I’ve just written a confronting article for Permaculture Research Institute which looks into why we don’t have food growing in public spaces, the problem of urban areas becoming ‘food deserts’ and the role urban agriculture can play to address the problem of food security. The truth might not be pleasant, but needs to be told, see the whole article here – Cities – Food Free Zones? The Creation of the Urban Food Desert
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Reblogged this on My Libertarian Lifestyle and commented:
This is an excellent article! However, rather than placing our hope in government to solve this problem for us, I think private citizens can make a significant impact in our own communities and transform them from urban food deserts to beautiful spaces abundant with urban food security.
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Thanks, totally agreed, we definitely need to create the changes required, it’s our community and our space, it should serve our needs!
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I love the scope and writing and message in this piece. However, more and more, I am adamant that the responsibility is not with local governments, but with citizens. That said, I believe the role of local governments is to adapt coding and allow for things like this. Thanks.
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Thanks for your comment. Yes, people do need to lobby their local government representatives to make sure they serve their needs, that’s their job after all!
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It’s seriously a whole of society culture that needs to be changed. When I worked with public housing tenants, I was too often approached by their neighbours asking me to tell the tenants to remove the ‘ugly’ vegetable gardens in the front yard because it lowered the standard of the neighbourhood. Being a contrarian, I complimented the tenants on their food gardens and encouraged them to plant more 😉
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I had a similar experience, where I was helping a community group select sites for a public space community garden in an affluent area.
One of the sites we assessed was rejected by local government because the neighbours complained that a community garden would lower the value of their properties!
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