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
>>
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.
▲
SuStainable CommunitieS • MaY/JUNE 201138
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.
PH
OT
O C
OU
RT
ESY
PL
aN
TL
aB
>>
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.
PH
OT
O C
OU
RT
ESY
SW
a G
RO
UP
Master Planned Community Incorporates 200 acre Farm
>>
SuStainable CommunitieS • MaY/JUNE 201140
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.
PH
OT
O C
OU
RT
ESY
WIK
IME
DIa
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