Five Borough Farm will partner New York City's most successful urban farm - Brooklyn-based Added Value - with New York's largest landowner - the City itself - to create the nation's first citywide plan for urban agriculture.
Urban agriculture is enjoying a tremendous renaissance throughout the country, as people increasingly recognize the social, health, economic, and ecological benefits of creating new public spaces that can produce food. Working with leading experts in sustainable development, urban policy, and landscape architecture, the Design Trust will bring together key stakeholders to expand urban agriculture throughout New York City. Tying together issues of sustainability, public health, economic development and social justice, this initiative will help transform underutilized lots in all five boroughs into urban farms.
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Five Borough Farm will inventory existing agricultural activity in the five boroughs and assess underutilized arable land in order to identify opportunities for City agencies to support urban agriculture. Using Added Value's holistic, community-development model as a guide, the project will develop metrics that measure urban agriculture's broad range of benefits, including youth empowerment, impacts on obesity rates, employment opportunities, access to healthy food, stormwater retention, and many other indicators. Finally, the project will create a pilot project that demonstrates the vitality of urban agriculture and its importance to New York's public realm.
The anticipated timeframe for the project is 12 months, beginning March 2010. For the first phase, the Design Trust will select two fellows in the fields of metrics/evaluation and policy/sustainable development. |
