Sustainable Communities Magazine 2011-05/06

SuStainable CommunitieS • MaY/JUNE 201136

F rom Seattle to New Orleans, cities are rediscovering

the economic and social benefits of agriculture as an

integral part of the urban landscape.

The urban agriculture movement aims to shorten the

distance from farm to plate, by weaving farms back into

the communities where people live and work.

The benefits of urban agriculture are numerous, at the

top of the list, as far as sustainable development goes,

is shortening the distance that food must travel to reach

consumers. The shorter the distance, the less fossil fuel

burned, the fresher the food, the more food security and

the more money staying within the community. On average

6-12 cents of every dollar spent on food, goes to transpor-

tation costs.

To real estate developers, urban agriculture or garden-

ing can add to the market appeal of a property. To city of-

ficials, in-town agriculture is a great way to create jobs and

improve nutrition in lower-income areas. and in declining

cities, urban agriculture is a good use of vacant and aban-

doned land.

Urban agriculture can also bring jobs and revenue to a

community by creating a local food-based industry. Thanks

to the “locavore” movement, made popular by Micheal

Pollan’s bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma, restaurants can

charge a premium for local, organic products. City farm,

an urban farm bordering the Cabrini Green neighborhood

of Chicago primarily sells its produce to local restaurants.

Sepia, a high-end restaurant in Chicago features City Farm

produce. The restaurant “favor[s] local artisan growers”

and charges around $30 a plate for such dishes.

RETURNING TO OUR AGRARIAN ROOTS:

a renaissance in urban agriculture

By Megan Truxillo

MaY/JUNE 2011 • SuStainable CommunitieS 37

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Utilizing Urban Space

The high cost of urban space is one of the predominant

reasons agriculture has historically moved to rural and un-

populated areas. Urban agriculturalists have dealt with this,

though, by creatively using unutilized or underutilized space

in urban areas. The greatest potential for this new trend ex-

ists in cities with slow or no-growth, where vacant land is

plentiful. But, even in thriving cities, unused spaces like roof-

tops provide prime real estate for urban farms and gardens.

Greening blighted city spaces is an important benefit of

using vacant or abandoned land for agriculture. This serves

aesthetic purposes but also can raise property values in the

area. New Orleans saw an upswing of community gardening

after Hurricane Katrina, when far-sighted New Orleanians

saw the potential to turn vacant lots into beautiful gardens.

NOLa Green Roots, a non-profit organization founded

by Joe Brock in New Orleans, manages several community

gardens. The organization started with the Mid-City Commu-

nity Garden, turning a once-abandoned lot in mid-city into a

producer of mustard greens, carrots, tomatoes, herbs, beans

and eggs. The bounty is offered to community-members at a

fraction of the cost of supermarket produce.

In Queens, NY, Brooklyn Grange Farm operates a for-

profit farm on a one-acre rooftop. Grange’s mission is to

turn urban farming into a thriving and viable industry. The

rooftop, over which Grange has a long-term lease, holds 1.2

million pounds of soil and hundreds of thousands of plants.

The produce is sold at farmstands and to local restaurants.

Rooftop farming, particularly in densely developed urban

areas like New York, has the potential to take advantage of

otherwise underutilized land in a city.

What is Urban Agriculture?

although, urban agriculture can mean a few garden plots,

a community garden and chickens in the yard, it can also

mean a real working farm within city limits, with goods sold

locally and exported.

This March in Detroit, Hantz Farms, a subsidiary of Hantz

Group, acquired 5 acres of blighted land around a warehouse

in Detroit with the aim of operating a large commercial farm

on the site. This property is the first acquisition, in what

Hantz plans to be a large-scale conversion of blighted and

abandoned land in the city to agricultural use.

If Hantz can overcome city roadblocks, the farm promises

to create hundreds of jobs for the Detroit unemployed, offer

local produce to a city that does not even have a single gro-

cery store chain within the city limits and free up police, fire

and city services from serving and patrolling nearly aban-

doned neighborhoods. In the meantime, Hantz is landscap-

ing and cleaning up the land to demonstrate to the city the

potential agricultural conversion has.

