Municipal Planning Response to Urban Agriculture: Equity is Not Quite on the Table

Abstract

AbstractPublic policy is the decision to act, or not to act, by a government entity in response to a societal issue. Nearly 40,000 local, regional, and metropolitan governments across the United States routinely develop and implement policies in a variety of domains, ranging from ensuring public safety to the provision of physical infrastructure. Since the early 2000s, community advocates and scholars, in part urged by Jerome Kaufman and colleagues, called on local governments to develop, support, and/or implement policies that strengthen, rather than hinder, urban agriculture and food systems. This chapter, an overview of a section on municipal policy for a book that honors Jerome Kaufman’s legacy, describes the extent to which local and regional governments engage in urban agriculture policy using an equity-centered, ethically grounded approach. The chapter summarizes a collection of perspectives on municipal policy co-authored by scholars and policy practitioners from around the United States. Since Jerry’s call to action for planners, urban agriculture is increasingly recognized as a space for local government engagement. That said, the authors conclude that municipal governments continue to struggle to center questions of equity and ethics in their policymaking even as they claim to have a progressive approach toward urban agriculture.