Newest Eco-Development Model: ‘Agricultural Urbanism’
Farms and gardens would be critical to a self-sustaining 2,000-home development envisioned in British Columbia.
An eight-day charrette in May, led by Andres Duany, laid out an innovative, agriculturally-oriented path that new urbanists could use in communities worried about losing farmland.
Duany and other new urbanists collaborated with Michael Ableman, an organic farmer and author, to show how a 538-acre tract near Vancouver, British Columbia, could accommodate nearly 2,000 housing units while fostering a wide range of food-producing activities.
The new approach — “agricultural urbanism” — calls for carefully fitting numerous food-related activities into a walkable community, including small farms, shared gardens, farmers’ markets, and agricultural processing.
“What’s unique about this project,” says Marina Khoury, director of town planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ), “is that we’re trying to integrate agriculture and urbanism at all levels” — from high-density housing with window boxes to somewhat less dense houses with kitchen gardens, to quarter-acre plots, 50-acre farms, and perhaps one 160-acre farm.
If the approach succeeds on the site just north of the US border, it could become an influential model, counteracting the interrelated problems of
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Posted by New Urban News on 01 Jun 2008