Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

ISSN: 2152-0801 online

www.AgDevJournal.com

Planning urban foodscapes

Book Review: Agricultural Urbanism: Handbook for

Building Sustainable Food Systems in 21st Century Cities,
edited by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland

Review by Nevin Cohen, The New School

De la Salle, J., & Holland, M. (Editors). (2010). Agricultural Urbanism: Handbook for building sustainable
food systems in 21st century cities. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: Green Frigate Books.

Published online 30 November 2011

Citation: Cohen, N. (2011). Planning urban foodscapes [review of the book Agricultural Urbanism: Handbook for Building
Sustainable Food Systems in 21st Century Cities, edited by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland]. Journal of Agriculture, Food
Systems, and Community Development, 2(1), 319–321. http://dx.doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2011.021.016

Copyright © 2011 by New Leaf Associates, Inc.

ne of the most exciting new areas of planning economy, infrastructure, education, place-making,
O and development involves innovative strate-
gies to reintegrate food production and distribution
policy, and environmental protection.

into our communities. Agricultural Urbanism, edited Urban planners and landscape architects will
by senior planners at HB Lanarc, a Vancouver- recognize many of the ideas in Agricultural Urbanism
based planning and design firm, is a collection of from the works of William H. Whyte, Donald
planning, policy, and design concepts to do just Appleyard, Jahn Gehl, and more recently, Andre
that. The book outlines a program — a manifesto, Viljoen. Designing eating and drinking opportu-
really — for “building a place around food” (p. 9). nities into the streetscape, integrating productive
This requires rethinking the role of food in cities, edible landscapes, using stormwater for agricultural
transforming the messy elements of food irrigation, and designing interpretive signage and
production and processing functions that have other features to connect people to food at the
been relegated to the “back of the house” to the streetscape, are all concepts that urban theorists
“front of the house,” and making food systems have written about for decades. The concepts of
visible in communities so that people become agricultural urbanism have been implemented in
reconnected to the sources of their food and better various contexts ranging from festival retailing
understand the nature of food production. In projects to green infrastructure plans. Cities like
describing the contours of agricultural urbanism, Seattle have integrated urban agriculture into a
the authors ambitiously discuss the whole gamut of wide range of projects; Toronto is experimenting
the food system, including food access, the food with neighborhood food production hubs for

Volume 2, Issue 1 / Fall 2011 319

 Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
www.AgDevJournal.com

economic development; and New York is USDA report has shown.2 A recommendation to
innovating with rooftop farming. The authors have retrofit industrial buildings to support rooftop
drawn on these precedents, added their profes- farming (p. 42) may be overstating the possibilities
sional experiences, and wrapped the ideas together given the substantial costs of reinforcing roofs,
into a framework that is easy to understand and installing growing media, and the limitations of
apply, much like the principles of New Urbanism growing food on windy, dry, hot rooftops with
that define mixed-use, walkable communities that shallow soil. A suggestion based on a case study of
embody traditional neighborhood design. a particular Vancouver urban farmer that urbanites
have “access to cheap land” (p. 165) does not apply
In fact, Agricultural Urbanism uses the New Urbanist to those in built-out cities. The idea that more
concept of the transect, or the gradient from rural to “benign growing conditions…with fewer wild
urban, to identify appropriate forms and scales of pests and built-in wind protection” (p. 166)
food production systems that can be integrated minimizes the substantial challenges of urban
into the landscape, from the most rural commu- agriculture, from desiccating wind on rooftops to
nities to dense downtowns. At the rural edge, this relatively high water costs compared to rural
might take the form of new clustered residential, farmers. More careful analysis and better attention
commercial, and processing facilities that enable to source material would make the arguments in
farmers to interact, more efficiently share equip- the book much more compelling.
ment and facilities, and improve their productivity.
In suburbia, agricultural urbanism might involve Some of those details are, in fact, critical for
the integration of residential subdivisions and building support for agricultural urbanism. Without
small-scale farms, such as Prairie Crossing, the that level of detail, many policymakers and citizens
suburban Chicago residential development that will remain skeptical that food production and
includes 40 acres of farmland.1 At the urban end of development fit together, viewing the incorpora-
the transect, in center cities filled with high rises, tion of farms in subdivisions as only marginally
agricultural urbanism might include networks of better than the golf courses that anchor many
window-boxes, community gardens, and rooftop suburban communities. The need for better data
farms that enable apartment dwellers to grow some about the benefits of agricultural urbanism, lessons
of their own food. learned from existing projects, and the critical
assessment of its limits would help to build support
In presenting a broad range of ideas, Agricultural for these projects. This has become particularly
Urbanism provides policymakers and planners with clear in the case of the Southlands project in the
a framework for thinking comprehensively and town of Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada, a
holistically about food in their day-to-day duties. proposed agricultural urbanism development
The book provides a rich conceptual overview, described in great detail in the book that has yet to
though practitioners will need to consult other come to fruition. The Southlands project would
resources for the financial, technical, and logistical have converted a 536-acre tract of former agricul-
details needed to design and implement specific tural reserve land into an integrated residential,
projects. For example, a statement that the produc- commercial, and food-growing community. The
tion of local foods reduces transportation-related editors and their colleagues at HB Lanarc ran
energy use (p. 39) fails to explain that the energy design charrettes (described in chapter 17) invol-
efficiency of food production and transportation ving community visioning, site inventory and
depends on much more than proximity, as a recent analysis, typology development, conceptual design,

2Canning, P., Charles, A., Huang, S., Polenske, K. R., &

1 Cohen, N. (2007). The Suburban Farm: An innovative model Waters, A. (2010, March). Energy use in the U.S. food system
for civic agriculture. Urban Agriculture Magazine, 19, 55–57. (Economic Research Service report ERR-94). Washington,
Available at http://www.ruaf.org/book/export/html/101 D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

320 Volume 2, Issue 1 / Fall 2011

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
www.AgDevJournal.com

and site design. While the idea of a mixed-use Whatever the fate of Southlands, Agricultural
agricultural urban community was well received Urbanism remains an intriguing and important idea
early in the process, over time public opposition to that is likely to be adopted more broadly as com-
developing the site has grown among those con- munities seek to address issues of climate change,
cerned about losing the land to housing and food security, and urban sustainability. For this
commercial buildings. On October 6, 2011, the reason, developers, architects, planners, and city
local council received a new application for the officials will want to understand the concepts
project, triggering an additional public consultation explored in this handbook and keep a copy on
process. their shelves.

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