Today San Francisco mayor, Gavin Newsom announced an executive directive to change the way San Francisco thinks about food. One of the more important pieces of this move is the mandate to have all city departments conduct an audit of all unused and underutilized land in the city. They have 6 months to evaluate potential land for new urban farming efforts. This includes “empty lots, rooftops, windowsills and median strips” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Portland, ahead of it’s time…as usual, completed an audit of urban land a number of years ago in a study performed by a group of Portland State University students. The study was called “The Diggable City” and can be found on the website of Portland’s Office of Planning and Sustainability. While many sites were identified as potential urban agriculture sites, nearly none of them were available for a variety of reasons…future development plans, parks department space was seen as to be used for “recreation” only and a host of other reasons.
One effort that has moved forward in the local government in Portland is the County DIGS project to:
“promote opportunities for urban agriculture throughout Multnomah County by providing unused or surplus County property to individuals or organizations for use in growing food or agriculture products”.
Full disclosure…POP Farmer Dan Bravin is currently managing one of the County DIGS projects outlined in the previous blog entry.
The Multnomah County board of commissioners is making urban farming a reality in the Portland area with real tangible projects like County CROPS and County DIGS. Hopefully San Francisco will be able to act on their audit of city land. Urban farming is a hot topic right now. If it doesn’t happen now, it is not going to happen.