For the techies out there, urban agriculture can also

mean an indoor “vertical farm.” a vertical farm at its sim-

plest is a multi-story greenhouse. at its most high-tech, a

vertical farm is a tightly controlled indoor farm, with water,

humidity and nutrients precisely measured and sunlight

excluded.

PHOTO COURTESY BROOKLYN GRaNGE FaRM, BROOKLYNGRaNGEFaRM.COM

a renaissance in urban agriculture Brooklyn Grange Farm in New York produces forty varieties

of tomatoes, salad greens, herbs, carrots, fennel, beets and

many other varieties of produce on a one-acre rooftop.

▲


In the Netherlands, the Dutch research company Plantlab

has been perfecting its version of the vertical farm for the

past ten years. In its research station, strawberries, yellow

peppers, basil and banana plants grow under LED bulbs.

Water trickles to plants as needed, and all excess water is

recycled. The facility uses no pesticides and 90 percent less

water than outdoor agriculture.

By the end of this year, the company plans on building a

four level commercial-sized vertical farm in the Netherlands.

The company envisions vertical farms occupying city space

next to shopping malls, supermarkets and grocery stores,

providing fresh produce that travels a very short distance.

Zoning for Urban Agriculture

One of the biggest hurdles facing urban agriculture is

restrictive land use and zoning laws. The problem can be an

outright restriction of agricultural uses within city limits, a

result of years of creating non-mixed use communities and

pushing agriculture outside of cities and suburban areas.

Or, the problem can simply be a

failure to address agricultural use,

leaving urban agriculturalists to

wade through endless red tape

to open a farm or community

garden.

In Chicago, the city is in the

process of remedying a zoning

code that did not address agricul-

tural uses within city limits. The

lack of clarity hindered the devel-

opment of community gardens

and commercial farms because it

meant extensive red tape to ac-

quire the proper permits. The pro-

posed zoning amendment would

add commercial and community

farming as allowed uses by right

within certain zoning districts and

provide specifics on allowed size

and operations.

The proposed Hantz operation

in Detroit has been at a standstill

for the last two years while city

officials determine how best to in-

corporate agricultural zoning into

the city code. The current code

does not address agricultural

uses, although many small com-

munity gardens operate, albeit

technically illegally.

The cities hangup stems in

part from an existing law, Michigan’s ‘Right to Farm act.’ The

law restricts the ability to bring a nuisance claim against an

existing farm, leaving the city wary of allowing a large-scale

commercial farm into the city until proper zoning is in place.

San Francisco recently amended its zoning code to al-

low gardening in all parts of the city and to allow produce

and value added goods to be sold on site in all zoning areas

but residential. The addition of on site sales is important

for the financial viability of small urban farms, which often

produce too little produce to sell to grocery stores or even

at farmers markets.

Taking it a step further, Seattle’s comprehensive plan ac-

tually requires one community garden per 2,500 residents in

an urban village or neighborhood. The zoning code in Seat-

tle is often cited as the most supportive of urban agriculture

in the country. Like San Francisco’s code, gardening is al-

lowed by right in most parts of the city and sales are allowed

on site as well. Seattle’s code also supports keeping animals,

including chickens on urban properties.

Many cities are rewriting general plans and zoning laws

▲ Plantlab hopes to decrease the distance from farm to plate by building vertical farms

adjacent to, below and on top of grocery stores, as depicted in this artist’s rendering.

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MaY/JUNE 2011 • SuStainable CommunitieS 39

to embrace urban agriculture. However, even when a city

decides to allow agricultural uses, there is still the question

of how far to allow it to go. Not everyone likes the idea of a

rooster crowing in their neighbor’s backyard, or a commer-

cial farm taking over the vacant lot next to their property.

But adding urban agriculture to the zoning code is actually

good for both advocates of urban agriculture and those that

are less enthusiastic because the zoning code both allows

the use and restricts it at the same time.

