Complexity in urban agriculture: the role of landscape typologies in promoting urban agriculture’s growth

Abstract

This research identifies the potential shortcomings of local initiatives to encourage urban agriculture projects by comparing citywide efforts with existing community projects. It investigates how more effectual policy might be developed to accommodate a fuller range of urban agriculture projects, and how urban agriculture stakeholders might use clearer promotion processes to meet stated goals. It hypothesizes the important role of clear urban agriculture definitions, typologies, and links to associated benefits towards meeting the stated goals of policy-makers. Utilizing San Francisco in California as a case study, this paper investigates recent efforts at citywide urban agriculture promotion.

Keywords:

• urban agriculture
• city land audit
• environmental design
• landscape typology
• San Francisco
• landscape architecture

Funding

This research was conducted in part with the support of the Hellman Fellowship Fund.