Abstract
Agricultural Urbanism is an important book, one of the first of its kind, envisioning a new relationship of contemporary urban design to agriculture. As such, one should ask what this book offers, rather than what it could have. It is unfair to ask the latter question in light of the need for this book, but it is that question that remains with the reader. Take one part Darrin Nordahl’s Public Produce (2009) and one part Charter for New Urbanism (2001), mix with a couple American Planning Association Planning Advisory Service Reports (Local and Regional Food Systems #554 [2006], and Urban Agriculture #563 [2012]), and sprinkle liberally with the style and formatting of a consultant report, and one has Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland’s Agricultural Urbanism: Handbook for Building Sustainable Food & Agriculture Systems in 21st Century Cities.
The scope is broad and ambitious, first introducing the reader to the concept of the food system and how our current global industrial one is in need of repair. The authors develop their ideas over five sections and twenty-four chapters. In the first six chapters, they outline the problem and a new vision that includes local food production and the inclusion of agriculture into urban environments. The section concludes by suggesting that this new type of urbanism, which the authors call Agricultural Urbanism, can be supported by planning done by local governments. It includes a useful chart of food system elements and how they can be included in the general topical areas of such units. Because it has been approximately a decade since these ideas surfaced at APA state and national conferences, it is about time they were included in such a guide on designing local communities, and food system advocates owe a debt to the authors for this.
The eight chapters of the second section of the book provide an overview of the core elements of Agricultural Urbanism, including production, sales and education, the celebration of food, and food security. Although the authors use many examples of people and places that are attempting these efforts, the presentation of these ideas in this section is oftentimes cursory. Thus, the book is more successful in the conceptual realm, as their real examples are so brief that they serve little use except to suggest additional research. The authors have a particularly romantic notion (which, admittedly, I share) of how food intertwines with society, but it is unclear if this section would resonate with those outside the good food choir. The food security chapter is particularly guilty of brevity and lack of detail, but even more so for a Pollyanna-ish approach to a wide set of politically and economically charged problems inherent in the current global capitalist food system. Stylistically, by this point in the book the staccato bullet points that displace more fully developed text have become tiresome.
The third section covers planning and design concepts, integrated systems thinking, scalar considerations of designing agricultural systems for people in and near cities, and a host of ideas about what this might mean to spatial planning. Building on the first two sections of the book, here most readers would expect to see the big ideas of agricultural urbanism described and displayed, and they are. The five chapters in this section are written by several authors, and succeed to varying degrees. One of the problems is that the chapters are not as tightly connected with the rest of the text—or with each other—so there is some degree of repetition, a problem that grows as the book progresses.
For those not familiar with systems thinking or the presentation of closed resource loops in, for example, The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City (Farallones Institute 1982), the chapter on integrated systems and infrastructure is a good primer. The next chapter on human-scaled Agricultural Urbanism draws from the theory of transect design and blends elements of agricultural production into the wild-to-urban transect. Rich with ideas but overly optimistic, it is insufficient in the details on agricultural economics and socioeconomic structure to support its proposals. The following chapter is on urban and open space design for agricultural urbanism, and is replete with ideas and examples (but again, cursory in their presentation). The text elements of this chapter repeat much of what preceded it, but as a standalone it delivers a bullet-point (they are unrelenting) tour-de-force of programs and design ideas for urban space. The best part about the chapter in terms of cohesive design presentation is the annotated line illustrations of what these ideas might look like in several settings: rural, suburban, urban village, inner city residential, and an urban food precinct. A nice transition is made here to a chapter that discusses food hubs. There is a growing body of literature on such multifaceted facilities, and this chapter provides a friendly overview of what they might be, though the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other sources will be more helpful for those actually interested in building or operating one.
The final substantial section, Perspectives, is the best in terms of both the development of ideas and the writing. The reader is subjected to fewer lists and is provided more nuanced descriptions that help define common challenges to the ideas in this book. For example, there is a chapter on the economic potential of urban agriculture, and another one on the relationship of agriculture and the metropolitan fringe. The latter stood out as the most academically presented with regard to argument development and style, and indeed it was written by academics. They propose a thought-provoking idea about how agriculture and development might merge at the metro edge and how society might finance such an agricultural area. Reminiscent of Henry George’s Land Value Taxation though described in terms of developer fees, a mechanism for implementation is proposed, and the authors invite the reader to the discussion (and recognize the paradigm shift required to have it). The next chapter feels like an extension of that invitation, as it discusses the opportunity presented by food and agriculture to be integrated into public discourse and civic life generally. With a more involved case study on Southlands (a 538-acre site in Delta, British Columbia, that underwent a collaborative master planning process), examples for planning and process that include agricultural considerations in an urban environment are a welcome addition and this chapter would serve nicely (as would others) as a class reading in a general planning or public participation course.
Frankly I am not much for Charters in urban design and planning, so will say little about the two-page chapter titled “Charter for Agricultural Urbanism” except that it is presented late in the game (chapter 21), and that the framing makes the ideas feel cliquey. I was disappointed by the Charter and the numerous acronyms and lists in the book. Ultimately, it is this type of narrative—a stylistic one that undermines substance—that detracts from this book.
Perhaps it is all about expectations, but the book cannot live up to its subtitle, Handbook for Building Sustainable Food & Agriculture Systems in 21st Century Cities and would better be titled something like Visions for . . . I yearned for more detail, more substance, and fewer bulleted lists. Perhaps this is an unfair desire based in the different epistemologies of design (the authors’ perspective) and planning (mine). For readers new to these ideas, this is a good book for planting the seeds of ideas about blending food, agriculture, and urban environments. However, it lacks any real political economic reflection for the urban theorist and any reasonable amount of detail for the practitioner to function as a handbook.
From a critical political economy perspective, this book walks a fine line between David Harvey’s (2009) revolutionary and counterrevolutionary practices. Revolutionary practices are fundamentally challenging to unjust social and economic structures, a crucial component to any socially meaningful attempt at food systems planning or democratization of the food system. Counterrevolutionary ideas, conversely, work against these, draining time, energy, and intellect from the larger transformational task. Unfortunately, professionals in planning, policy, and design often engage in counterrevolutionary work unwittingly. This book, as it advocates for a fundamental rethinking of how food is produced, where, and by whom, falls in the revolutionary camp at times and as such can be exciting and thought-provoking. However, with little historical context and sometimes naïve notions about how change happens in an environment driven by power, economics, and politics, it flirts with counterrevolutionary placation of the interests most impacted by the paradigm shift outlined in its pages.
An example of this appears in chapter 2, in which the authors envision a (utopian) time in which “there are no good guys or bad guys, just people working together to increase the sum of human happiness” (18) and “corporate responsibility is a cornerstone of business plans” (18) and “food is no longer a commodity even though food businesses maintain high profit margins” (19). Paradoxically, the necessary market transformation simultaneously de-commodifies and bolsters the agri-food economy (perhaps simply implying a very different use of the term agri-food). It is quite a vision, to be sure, like envisioning world peace. And maybe everyone can get along in this new food system and economy. But it does a disservice to imply that this would be easy, that the corporate and political interests enmeshed with our food system will give up or behave nicely (or even justly), or even to ignore that this has been explored extensively elsewhere (e.g., Marion Nestle’s Food Politics [2007]).
Agricultural Urbanism is still an important book, as most of the urban design and planning community is relatively new to its content. Even those who are not will find something new in this volume, something thought-provoking or inspiring, or something that provides backing for proponents of a new food movement that is grounded in the places people live.