Community gardens, still growing in popularity, are increasingly seen as a valued use of land by municipalities and a worthwhile pursuit for residents interested in greening their neighborhoods and gaining food self-sufficiency. This is especially true in neighborhoods that have been hit hard by unemployment and economic disinvestment. Detroit is a case in point: the city's unemployed and underemployed number near 50 percent, and approximately 30 percent of lots in the city are vacant. Community gardens are filling the void in neighborhoods and providing sustenance for residents struggling to get by.

Many believe that urban farming, especially market gardens and commercial farms, has the potential to foster entrepreneurship and spark economic and community development where more conventional development models have failed and outside investments are difficult to attract. Gardening in the city brings people out into yards and boulevards, strengthening relationships among communities and creating safer neighborhoods with more eyes on the street. Added green space creates a more aesthetically pleasing streetscape, but also provides habitat for native and beneficial animals and insects-including bees, which are critical to the health of ecosystems and provide yet another opportunity for urban farming entrepreneurs as well as backyard beekeepers. And above all, in-city farming can bring greater resilience to urban populations, which depend on fossil fuel-based systems for transporting critical resources-systems that by most accounts will be ever more vulnerable in a future of uncertain climate and resource availability.

Enough space?

Research shows thatthere is far more open land in American cities than one might think. A study by the Brookings Institution in 2000 looked at 70 major U.S. cities and found that an average of 15 percent of the land area within them was vacant. (These numbers are somewhat higher in the South and lower in the Northeast.) But with land values running prohibitively high in many of those cities-even those that have been hit hard by the recession-conventional models for agricultural land tenure simply don't translate to the urban landscape. "You couldn't do it if you had to pay a mortgage, especially if you want to pay a living wage," says Ken Dunn, director and founder of Chicago's City Farm, a project of the nonprofit Resource Center Chicago that grows vegetables for sale to restaurants and at farm stands on two acres within the city (and pays a living wage to its employees).

Woolly Pockets Garden Company produces easily installable indoor/outdoor "pockets" to grow ferns or edibles on a large or small scale. Photo: Andrew Takuchi

For a video on an installation of this product, go to greensourcemag.com/video

Many urban farms are the result of individually negotiated land-use agreements between farmers and landowners, often municipalities but also frequently private entities. These agreements allow farmers and gardeners to use the space without owning land outright, but often present barriers to longevity. City Farm has been at its current Chicago location-its fourth in 25 years-for six years, and the city says it may have to move again next year. "We put down roots lightly, so to speak," Dunn says. "Instead of poles in concrete, the fences are stakes driven into the ground, all the more easily pulled up and used at the new site." This flexibility can be a benefit, but can also discourage the kind of investment that can be necessary to start an operation like City Farm. Before growing food on a site, they grade and compact it, put down a layer of impermeable clay to block out underlying contaminants, and then bring in fresh, clean compost laid down two feet deep-no small investment at 1,000 tons per acre. But not all urban farms require such an investment, and even in a relatively economically vibrant city like Chicago, where farms must compete with other development interests (but which nonetheless has 20,000 acres of vacant land), the opportunities are there.

Recent developments show that city officials and planning departments are awakening to the benefits of integrating agriculture into the urban landscape. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently ordered all city departments to conduct an audit of unused land, including vacant lots, windowsills, medians and rooftops, which could be converted into gardens. In Chicago, where Dunn has worked (sometimes with frustratingly little success) for decades to convince planners and city officials of the value of urban agriculture, City Farm will soon begin cultivating a new two-acre section on the city's south side as part of a larger quality-of-life development plan for the surrounding neighborhood-a plan much like those Dunn had been proposing for nearly 20 years. "The studies indicate there's likely no other demand for that space for the next 100 years," Dunn says. "The city seems to see now that urban agriculture is an opportunity to have something vital going on there."