UK: Unveiling the edible city of the future

Urban food sustainability could be ensured by identifying local city neighbourhoods as productive spaces to be used for growing food

By Dr Mikey Tomkins
Sussex Bylines
23-03-2024

Excerpt:

The image shows central Brighton as a city full of food gardens. This is not an attempt at urban self-sufficiency but more a demand for cities to take responsibility for the food they can produce and then import the rest.

Using the map, imagine walking from Churchill Square shopping centre, having visited the large roof farm, and continuing down North Street, passing the indoor farms and roof gardens on the old NCP car park. As you cut through Church Street, these now pedestrianised side streets are fragrant walk-through productive gardens, all connected to form a continuous green corridor (without cars).

From the map, we can picture how we might celebrate the urban honey harvest in August or the almost daily harvests of salad and fish from hydroponic and aquaponic farms. There are also urban eggs, and we remember the year that wheat was grown in front of the Brighton Pavilion, along Victoria Gardens to St Peter’s Church.

Such practices will bring new design concepts and planning regulations as we wake up to the economic, social, and environmental benefits of zero-mile food. What urban food mapping and growing also offer is a way out of the complexity of our food system, by bringing home the relationship between landscape, everyday food production, and neighbourly people.

Emily Cockayne, in her book, ‘Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours’, puts this nicely, reminding us that “the word ‘neighbour’ originally meant ‘the man who tills the next piece of ground to mine’”.

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