Urban crops and livestock: The experiences, challenges, and opportunities of planning for urban agriculture in two Canadian provinces

The Intersection of Planning, Urban Agriculture, and Food Justice: A Review of the Literature

“…Many scholars loosely defi ne urban agriculture as the cultivation of food within metropolitan cores as opposed to that in more peri-urban and rural areas (Golden, 2013 ;Lovell, 2010 ;Santo et al, 2016 ). Urban agriculture includes a range of activities, such as growing vegetables, fruit, herbs, and grains and raising fi sh (aquaculture), bees, and animals (e.g., chickens, goats, pigs, rabbits).…”

“…Some regulations require tall and expensive fences and lighting around both private and public urban gardens. There has been recent media attention on city governments across American fi ning urban gardeners for code-prohibited activities such as growing food in front yards and selling produce in front of their house (Gordon, 2013 ;Keeling, 2011 ). Planners in some cases ignored urban agriculture altogether and included no language in plans or codes about the practice (Pothukuchi & Kaufman, 2000 ).…”

Mapping the growing capacity of climate smart food in urban environments

“…UA can be described as hyperlocal, which refers to the production and consumption of food within an urban boundary; shifting the focus from food miles to food feet. The global South has dominated research outlining effective UA policies and practices, with information in the Canadian context especially limited (Huang & Drescher, 2015). Taylor and Lovell (2014) have outlined the future research directions of North American UA, with an explicit focus on the understudied home-food gardens because of their durability and the ease of conversion from lawn to garden.…”

“…UA is mainly practiced through the conversion of both public and private land into plots of intensive cultivation of vegetable and fruit crops (Eigenbrod & Grude, 2015;Huang & Drescher, 2015). Multiple studies have explored the range of initiatives and the effectiveness of UA in order to address rapid urbanization and the concomitant need to feed growth in cities across the globe (Galhena, Freed, & Maredia, 2013).…”

“…Opportunities exist for municipalities to incorporate UA into improved policies that enhance a local food system (Huang & Drescher, 2015). These policies can be built on the premise that plentiful food that is geographically appropriate can be grown in limited space (Mok et al, 2014).…”