I happened to get a quick tour of Braddock, Penn., this past Monday. I've never seen the post-industrial challenge facing many North American cities—Detroit, Newark, Youngstown, and closer to home in Gary—more acutely than on the main strip of Braddock, which is a stone's throw from Pittsburgh (which has reinvented and reinvested in itself in recent years by cultivating a nascent biomedical and ecoindustrial economy, combating brain drain through the work of groups like the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project, and adapting its architectural legacy to create rich, vibrant places like the new public market).
Braddock's creed is "Reinvention is the Only Option," and if you've seen it in person or in a current series of Levis commercials, you understand why. Braddock's population has dropped from around 20,000 to around 3,000 in the last few decades. It's got the street grid, infrastructure, and building stock of a decent sized-town town, but for a first-time visitor there's an inescapable feeling that it's been left behind by time, history, and society. It didn't help that I was there in the dead of winter, on a holiday, and that most folks were still recovering from the Steelers' playoff win. The streets were quiet, and the only two signs of activity were telling: a wrecking ball was methodically knocking down the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a few blocks away some cabbage and Swiss chard were quietly growing at Braddock Farms, a small commercial farm occupying lots on both sides of the main street, making use out of vacant lots produced by one of the wrecking ball's peers.
Growing Home's Wood Street Urban Farm, in the Englwood neighborhood on Chicago's south side.
A farm. Not a community garden, but an active, working farm producing crops and flowers for sale at local restaurants, shops, and public markets. A farm is an economic enterprise resulting in the sale of produce; gardening is more a pursuit, philosophy, or pastime. That's not just my opinion, it's the working rationale behind the City of Chicago's ordinance proposing changes to the city's zoning code to reflect the rise of both commercial and community gardening. The latter, neighborhood gardens for primarily recreational uses, are sprouting all over the place, providing fresh food, a social outlet, and activity for young and old. But across the country—from the relatively small-scale farming efforts in Braddock to Detroit's more sweeping aspirations, and across Chicago, from Englewood's Wood Street Urban Farm to Chicago Lights Urban Farmnear the vestiges of Cabrini-Green—urban farming for the purpose of making economic use out of vacant, underutilized land, is not just on the rise, but a real and growing part of a the new green economy.
At least in Chicago, starting an urban farm has required a lengthy, complicated, no-guarantees process of working around the existing zoning code. Urban farms were once new and different, an experiment in using dormant land to put people to work and improve access to fresh produce. But now? They're approaching normal, and with that normalcy comes a need to streamline the process for establishing commercial gardening enterprises throughout the city. The proposed ordinance would allow for urban farming "by right," precluding the need for variances and exemptions and making the process a lot more transparent for everyone involved. Because commercial gardens are businesses—employing people, selling goods, generating revenue, etc.—the proposed ordinance largely treats them as such. They must be in areas zoned for business activity. Community gardens, however, can be basically anywhere, but do face size restrictions.
The ordinance is obviously more detailed than that, but rather than address every facet of it here, I encourage you to read "Urban Agriculture Zoning in Chicago: Navigating the Rules" (and better yet, attend Advocates for Urban Agriculture's winter meeting and potluck dinner on Feb. 2). We should be making it easier to establish urban farms, and the best way to do that is through a cooperative process between practitioners, neighbors, and the City. The long and short of it is that this ordinance is a step forward for both recreational and commerical agriculture in Chicago. Does it change how and where future gardens will be built? Yes. Does it create a new framework for farming in the city? Absolutely. Does it create standards that, had they been applied years ago, would have changed how some current gardens are configured? Sure. Is it perfect? Nope. But people are pretty adaptive, and given new rules to a game, they'll figure out how to play it (e.g., the shot clock and 3-pointer didn't exactly kill basketball).
Whatever your opinion of the ordinance—and I encourage you to share yours here—the fact is that urban farming, for profit or for fun, is here to stay. Whether in Braddock or in Hyde Park, where I live,urban farming is both symbolic of rebirth and a practical way to create jobs and career tracks, improve quality and accessibility of available food, remediate soils, manage stormwater, reduce the transportation cost and carbon footprint of produce, beautify neighborhoods, reconnect people with the land... the list goes on and on. In more affluent areas community gardening can signal a shift away from strict consumption and toward productivity. Some gardens will become an integral part of the neighborhood and amenity for decades to come. For disinvested communities like Braddock, urban farming is part of reinvention. It's a transformative shift from decay to growth. Perhaps market conditions will improve, and more desirable uses will emerge. Some gardens may be temporary efforts. But those market transformations take time, whereas urban farms can, in theory, be launched relatively quickly. Chicago's proposed zoning changes seek to make that reality in practice as well.
PS - The city council zoning committee meets next Thursday, Jan. 27 at 10AM—the zoning ordinance is near the top of the agenda (which they note is "subject to change"). Here is the link specific to the urban ag ordinance. Keep in mind that this will only show the portions of the ordinance for which there have been suggested additions or edits.