Smart Growth or Smart Food?

"Locavores" hoping to promote more sustainable agriculture through urban gardening are facing a new hurdle: infill housing projects.

1 minute read

August 12, 2008, 11:00 AM PDT

By Michael Dudley


"Slow Food...a movement once associated with European elites will be convening in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend, bringing an advertised 50,000 devotees along to celebrate the virtues of thinking globally but eating locally.

But there's a catch, a big one. The commendable push to get you to eat food grown near home, especially in your city backyard, is likely to run smack up against another equally Greenish cause, urban infill.

The problem is that it's all too easy for all of us to march in different directions, all flying our personal green flags. Plausible-sounding plans to fill up every remaining open space in our already developed urban areas could mean that there will be nowhere left to put our victory gardens.

If the 'locavore' idea is to get any major traction, its proponents will have to come to terms with the prospect that city back yards, front yards and vacant lots are becoming endangered species, just like family farms."

Thursday, August 7, 2008 in The Berkeley Daily Planet

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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