Pioneers of urban farming

ヘイゼン・ピングリー / Hazen S. Pingree→

1840–1901 · United States

Mayor of Detroit; originator of the 'potato patches'

The Detroit mayor who, in the 1893 depression, opened vacant city land to jobless families to farm — an early instance of government-led urban agriculture.

エベネザー・ハワード / Ebenezer Howard→

1850–1928 · United Kingdom

Founder of the Garden City movement

Conceived the 'Garden City' — planned towns combining the best of city and country, ringed by farmland — shaping twentieth-century planning.

レーベレヒト・ミッゲ / Leberecht Migge→

1881–1935 · Germany

German landscape architect and regional planner; theorist of self-sufficiency

Argued that 'everyone should be self-sufficient' and designed productive gardens into housing estates — a thinker who prefigured urban agriculture.

アリス・ウォータース / Alice Waters→

b. 1944 · United States

Chef; founder of the Edible Schoolyard; pioneer of edible education

A chef who founded the 'Edible Schoolyard,' turning school grounds into gardens where children grow, cook and learn — and a mother of the farm-to-table movement.

進士五十八 / Isoya Shinji→

b. 1944 · Japan

Landscape scholar; advocate of 'environments with farming'; former president of Tokyo University of Agriculture

A landscape scholar who linked landscape architecture with farming and argued for restoring agricultural environments in cities; past president of Japan's landscape and city-planning societies.

リズ・クリスティ / Liz Christy→

1945–1985 · United States

Founder of the Green Guerillas; mother of the community-garden movement

An artist-activist who in 1973 turned a derelict New York lot into a citizen garden, sparking the community-garden movement across the US.

ウィル・アレン / Will Allen→

b. 1949 · United States

Founder of Growing Power; leader in urban agriculture and food justice

A former pro basketball player turned urban farmer who built an intensive city farm in a Milwaukee 'food desert' and won a 2008 MacArthur fellowship.

パム・ウォーハースト / Pam Warhurst→

b. 1950 · United Kingdom

Co-founder of Incredible Edible

In 2008 she began turning public space in Todmorden into gardens anyone could harvest, growing the movement to 1,000+ groups worldwide.

ロン・フィンリー / Ron Finley→

Contemporary · United States

The 'Gangsta Gardener'; urban-farming and food-justice activist

Planted a garden in a Los Angeles parkway, fought the city, and reclaimed farming in a South Central 'food desert.' Became known worldwide via a 2013 TED talk.

加藤義松 / Yoshimatsu Kato→

Contemporary · Japan

Originator of the 'experience farm' (Nerima model); chair of the national experience-farm association

A Tokyo urban farmer who in 1996 opened Japan's first 'experience farm' in Nerima, spreading the 'Nerima model' in which the farmer teaches citizens to grow.

After planning work around the world, he led the landmark 1996 UNDP report 'Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities,' lifting urban farming onto the international policy agenda.

Since turning a derelict Bronx lot into the Garden of Happiness in 1988, she has fought for community gardens and food justice for over three decades — and replaced 'food desert' with the sharper term 'food apartheid.'

The agronomist who, after Argentina's 2001 collapse, built Rosario's Urban Agriculture Program (PAU), turning idle land into gardens for low-income families — winner of the 2020–21 WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities.