[M II A II R II K]

The history of urban agriculture should inspire its future


3 Aug 2010

By Tom Philpott

Read More: http://www.grist.org/article/food-th...ire-its-future

"Few things scream 'Hipster' like an apartment garden." Thus spake the New York City music magazine Death + Taxes, and it's easy to see why. In trendy neighborhoods from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to San Francisco's Mission district, urban youth are nurturing vegetables in window sills, fire escapes, and roofs. Down on the street, they tend flourishing garden plots, often including chickens and bees. Even Grist has launched a comic strip (left) devoted to the exploits of urban-hipster homesteaders.

- But growing food in the city isn't just the province of privileged youth -- in fact, the recent craze for urban agriculture started in decidedly unhip neighborhoods. Nor is it anything new. As I'll show in this rambling-garden-walk of an essay, urban agriculture likely dates to the birth of cities. And its revival might just be the key to sustainable cities of the future.

- As a result of high unemployment and plunging occupancy rates, inner-city rents fell, and many landlords suddenly owed more in property taxes than they were making in rent. Too often, the "solution" was eviction, arson, and a fast-and-dirty insurance settlement. A 1977 Time article documented the phenomenon:

In ghetto areas like the South Bronx and [Chicago's] Humboldt Park, landlords often see arson as a way of profitably liquidating otherwise unprofitable assets. The usual strategy: drive out tenants by cutting off the heat or water; make sure the fire insurance is paid up; call in a torch. In effect, says [then-New York City Deputy Chief Fire Marshal John] Barracato, the landlord or businessman "literally sells his building back to the insurance company because there is nobody else who will buy it." Barracato's office is currently investigating a case in which a Brooklyn building insured for $200,000 went up in flames six minutes before its insurance policy expired.


- Post-industrial inner-city neighborhoods may have sprouted the current urban-ag craze, but the act of growing food amid dense settlements dates to the very origin of cities. In her classic book The Economy of Cities, urban theorist Jane Jacobs argues convincingly that agriculture likely began in dense tool-making and trading settlements that evolved into cities.

The main building of the groundbreaking urban farm Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wis.Photo: OrganicNation via Flickr