Close-up of agricultural urbanism

Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has continued to refine “agricultural urbanism” — the idea “in which all aspects of urbanism are focused on food production.” The firm is drafting a booklet covering what it has learned from  agricultural urbanism charrettes. When this concept is applied to a piece of existing farmland, it allows food production to be tripled — even though a third of the land is development, Andres Duany notes. “It’s an upward trade, instead of downward trade,” he says. “By harnessing people living on the land, you actually increase production.”

One concept that DPZ has developed is the market square — see rendering on this page — a plaza that is “centrally situated between agricultural land and residential development and is anchored by a university’s Urban Agriculture studies department.”

Another concept is value-added agriculture, “the processing and preservation of foodstuffs in a way that increases their market value.” Examples include bakeries and canneries “that buffer market and crop fluctuations, allow the use of less than perfect produce ... , and make use of less skilled or part-time labor, including a part of the population that might not otherwise be employed.”