Urban Farm DB
Research catalogue
Database research record2022·United States (Portland, Oregon)

Mobilizing ‘impermaculture’: Temporary urban agriculture and the sustainability fix

Eugene McCann, Nathan McClintock, Christiana Miewald

Environment and Planning E Nature and Space

Urban Farm DB summary

This paper introduces "impermaculture," a model of urban agriculture where farmers in cities like Portland, Oregon, embrace the impermanence of their operations, viewing the potential for displacement by higher-value developments as an intended modus operandi. This approach, utilizing portable growing systems, is presented as a means of stabilizing the "sustainability fix" in neoliberal cities. The study suggests that this 'impermaculture by design' shores up and temporally rescales the sustainability fix, providing stability to urban agriculture initiatives despite their temporary nature.