[P2P-F] does urban farming make sense?

Tue Apr 19 11:12:04 CEST 2011

Hello all,

given the current condition of urban environment (mainly air pollution) i'm
not sure how healthy would it be to grow food in big cities. for smaller
cities, where the air pollution is not a problem, people can grow food on
the rooftops of their houses <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof>. Thus
"wasted" space becomes useful again.

On the other hand, if ever cities try to adopt Transit Oriented
Development<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development>and
more specifically Crawford's
topological model <http://www.carfree.com/draw/clover.gif> for car-free
cities, a lot of space will be created for agriculture in the centre of
those "lobes".

Moreover, Von Thunen<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_von_Th%C3%BCnen>'s
model talks about accessibility and land prices and is drawing heavily from
Adam Smith's ideas while treating the city as monocentric. Currently, cities
are conceptualized as being polycentric and discussions have started about
network cities. In our search for the future city, I'm not sure how relevant
are Von Thunen's ideas anymore.

On 19 April 2011 09:56, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> this is from our companion list on urbanism, and seems to me, a too
> simplistic take on the issue,
>
> what kind of arguments can be brought to bear on such a hostile attitude to
> urban farming?
>
> my own intuitive sense  is that, though certainly by no means a panacea,
> regrowing food is part of regreening of the city, sustainability, autonomous
> production, community formation, and the like, and therefore, overall, a
> positive development, certain in the context of possible future food
> shortages,
>
> Michel
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jan Wiklund <jan.wiklund at srf.nu>
> Date: Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 2:00 PM
> Subject: SV: [P2P-URBANISM WA] a debate on country-city (dis)urbanism,
> moscow 1930
> To: "p2p-urbanism-world-atlas at googlegroups.com" <
> p2p-urbanism-world-atlas at googlegroups.com>
>
>
>  And for my part, I don’t se the point of all this talk about food
> production in towns. The point of towns is to keep down the distances
> between people and all the millions of activities you need in a complicated
> economy. Preferably, people should be able to communicate mostly by foot.
> Bulky kinds of production should be kept out of towns. Von Thünen’s scheme,
> constructed before the fossil age, still holds good. People in the middle,
> gardening just outside, and even more spacy activities even farther away.
>
>
>
> Keeping spaces in towns to grow vegetables on means longer distances, means
> more fuel. We can’t afford that, except, of course, in small towns where the
> distances are small anyhow.
>
>
>
> Jan
>
>
>
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