josefski’s Recent Comments

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  Sustainable Growth

  I think I know one of the obvious answers to this problem. It's no silver bullet but it's the first step in combating the constant inflation of the price of farmland around the cities.

  Sustainable Growth.

  I live in Portland, OR, where as you drive from the center of the city and head west the progression of development goes a little something like this, inner city, suburbs, and then WHAM! farmland. It's almost as if some artificial boundary has been imposed that limits growth to a certain point about 20-25 linear miles from Portland city center, thus preserving farm communities and the infrastructure they need to survive.

  Well guess what, there is such a line, and we call it the Urban Growth Boundary, or UGB for short. We are so emphatically in love with our UGB that we even have a fourth layer of government called Metro that sets the UGB and acts as a central planning body to whom all local governments in the Portland area are beholden when setting their development and zoning strategies. The size of home lots has shrunk dramatically inside this boundary within my short (24 years) lifespan and I must say, it's quite a trip when you live 20 minutes from downtown and 5 minutes from farmland, all in a metropolitan area of 2 million people.

  Imagine the effect this must have on the price of fresh produce. We have more farmer's markets per capita than any other city in the nation, so HA!

  The problem of accessiblity to nutritious and affordable food will not be solved until the other cities in this country commit themselves to a growth strategy similar to Portland's, where the emphasis is sustainable growth.On To create a truly sustainable food system, we'll need to make some fundamental changes. posted 4 years, 1 month ago 26 Responses