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Prepared by Megan Horst
University of Washington, College of Architecture and Urban Planning
July 1, 2008. 74 pages
Planners and policy-makers in the United States and around the world are increasingly recognizing the importance of food systems planning. Effective food systems planning at the local and regional levels offers tools to address some of the major challenges faced by modern cities, including high rates of joblessness, poverty, and hunger along with growing environmental problems related to fossil fuel dependency and resource consumption. Urban agriculture, mainly in the form of community gardens, is one of the many food systems planning strategies that different cities have been using to address these kinds of problems.
Urban agriculture offers many economic, social and environmental benefits to cities, including increased food security and equitable access to food, the beautification of previously vacant or under-used sites, opportunities for training and employment of under-skilled residents and youth, and the enhancement of community life.
Seattle is one of many cities across the United States and the world that has established a public community gardening program. The existing 72 gardens, or P-Patches as they are called in Seattle, are popular with residents; many have waiting lists of up to three years. As the city’s population continues to increase and particular areas increase in population density, there will likely be a demand for more P-Patches. The city has already expressed its desire to create additional community garden spaces in some of its key policies and plans.
Securing land for garden space is not an easy feat in a city where pressure for land and the cost of purchasing are increasing. Nevertheless, as in most American cities, there is vacant, excess, and under-used public land that is suitable for urban gardening. Recognizing this, the Seattle City Council recently passed a Local Food Action Initiative Resolution. As part of the Resolution, the Department of Neighborhoods is requested to create an inventory of publicly owned land that has P-Patch potential. The following report responds to that request.
Originally posted by Flavian
reply to post by angelchemuel
Whilst i applaud the residents of Todmorden, i am not sure how this same scheme would fare in other places around our fair Isles. Have you ever been there? It is a very new age, hippy type of place (nothing wrong with that) and as such, people there tend to be more open to this sort of thing and also to not abuse the system. I suspect if you tried this in Burnley, Rochdale or Halifax it would be abused left, right and centre.
Well done to them though.
Originally posted by angelchemuel
I am sooooo sorry I have not participated over the past few days, but I have been totally incapacitated with a dreaded lurgy of some sort
I have been keeping my eye on the thread and my notes for suggested plans of action is growing! So be prepared for a ramble....of the nature kind!
Oh and BTW, I haven't contacted the local council, because as synchronisity would have it, my local MP wrote to me on Saturday with the update of her support NOT to sell off British woodlands! So think I might as well go straight to the 'Big Boyz'.
13. Most importantly, peoples attitudes. When things start getting even tighter next year, and people really start struggling to put food on their tables...you watch how this will catch on! There are more of us than them!