A Publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies A Journal of Place Volume vı | Number ıı | Spring 2011 Essays: Cities Going Green, The Urban Landscape as Food 3 Timothy Beatley: Inventing the New Urban Farm: Field Notes From Detroit Ben Helphand and Laura Lawson: The Culture of Food and Chicago’s Community Gardens Jane Garmey: Rooftop Revolution: Culinary Gardening Aloft in New York City Jane Roy Brown: They Built a Fahm in Hahvud Yahd: A Tiny Garden Strives for Global Impact Katherine Harmon: Lessons in the Dirt: School Gardens Grow in Brooklyn Place Keeper 16 Paula Deitz: Twin Maples, Litchfield County, Connecticut Book Reviews 18 Elihu Rubin: Delirious New Orleans: Manifesto for an Extraordinary American City By Stephen Verderber Alice Truax: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer By Novella Carpenter Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: Parks, Plants, and People By Lynden B. Miller Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor Corn was grown in unprece- Berkeley, California. More produce sections of super- phy is based on “the princi- dented quantities to provide than a restaurant, it became markets a two-tiered offering ple that access to sustainable, oil, sweeteners, and feed for the prototype of the new of fruit and vegetables has fresh, and seasonal food is a the cattle that would enter American cuisine. Other become common. In places right, not a privilege.” The y the end of the way system stitched together the human food chain as restaurants in other cities like Whole Foods – the Edible Schoolyard (ESY) pro- nineteenth century it hinterland and metropolis, hamburgers sold by fast-food followed suit, and their ecosavvy fresh food empori- gram sponsored by her Chez became impossible making long-distance truck- franchises. Profitable junk menus, like that of Chez um that has fanned out from Panisse Foundation originat- to “keep ‘em down ing to and from multiple foods filled entire supermar- Panisse, began to detail the its home base in Austin, ed at the Martin Luther King on the farm”; people delivery points possible. ket aisles. provenance of baby lettuces, Texas, to many other parts of Middle School in Berkeley Bbegan moving to cities where So what is there not to The seeds of reaction to goat cheese, lamb, figs, and the country – there are “con- and now has affiliated pro- factory jobs and bright lights celebrate about much bigger industrial agriculture were so on. Waters was not only ventionally grown” and “cer- grams in New Orleans, Los beckoned. A hundred years harvests and the liberation planted in 1962 by Rachel hailed as the pioneer of a tified organic” labels on Angeles, San Francisco, later, with four out of every of the 20 percent of the pop- Carson with the publication simpler native gastronomy everything from avocados to Greensboro, and Brooklyn. five Americans living in met- ulation who remained on of Silent Spring. In the book, but also as the originator zucchini. Aimed at combating the ropolitan areas, the country the farm from a legacy of Carson called attention to of what some now refer to as But just because it was junk-food craze, it integrates was no longer an agrarian drudgery? Isn’t abundance a the dangers lurking in the the locavore ideal, whose grown without chemical learning in the school gar- nation – a fact of momen- byword for the American way arsenal of chemical weapons proponents maintain that assistance doesn’t mean that den with learning inside the tous social consequence with of life? And shouldn’t we that had been developed to locally grown meat, dairy an organic blueberry isn’t as school. As part of the ESY a corresponding effect on take into consideration the control pests and improve products, vegetables, and much a product of the curriculum, students cook the way in which people fact that the export of grain yields. The seeds she sowed fruits taste better and are industrial agricultural sys- their garden produce in the were fed. and other surplus crops is began to sprout in 1970 with healthier for you than those tem as a conventional one, kitchen classroom. Such The industrial revolution good for the balance of the first Earth Day and the you buy in the supermarket. for organic and local are not things as scaling down wasn’t just a matter of the trade? burgeoning of the environ- Not surprisingly, in cities necessarily the same thing. recipes are presented as growth of manufacturing in Throughout the twentieth mental movement. Docu- the philosophy of locally With sufficient consumer math problems. However, and around cities. Machin- century the cornucopia pro- mentation of the poisonous grown food hit the street – demand and willingness to although part of its mission ery irrevocably changed the duced by industrial agricul- effect of agricultural chemi- literally – with the prolifera- pay higher prices for organic is directed toward school- character of farming: the ture was poured out on the cals on animals and birds, as tion of farmers’ markets in produce, commercial corpo- lunch reform, cafeteria horse-drawn plow became table in millions of American well as their danger to numerous communities rations now have a profitable lunches are still prepared in the tractor, the wagon homes. But this cornucopia humans when consumed in across the country. Bringing market capable of absorbing the same way as before. The became the truck, the pitch- was not made up simply of food and drinking water, the farm stand to the city is a the costs of long-distance hope is, however, that fork became the harvester. fresh food. Freezers were helped activists build the good two-way deal: it pro- transportation. A case in schoolchildren whose palates The appearance of the land- another of industry’s gifts to case for environmental con- vides truck farmers within a point: Earthbound Farms in have been exposed to fresh scape as well as the lives the kitchen, and even before trols. But none of this two-hour driving radius of Carmel, California, presents flavors will expand their of farmers altered more dra- mothers went out into the at first had much effect on a city with a consumer base a local-farm-stand face on dietary repertoire and eat matically over a couple workplace, they served changing the easygoing and urban dwellers with a its website, but the triple- healthier food outside school of generations than in all the frozen foods for dinner. dietary habits of the majority means of bonding with their washed, field-fresh container and at home. preceding millennia that Before long, entire frozen of the American public. rural neighbors (not to men- of baby arugula in my New Hidden in the implicit human beings had been meals could be eaten in But then in 1971, not long tion their immediate urban York refrigerator has been question of why school- growing crops. Dams made front of the television. after Julia Child had awak- neighbors) on market days. shipped cross-country, rais- grown food is not served in possible not only hydroelec- Moreover, after large-scale ened the taste buds of Propelled by an environ- ing in my mind the question the school cafeteria is a tricity but also the irrigation agriculture was put in the Americans to the joys of mental movement calling for of how to measure the car- conundrum. It is one of of arid lands. Machine farm- service of the fast-food French cooking, Alice Waters, pesticide-free produce, the bon footprint of the tasty scale. Feeding the American ing meant much larger industry, you no longer even now widely considered the word “organic” entered the salad that is coming to me population of over 310 mil- fields. The interstate high- had to eat at home. Catering mother of the fresh-food food vocabulary. Chemical- on a refrigerated truck tra- lion is dependent on large- to the specifications of movement, opened her free food gained popularity versing a continent. scale agriculture as well as McDonald’s, many potato restaurant Chez Panisse in among a broader spectrum This brings us back to food imports from other growers concentrated solely of food shoppers than those Alice Waters, whose philoso- countries. The conundrum On the Cover: on the most suitable variety who already subscribed to is one of economics, too. Artists’ Garden, South Chicago. for making french fries. farmers’ market ethic. In the Consumers vote with their 2 dollars and their food dens is beginning to dissolve Cities Going Green, The Urban Landscape as Food stamps. The pricing of local- the dichotomy between rural ly grown food has to equate and urban scenery. with the financial sustain- In this issue of Site/Lines ability of small farms, and Jane Roy Brown takes us to Inventing the New Urban Farm: Field Notes From Detroit herein lies the rub. As in the Harvard Yard to see how ew American cities have fallen as far or as hard as case of all handcrafted student gardeners are grow- Detroit. Once the fourth largest city in the country, an objects, individually planted, ing vegetables in the heart iconic example of American ingenuity and produc- handpicked foods cannot of Cambridge; Katherine tivity, over the last half century it became instead an underprice those of industri- Harmon visits school gar- emblem of cronyism, corruption, and despair. The pop- al mass production. dens in Brooklyn; Jane Fulation, once close to two million, now hovers at around half Thus Michelle Obama’s Garmey elevates us to the that. Unemployment is at 14 percent. A Time article in 2009 White House organic veg- rooftops of Manhattan to cited the median home sale price at less than $6,000 – and no etable garden may point the discover hives for honey bees one was buying.