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Toward a Sustainable Food System for the City Beautiful Lucas Fernando Lopes DCP 4290 — Capstone Project in Sustainability and the Built Environment College of Design, Construction and Planning Spring 2016 LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !1 Table of Contents 3 Abstract 4 Introduction 5 Connecting Sustainable Food Systems with a Sustainable Built Environment 6 Research Methodology and Objective 8 Project Background and Beginnings 9 What is Urban Agriculture? 14 Orlando: The City Beautiful 18 New York City 26 Seattle 32 Los Angeles 35 Moving Forward 40 Acknowledgments 41 Citations ***UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE, ALL SITE IMAGES WERE TAKEN BY LUCAS F. LOPES*** LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !2 Abstract Image Source: The New York Times The purpose of this study was to provide the City of Orlando with the necessary background and recommendations to foster a local and sustainable food scene through specific government actions, policies and programs. Through a case study methodology, the food systems and recent advances in the cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City were analyzed to provide information that Orlando could utilize to improve its food system. The study also served to connect local food systems to the larger vision of sustainability in our built environment by showing how certain practices build community, foster education and enhance our urban environments. LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !3 Introduction The 1987 Brundtland Commission’s Report, Our Common Future has come to influence many aspects of sustainability research. The study and program of Sustainability and the Built Environment here at the University of Florida has itself been formed upon the foundational words from that report. It states that sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their needs. Of particular importance to my research and my starting point is Chapter Five: Food Security: Sustaining the Potential. It provides detailed remarks on the state of the world’s food system in the late 1980’s. Many statements still ring true nearly thirty years after the report has been published; “There are places where too little is grown; there are places where large numbers cannot afford to buy food. And there are broad areas of the Earth, in both industrial and developing nations, where increases in food production are undermining the base for future production. The agricultural resources and the technology needed to feed growing populations are available. Much has been achieved over the past few decades. Agriculture does not lack resources; it lacks policies to ensure that the food is produced where it is needed… (Our Common Future 1987).” LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !4 Connecting Sustainable Food Systems with a Sustainable Built Environment The United Nations Environmental Programme states that the Principles of Sustainable Development are rooted on a few central themes, some of these are the conservation of resources such as water and land, the use of environmentally sound materials, minimizing energy consumption and reducing overall waste. In planning and revitalizing our urban environments there is great potential to introduce aspects of sustainable food systems through design. Between private and publicly owned lands throughout our cities there are millions of acres of arable, unused or underutilized parcels that could be suitable for urban agricultural applications like community gardens or urban farms. In New York City alone, there are about 2,700 acres of roof tops that could be suitable for urban agriculture (Five Borough Farm 2015). Municipal governments, planning agencies, and city regulations have remained relatively silent on urban agriculture applications until recently (Lovell 2010). It is only within the past few decades that we have seen efforts from the public sector that begin to investigate and address such issues and topics. LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !5 Research Methodology and Objective My research project utilized a comparative case study methodology in which I examined three major U.S. cities to answer the following question: How can the City of Orlando act to promote a local, sustainable, equitable, and vibrant food system? LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !6 Advancements in the arena of sustainable food can come from all institutions and sectors of society. An example of this could be a large super market chain deciding to source its produce from local farms for each of its locations. Another example may be a grassroots citizen led effort to compost individual household food waste. For my research I analyzed what specific policies, programs and efforts municipal governments have made to examine and improve their food systems. Food systems are broad and overarching, therefore, not all areas will be touched upon or comprehensively examined. LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !7 Project Background and Beginnings The topic of my Capstone Project in Sustainability and the Built Environment came about through my work as a city planning intern with the City of Orlando’s Economic Development Department during the Summer of 2015. I, alongside another intern, conducted a Food Policy Audit. This is a study tool that uses one- hundred yes or no questions to create a baseline analysis of the gaps and assets in a particular food system. A food system is defined as a complex set of activities and relationships related to every aspect of the food cycle. The Food Policy Audit was first developed by the University of Virginia as a planning research project for the Franklin County Ohio Food Policy Council. The questions are identified as best practices. While the project was considered a success, many questions could not be answered and simply did not apply due to Orlando’s unique development patterns and history of growth. I decided to use the City of Orlando as the subject of my capstone proposal because it is the city I have called home for the past fifteen years. Also, there is a young but quickly growing local food movement with great potential to positively impact the way our community eats and connects with its food. I analyzed major events, themes, and methods within the sustainable food movements of three different American cities — Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York City — and applied this knowledge in the form of potential recommendations for the City of Orlando to foster a local food scene. LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !8 What is Urban Agriculture? The state of our ecosystems, lands and the seemingly never ending worldwide environmental degradation makes it quite clear that there are major issues with the way we feed our world. The connections weaving the patches of agricultural lands and polluted lands abound. Intensive industrial agriculture has been able to feed us for decades which is an impressive undertaking, but it is not without its risks and detriments. The United Nations World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision project that our global population should reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050. To feed a rapidly growing population we should utilize industrial agriculture but we must also continue build and support localized and regional food systems. The Los Angeles Food Policy Council summarizes research into industrial food systems by stating that “conventional industrial farming methods, along with the practice of transporting food products over long distances, have been shown to cause severe ecological harm to the environment and climate, depleting non- renewable resources (e.g., soil, energy, biological diversity) and widening social inequities.” The end goal of a local food system is to abolish food deserts, to feed every person, from every age group, to every race, to every social class; but not just to feed them, to empower them with resources and access to a holistic diet, one that is tied to their nearest terra firma. LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !9 Urban agriculture — which includes everything from community gardens to fruit trees, to small scale farming within or on the edges of a city or town — is a way in which we can reduce pollution, decrease natural resource imports, and overall, lessen our footprint on the Earth (Broadway 2009). In the Worldwatch Institute Blog, Emma Hansen points out that nearly eighty percent of the worlds population will be living in an urbanized setting by 2050 (2015). In May 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture recognized the Ohio City Farm as a national model for urban agriculture. In the Crain’s Cleveland Business, Kathy Ames Carr mentions how the Ohio City farm is not only the largest urban farm in the country but also an example of an urban agricultural application that has transformed underused land, improved community nutrition and food access all the while fostering local production and distribution (2015). This is not the only example of successful urban agriculture initiatives; communities throughout the Pacific Northwest, California, and the Northeast are embracing and promoting thriving community gardens, urban farms, and local farmers markets among other excellent practices. Bottom up approaches or grassroots efforts have been the basis for most urban agricultural initiatives throughout the country but as Lovell (2010) mentions, the benefits are now seen and understood; what is needed is a top down push through planning policies that improve coordination and increase benefits of urban agricultural efforts. LUCAS FERNANDO LOPES APRIL 2016 !10 Most of the barriers to urban agriculture revolve around the fact that city zoning, land use codes, and growth management plans have in the past neglected to integrate food system thinking and policies (Lovell 2010). In The Guardian, William McDonough states how as industrial agriculture negatively impacted our land throughout the years, our leaders forgot that the city and its residents were indeed a part of nature (2014). A lack of expertise and knowledge about food systems within city planning departments was once the main obstacle to government support for local food systems.