Metro Vancouver: Designing for Urban Food Production

Abstract

This article focuses on the role landscape architects and planners can take in the creation of urban food production landscapes. It draws upon a series of local projects and visions to demonstrate how this can be accomplished. Within the context of Metro Vancouver, there are significant constraints to expansion due to geographical limitations, a steadily growing population, and large low-density residential areas. Successful food production strategies for the future can be achieved by integrating urban agriculture into a wider city planning context, and transcending the creation of community gardens. The challenge is to provide custom solutions for specific neighborhoods, at all scales, from the urban core to the suburbs, and beyond. The design of food production sites within the urban core and, particularly, the edge condition between residential development, and farmland, will challenge landscape architects to create real places of interaction between man and land.