What happens when a neighborhood is built around a farm
grist.org
This is what happens when communities are built around farms, gardens, and crops - not cars.

Picture the bucolic little town of a fairy tale. At its core stand medieval buildings, a square where folks hawk their goods, and perhaps a well to provide water. Beyond the defensive wall radiate agricultural fields, where people toil to bring grains, fruits, and vegetables to market.

Invert that for modern times and you’ve got the idea behind “agrihoods,” communities designed around a central farm. Like a garden in a big city, agrihoods promise to boost food security, reduce temperatures, capture rainwater, and increase biodiversity. As climate change intensifies heat, flooding, and pressure on food systems, agrihoods could be a way to make urban living more resilient — not just more picturesque.

Developers have a hard time offering open space, because they would like to build more housing,” said Vincent Mudd, a partner at the architectural firm Steinberg Hart, which designs agrihoods. “One of the few ways to kind of bridge that gap is to be able to use active open space that actually generates commerce.”

On paper, an agrihood is a simple concept: a working farm surrounded by single- or multifamily housing.

Steinberg Hart recently finished two of them in California — one in Santa Clara and another, called Fox Point Farms, in Encinitas. The former, south of San Francisco, features townhouses, market-rate units, and affordable housing, plus a community center and retail shops. The latter, north of San Diego, adds a farm-to-table restaurant, an event venue, and a grocery store, but its housing is primarily for sale instead of rent. “Two different housing programs for two different communities, but built around the sustainability of urban farming,” Mudd said.

    • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml
      7·
      1 day ago

      The problem with that concept is that it’s not efficient. Sustainable (i.e. car-free) settlements are dense to minimize distances while economies of scale naturally apply to farming. In the mentioned cases, the agriculture is more of a (costly) gimmick that adds to the cost of housing.

      It’s always sensible to look at ancient solutions that are more often than not better suited to solve the problems to modern solutions. Farming has always happened in concentric rings around the settlements, not interspersed.

      However, parks that grow food serve an aesthetic function that might justify the increased cost.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
        8·
        9 hours ago

        while economies of scale naturally apply to farming.

        While that is generally true, David R. Montegomery’s book, Dirt, referenced some interesting studies which indicate that dense urban farming can potentially out-produce industrial agriculture by 2 to 10 times depending on size (the smaller the farm, the more potential for increased productive capacity, to even 100x more efficent). The only downside is that urban farming generally has more carbon emissions than industrial scale farming, but the pro’s it tends to give (healthier and more nutritive diets in food-deserts, community building effects, less reliant on outside sources of food for urban areas) are pretty worthwhile.

        Relevant passage of the book referenced from an Edenicity video:

        That video also referenced a really interesting experiment by someone trying to sustain themselves off a small garden with limited time and effort put into it: https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/home-gardens-vs-farms-efficiency/

        If his numbers are accurate, he was able to produce enough calories to sustain him for a year in a 35 by 40ft garden plot.

    • relianceschool@slrpnk.netOP
      9·
      2 days ago

      It was a no-brainer until fossil fuels! (Although traditionally settlements would have a village surrounded by farmland, not the inverse.)