When agricultural uses are added to the zoning code, it

provides a place to define size limits, aesthetic rules and op-

erational and safety requirements; providing rules and clar-

ity for operators and for those that live within the vicinity of

the operation. The San Francisco code, for example, requires

compost units to be set back three feet from dwelling units

and decks and fencing around a farm to be wood, ornamen-

For master planned communities, weaving community gardens or farms into the plan can increase the appeal

of the community to homebuyers. In Wisconsin, the master-planned Community of Bishop’s Bay, 15 minutes out-

side Madison, will interweave 200 acres of farmland amongst the houses and other features of the community.

The entire community, roughly 800 acres, is a mixed-use community, and will include single-family homes,

multi-family complexes, schools, a main street downtown and recreation areas. The community won the National

Association of Home Builder’s 2011 “On the Boards Community of the Year,” for its innovative design.

“The design intent was to create a community within a community that integrates both natural features such

as woodlands, prairies and agriculture landscape systems into a quilt work of development ‘patches’ or neighbor-

hoods, respecting both the rolling Wisconsin landscape and local housing needs,” noted Sean O’Malley, principal

of SWA Group, which did the site planning and landscape architecture.

The cities of Middleton and Westport, the towns the community straddles, required the planners to incorpo-

rate a 200 acre agricultural set aside into the project. But, instead of pushing the agricultural set aside to the

outskirts of the area, the design team incorporated it as a selling feature of the community.

The farm is intended to put the community in context, since it is being planned in an agricultural area, but

also was included in the design because it was something the team felt people wanted in their community, said

O’Malley.

The result is The Farm at Bishop’s Bay. In it, houses are set in circular clusters, surrounded by farmland.

Homeowners in the area will pay homeowner’s fees to partially offset costs for operation of the farm and can take

part in the farming and eating of the bounty. Also, local produce from the Farm may be sold at a farmers market

in Bishops Bay town center, to the benefit of the homeowner association. Groundbreaking on the project is set for

later this year, with a total build out of between five and ten years.

▲ At The Farm at Bishop’s Bay, housing is clustered into a weave of farm belts that are maintained and harvested by

the community.

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Master Planned Community Incorporates 200 acre Farm

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tal or covered by plant material.

The restrictive nature of zoning is a source of discord

within the agricultural movement in Chicago. according to

the advocates for Urban agriculture, a non-profit coalition

of urban agriculture enthusiasts, some of its members feel

the proposed zoning in Chicago is unduly restrictive of size,

operation and placement. Despite this, the group overall

supports the zoning as a first step to the introduction and

expansion of urban agriculture in the city.

Like opening any business, having neighbors and the

community on board is a crucial first step. Joe Brock of

NOLa Green Roots says he does extensive community out-

reach before siting a garden, to ensure that the neighbor-

hood is on board with the operation.

Hantz farm, in its quest to acquire property in nearly

abandoned neighborhoods ran into an unforeseen problem:

once individuals in the neighborhood knew a farm might go

into it, they did not want to sell their properties -- support-

ing Hantz’s assertion that members of the Detroit commu-

nity want agriculture within the city limits. ❧

▲ Slow Food Nation, a non-profit group dedicated to

sustainable food production, created an edible, organic garden

in front of San Francisco’s City Hall during the summer of

2008. The harvest was donated to local food banks.

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Brooklyn Grange Farm, brooklyngrangefarm.comCity Farm, www.resourcecenterchicago.comHantz Farms, www.hantzfarmsdetroit.comNOLA Green roots, www.nolagreenroots.comCommunity of Bishop’s Bay, www.swagroup.com

to leaRn moRe viSit:

Sister Lillian Murphy, RSMCEO, Mercy Housing

Professor Nicolas P. RetsinasSenior Lecturer,

Harvard Business School,Director Emeritus,

Joint Center for Housing Studies

Honoring NHC’s 2011 Housing Persons of the Year

Thursday, June 23, 2011

National Building Museum 401 F Street, N.W. Washington, D.C.

National Housing Conference p 202 466 2121 f 202 466 2122

5:30 p.m. Cocktails6:30 p.m. Gala Program7:00 p.m. Dinner & Networking

Housing’s Networking Event of the Year

Visit the “Events” section at www.nhc.org for Gala tickets, sponsorship opportunities and more information