Urban Agriculture: The New Frontier

Paper presented to Planning for Food Seminar: Vancouver 21 June 2006

by Ian Knowd, David Mason and Andrew Docking

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Urban Agriculture - The New Frontier

ABSTRACT

The drive to integrate agriculture into urban landscapes has a long history and this drive has intensified since the industrial revolution. Garden cities and the benefits that early visionaries perceived were possible through them remain utopian ideals.

In the contemporary context of urban development, the possibilities of looking anew at agriculture relates more to implementing sustainability and addressing the structural changes brought about by globalization to communities, their food systems and quality of life for urbanites.

Urban agriculture is a strategic resource and deserves a strategic approach in planning, one that recognizes the values of agriculture in economic, social and environmental terms.

Decision-making processes that fail to do so risk denying current and future generations a range of choices in the way the economy, society and the environment are managed. These failures breach principles of sustainability and risk the loss of productive land, social capital and natural assets.

Note: Table 1 on page 6 provides a useful summary of the typse of Urban Agriculture in the Sydney Region and associated values/benefits.