Imagining a community of very, very local food.
Leslie Ryan, Kasi Schnell, faculty and students from NewSchool of Architecture and Design, and San Diego City Community College
Let’s start here, in North Park, an older, built-out community with a lot of asphalt. If we can grow food here, we can make something important happen, because the benefits of growing food locally are profound.
The average meal in the United States travels over 1500 miles from farm to table. What if we reduce that to 5 miles and the cost of transportation and source of fuel becomes irrelevant? The typical food garden uses about 1/2 the water than a landscape of lawn and shrubs. What if our water consumption was more in tune with the water that falls naturally, and our front yards qualified for agriculture water rates?
Public health issues such as diabetes and obesity are strongly linked to the food that we eat. What if every resident of North Park had easy and affordable access to fresh food?
Philosophers – and marketing gurus – tell us that our ability to care about distant places and people depends on feeling it in our guts, and that our capacity to care develops first in the domesticated environment, here at home. What if our everyday environment helped us see and feel the human costs of rising corn prices in Mexico, and why North Korea would suspend its nuclear program in exchange for 240,000 tons of food?
Eat Here Now is an investigation into how we can re-imagine our cities to be near food. Built-out communities like North Park have few open spaces waiting to become urban farms. But what if the capacity to grow our own food is hiding in plain sight? Because North Park does have extraordinarily wide streets, miles of public right-of-way along our sidewalks, football fields-worth of flat roofs, acres of front and back yards, and a future mini-park.
Leslie Ryan, Kasi Schnell, faculty and students from NewSchool of Architecture and Design, and San Diego City Community College
- What if the public reclaimed public space?
- What if streets + roofs + yards = food?
- And local food = fuel savings + water savings + healthier communities + social justice?
- We can start right here, right now.
Let’s start here, in North Park, an older, built-out community with a lot of asphalt. If we can grow food here, we can make something important happen, because the benefits of growing food locally are profound.
The average meal in the United States travels over 1500 miles from farm to table. What if we reduce that to 5 miles and the cost of transportation and source of fuel becomes irrelevant? The typical food garden uses about 1/2 the water than a landscape of lawn and shrubs. What if our water consumption was more in tune with the water that falls naturally, and our front yards qualified for agriculture water rates?
Public health issues such as diabetes and obesity are strongly linked to the food that we eat. What if every resident of North Park had easy and affordable access to fresh food?
Philosophers – and marketing gurus – tell us that our ability to care about distant places and people depends on feeling it in our guts, and that our capacity to care develops first in the domesticated environment, here at home. What if our everyday environment helped us see and feel the human costs of rising corn prices in Mexico, and why North Korea would suspend its nuclear program in exchange for 240,000 tons of food?
Eat Here Now is an investigation into how we can re-imagine our cities to be near food. Built-out communities like North Park have few open spaces waiting to become urban farms. But what if the capacity to grow our own food is hiding in plain sight? Because North Park does have extraordinarily wide streets, miles of public right-of-way along our sidewalks, football fields-worth of flat roofs, acres of front and back yards, and a future mini-park.
