UN Division for Sustainable Development

Case Study Detail Record

Organization type:	Government

Name of Ministry/Agency:	International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

Country:	Canada

Name of Focal Point:	Bruce Currie-Alder

Initiative Title:	Making the Edible Landscape

Internet links:	http://www.idrc.ca/in_focus_cities/

Scope:	Global

Status:	Ongoing

Timeframe:	Start: July 2006 End: July 2008

Lead Institution:	McGill University and Urban Management Program

Stakeholders/Partners:	Promotion of Sustainable Development, Peru Municipal Development Programme for Eastern and Southern Africa Institut africain de gestion urbaine University of Beijing Harvard Centre for Urban Development Studies HABITAT Sustainable Cities Programme

Relevent issues:	- Food security and sustainable agriculture - Community-based and indigenous approaches to food production - Water management in agriculture - Capacity building - Research development - Research on local and resource system, site-specific, low-cost technologies and extension services - Consultative land planning and development - Women's access to land and land decision-making - Strategic urban and peri-urban planning for poverty reduction - Community-based programmes for efficient land use - Land and water use rights and legal security of tenure - Land tenure arrangements - Poverty reduction strategies and policies - Empowering the poor, including women and indigenous people - Institutional building/capacity-building - Poverty eradication - Sustainable development in a globalizing world - Means of implementation

Objectives/Challenges:

One objective was to increase the technical capacity and social awareness of design professionals and students. Site plans were validated through implementation with municipal partners. The project also emphasized land tenure regimes, as these are intimately related to the planning and site design process. Three ideas that motivate this proposal are to:

a) Better understand participation, planning and design processes in marginal urban areas in different regions of the world;

b) Facilitate the transfer of knowledge from one city team to another; and

c) Facilitate global partnerships in implementation of projects and related training activities. This is achieved through an inter-disciplinary approach, fostering North-South linkages and the sharing of inter-regional experiences.

The project was designed to present results in a global forum – i.e. at the World Urban Forum held in Vancouver in 2006.

Objectives at the City Level

Kampala City Council (KCC) was eager to transform an uninhabited parcel of land on the city’s northern edge where people had been farming and making bricks into a settlement providing housing and space for low-income people to practice urban agriculture.

The focus in Rosario, Argentina was on designs for productive use of existing open spaces, including parks, squares and verges along roads and highways. Rosario had previously participated in an IDRC project to optimize vacant land use for urban agriculture.

The city of Colombo posed quite a design challenge for urban agriculture because there seems to be very little space. In Colombo, the project worked with the city’s department of traditional medicine to develop designs for vertical growing and other ways of putting horticulture in small spaces.

Challenges

Although Kampala`s municipal government has recently passed ordinances that regulated agriculture in Kampala, local residents face many challenges as urban farmers. According to the coordinator of the project in Kampala, people run the risk of having their crops slashed by KCC enforcement officers if they farm in prohibited areas, such as beneath power lines or along road verges. Although urban agriculture has played a major role in the history of Kampala, and although it is practised by almost everyone (including its detractors), urban agriculture is still perceived as a non-economical use of urban land, and as an unsightly nuisance.

Lessons Learned:

It is very beneficial to have a clear, concise, and measurable project results framework.

South-South communication for knowledge sharing is useful and much valued by southern participants, but requires the coordinating team to take on responsibility for facilitation, primarily due to language differences and technical communication challenges.

A “light touch” and decentralized approach to project management can be beneficial in a multi-city project.

Slum upgrading for the poor is not enough if it focuses only on housing or sanitation systems. A component must be added that gives possibilities for income generation and for food security. Urban agriculture can be this component.

It is advantageous to select project locations where elected officials are already active, even taking leadership roles, in addressing the theme(s) the innovative project is to address (in this case, urban agriculture) – Municipal commitment to UA was very important: Kampala’s participation was owed at least in part to the municipal government’s commitment to urban agriculture.

Especially in cities where there are few jobs available, UA is an important means of cushioning against economic instability and providing an additional source of income, and is not only an activity of the poor.

The participants in, and beneficiaries of, projects like this gain experience that builds their confidence in their dealings with municipal authorities. This means they are better able to advocate for themselves and their communities in future.

The project showed that there is potential to grow herbs, medicines and nutritious food in very crowded areas, essentially in slums with no obvious growing space.

Policy Options:

Having ordinances passed to integrate and regulate urban agriculture (through permits, licences, and guidelines) is very important – otherwise UA can be seen as illegal or informal and be difficult to support and to build long-term projects around.

One of the main obstacles to practicing this form of income generation is lack of access to land, and land use rights. Establishing these for urban growers is essential, and local governments can take an active role by developing guidelines, use agreements, etc.

Urban agriculture should not be seen just as a social program - it can be integrated into planning and housing development. The Edible Landscape Project brought the public housing department in, and by the end of the project the department had institutionalized it. Urban agriculture is now a component of urban upgrading and construction of new settlements.

In Kampala before the project, there had never been an attempt to integrate urban agriculture into official planning and design. Urban planning in Kampala tends to focus on infrastructure development and general land-use zoning. But the Edible Landscape Project has made urban planning staff and the Kampala City Council (KCC) administration begin to realize the possibility of integrating agricultural land uses in a planned neighbourhood.

Summary:

Financed by IDRC and led by McGill’s Minimum Cost Housing Group (MCHG) and the Urban Management Program of UN Habitat, the Making the Edible Landscape Project is an initiative for participatory planning, design, and development of neighbourhoods that incorporate urban agriculture.

The project takes place in three different cities – Colombo, Sri Lanka; Kampala, Uganda; and Rosario, Argentina. It brings together Canadian planning and architecture students and professors with local community members, to design neighbourhoods that will allow easy access to places to grow food for consumption and for sale.

The project has contributed to an improved quality of life for local participants in the three cities. Among the positive impacts are increased self-esteem of the communities, political empowerment and space for participation in policy, design and project planning.

Making the Edible Landscape was a 2.5 year project designed to investigate the idea that urban agriculture processes could be used as a generator for the development and upgrading of informal urban settlements and neighbourhoods, in different ecosystems and regions of the world: Kampala, Uganda; Rosario, Argentina; and Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The project involved architects and urban planners in collaborative, consultative and participatory planning, design, and construction processes in each city. It involved training, site activities and knowledge transfer between city teams. It was designed to promote urban design for UA, and to support local governments and social movements in creating neighbourhoods that would be food secure, productive and green. This approach was designed to be an alternative, but complementary, approach to the UN-HABITAT, World Bank, FAO, and other existing initiatives on food security, poverty reduction, and slum upgrading.

Through McGill University, studios and training activities prepared students to develop site plans and explore the interface between city planning and urban agriculture. Students from local universities in the cities were also involved.

For more information also see: (http://idris.idrc.ca/) a searchable project database going back to 1971, and (http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca ) IDRC Digital Library with access to the reports and outputs from IDRC-funded research.

IDRC is a Crown corporation created by Parliament in 1970 to help developing countries use science and technology to find practical, long-term solutions to the social, economic and environmental problems they face. Support is directed toward building an indigenous research capacity to sustain policies and technologies that developing countries need to build healthier, more equitable and more prosperous societies.