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Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture in the United States

Future Directions for a New Ethic in City Building

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  • Open Access
  • © 2024

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Overview

  • Examines the potential and pitfalls of planning for urban agriculture in the United States
  • Contains case studies from across the United States
  • Includes illustrative examples of planning and policy tools to strengthen urban agriculture
  • This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Part of the book series: Urban Agriculture (URBA)

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Table of contents (30 chapters)

  1. Theories and Foundations: Ethics, Urban Agriculture, and Planning

  2. Practical Ethics: Urban Agriculture in US Cities

  3. Public Policy Responses to Urban Agriculture

Keywords

About this book

This open access book, building on the legacy of food systems scholar and advocate, Jerome Kaufman, examines the potential and pitfalls of planning for urban agriculture (UA) in the United States, especially in how questions of ethics and equity are addressed. The book is organized into six sections. Written by a team of scholars and practitioners, the book covers a comprehensive array of topics ranging from theory to practice of planning for equitable urban agriculture. Section 1 makes the case for re-imagining agriculture as central to urban landscapes, and unpacks why, how, and when planning should support UA, and more broadly food systems. Section 2, written by early career and seasoned scholars, provides a theoretical foundation for the book. Section 3, written by teams of scholars and community partners, examines how civic agriculture is unfolding across urban landscapes, led largely by community organizations. Section 4, written by planning practitionersand scholars, documents local government planning tied to urban agriculture, focusing especially on how they address questions of equity. Section 5 explores UA as a locus of pedagogy of equity. Section 6 places the UA movement in the US within a global context, and concludes with ideas and challenges for the future. The book concludes with a call for planning as public nurturance – an approach that can be illustrated through urban agriculture. Planning as public nurturance is a value-explicit process that centers an ethics of care, especially protecting the interests of publics that are marginalized. It builds the capacity of marginalized groups to authentically co-design and participate in planning/policy processes. Such a planning approach requires that progress toward equitable outcomes is consistently evaluated through accountability measures. And, finally, such an approach requires attention to structural and institutional inequities. Addressing these four elements is more likelyto create a condition under which urban agriculture may be used as a lever in the planning and development of more just and equitable cities. 


This is an open access book.

This is an open access book.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Urban and Regional Planning, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, USA

    Samina Raja, Alexandra Judelsohn

  • Rooted, Madison, USA

    Marcia Caton Campbell

  • College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

    Branden Born

  • University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, USA

    Alfonso Morales

About the editors

Samina Raja is a professor of food systems planning and the founder and director of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab (UB Food Lab) at the University at Buffalo. An alum of UW-Madison where she had the good fortune of training with Jerry Kaufman, Raja’s scholarship, teaching, and practice focuses on the role of people-led policy and planning on promoting food and health equity. A recent project includes Growing Food Policy from the Ground Up, a federally funded project co-produced by an interdisciplinary team of scholars and practitioners to build capacity of urban growers of color to shape and engage in local government planning ad policy in Minneapolis and Buffalo, NY. Raja also co-directs Growing Food Connections, a national initiative to use planning as a tool to communities’ local food systems.

Marcia Caton Campbell is Executive Director of Rooted, a Madison (WI) urban agriculture and food systems organization. She is coauthor of Urban Agriculture: Growing Healthy, Sustainable Communities, PAS Report No. 563 (American Planning Association, 2011), with Kimberley Hodgson and Martin Bailkey. A Past Chair of the American Planning Association’s FOOD Division, Caton Campbell was previously a faculty member in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an MCRP and a PhD in city planning from The Ohio State University.

Alex Judelsohn is a PhD student in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan. Her scholarship explores the role of local governments in the U.S. refugee resettlement program and, broadly, her interests include how the built environment impacts health, particularly for immigrant and refugee populations. Judelsohn holds a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University at Buffalo.

Branden Born, Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, studies the intersection of planning processes and social justice. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin (2003) as one of Jerry Kaufman’s last PhD students. Born’s work examines community governance, land use planning, and food systems. Branden directs the Center for Livable Communities for the Department of Urban Design and Planning, and co-directs the UW's Livable City Year program, a university-wide community partnership effort that pairs university classes with city staff to complete research and design projects in service to community needs.

Alfonso Morales (PhD Sociology Northwestern) is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He is also Chair of the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture. Originally from rural New Mexico with roots in family farming, there and in west Texas, he is a researcher, advocate, and practitioner/consultant on food systems and public markets. He has been invited to speak on these topics nationally and internationally. He cofounded farm2facts.org, used in farmers markets around the country, co-created the USDA Local Food Economics toolkit, among other scholarly and public-facing activities. 


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture in the United States

  • Book Subtitle: Future Directions for a New Ethic in City Building

  • Editors: Samina Raja, Marcia Caton Campbell, Alexandra Judelsohn, Branden Born, Alfonso Morales

  • Series Title: Urban Agriculture

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32076-7

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2024

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-32075-0Published: 20 March 2024

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-32078-1Due: 24 May 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-32076-7Published: 19 March 2024

  • Series ISSN: 2197-1730

  • Series E-ISSN: 2197-1749

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXXIII, 564

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Agriculture, Geography, general, Food Science, Human Rights, Social Policy, Politics of the Welfare State

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