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Design for Food By Lorraine Johnson
Is there a role for landscape architects in the growing urban agriculture movement? How actively involved have landscape architects been in designing urban farms? Two recent projects—one in Toronto, Ontario, and one in Rochester, New York—point to some of the challenges and possibilities of urban farms and the key role for landscape architects in this particular brand of urban revitalization. There are many different ideas about what constitutes an urban farm. Michael Levenston, executive director of City Farmer, one of the oldest North American organizations devoted to urban food production, says: “An urban farm can be a pot of herbs grown on a balcony or a large market garden. If it involves something you eat, and you’re growing it in the city, I’d call it an urban farm.” Tom Robinson, a landscape architect with the firm Environmental Design & Research in Rochester, on the other hand, draws a distinction between gardens and farms: “What sets an urban farm apart from a garden is that farm food production is at some kind of community scale—beyond the family to the neighborhood. The farm is serving a larger community purpose.” The larger community purpose of the Rochester Vineyard—a 2.7-acre urban farm for which Robinson served as project manager—is community enhancement and revitalization in a neighborhood with the most concentrated poverty of any area in the city. A substantial number of vacant lots here are the stark results of extensive demolitions. Yet there is also a strong historical farming tradition: The site of the Vineyard is the last remaining agricultural land within Rochester’s boundaries. Despite years of neglect and illegal dumping, the land retained its agricultural moniker, the Vineyard, even though the main crop prior to 2000 was debris and refuse. (To make way for renewed agricultural activity, 95 truckloads of garbage had to be carted away.) …To read the entire article, subscribe to LAM! What's New |
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