Reframing Urban Agriculture: Open Land for the Public Good

Urban Farm DB summary

This essay uses historical-structural analysis to examine how the history of US municipal land-use policies and urban agriculture informed the design of California's Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones (UAIZs) and their failure to increase land access and security for community food producers. It argues that UAIZs sit at the end of a long history of lot-conversion programs used for urban crisis management, and calls for reframing urban agriculture around land equity—the right not only to occupy but to manage land in service of one's community.