Published Date
Author
Category
Cities will not feed themselves, and the serious case for urban agriculture has never rested on the idea that they might. The yield per square metre is real but modest. What is large is everything that grows alongside it.
What a city plot actually produces
- Fresh produce with essentially no transport or refrigeration behind it
- Permeable ground, which slows storm water in exactly the places that flood
- Cooling, both from shade and from evapotranspiration in the streets that get hottest
- A reason for people who share a postcode to know each other's names
The forms that work
Allotments and community gardens remain the highest value per pound spent. Rooftop growing works where the structure was designed for the load. Vertical farming is impressive engineering with an electricity bill that confines it, for now, to high-value leaf crops.
What holds it back
Almost always land tenure rather than horticulture. A plot with a two-year lease gets annual vegetables; a plot with a twenty-year lease gets fruit trees, soil built up over seasons and infrastructure worth installing.
Cities that want the benefits mostly need to offer time, not money. It is a cheaper intervention than it looks and a slower one to show results.
