Franceschini and
the Futurefarmers the same year started the Victory Gardens in San
Francisco a scheme for growing vegetables in backyards and leftover
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The potential for urban
gardening and farming seems to be largely unused in
most western European and American cities, but when
you can have fresh vegetables produced locally and
not transported 1000's of miles it is a better alternative,
and creates more livable and less polluted cities.
As the examples show, urban farming can be integrated
in a variety of ways, as a part of public parks, allotment
gardens, rooftop gardens or on walkways.
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| Garden Cities of Tomorrow |
The
idea of planning green cities already has a long tradition. In the
early nineteen-hundreds, Ebenezer Howard hoped to combine the best of
the city (work, entertainment) and the countryside (healthy living,
open space) for changing the basic structures of society. The first
garden town that was built after Howard's visions was Letchworth,
England in 1903.
A corresponding movement happened in the United States in the 1920s and
30s, where regional cities would be planned with a sustainable
approach, and be surrounded by a greenbelt to supply the inhabitants
with produce. Spokesman for the Regional Planning Association of
America at that time was Lewis Mumford, an advocate and leader in
sustainable social planning. |
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