Volume 43, February 2015, Pages 1–14
Highlights
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- We examined the urban agriculture (UA) situation in Canada by analysing 10 cities.
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- While UA is becoming more popular, cities vary significantly in their approach.
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- Key drivers of the UA agenda are city council support and public advocacy.
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- Though UA policies are being adopted, implementing them remains difficult.
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- One main challenge is addressing misconceptions about UA among parts of the public.
Abstract
While
many municipalities globally are currently undertaking initiatives to
support urban agriculture, policies and zoning regulations can act as
barriers, with the former usually not integrated with planning.
Extensive research has been conducted on urban agriculture policies in
the global South, but much less is known about associated practices and
policies in the global North. This is especially true for the Canadian
context and therefore the present study aims at improving our overall
understanding of the urban agriculture situation in two Canadian
provinces. Relevant policies, such as official plans or official
community plans, alternate policy documents and guidelines, zoning
by-laws, and animal-related by-laws were reviewed for 10 municipalities
in Ontario and in British Columbia, all varying in socio-economic and
climatological characteristics. Additional key informant interviews were
conducted with municipal planners, community garden coordinators, and
other municipal staff familiar with urban agriculture policies from six
of the selected municipalities.
In line with global
trends, our results suggest that urban agriculture is becoming more
widespread in the two provinces. However, even though all studied
municipalities consistently support urban agriculture, they vary
significantly in their approach, with some municipalities focusing much
more narrowly on certain types of activities than others. Overall,
community advocacy and municipal council support are the most important
drivers in the policy process. Key informants expressed a need to bridge
existing gaps between policy adoption and implementation of tools,
emphasize public education and public awareness, create inventories of
land available for urban agriculture, incorporate urban agriculture in
the development review process, and focus on the commercial potential of
the practice. Encouragingly, despite the many challenges that need to
be addressed, we found that many opportunities exist that municipalities
could consider when creating improved local urban agriculture policies
and tools to enhance the urban food system.
Keywords
- Urban agriculture;
- Urban planning;
- Municipal policy;
- Food system;
- Ontario;
- British Columbia
- Corresponding author. Tel.:
+1 613 770 8585.
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