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Urban agriculture initiatives have rekindled the imagination of city residents and advocates across the United States. At its core, urban agriculture (UA) is about growing food – and engaging in allied activities – in urban spaces. Community gardens, large-scale urban farms, rooftop gardens, hellstrip gardens, and edible landscaping in public spaces are but a few ways that agrarianism appears in urban landscapes in America. Urban growers grow food for themselves and their communities. Urban agriculture enthusiasts also view the practice as a means to other ends besides food. Enthusiasts view urban agriculture sites as places for building community cohesion, such as around community gardens. Others view it as a means of greening the city. Urban agriculture may also be about social transformation (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). Some Black, brown, and indigenous people view growing as an exercise in collective agency and self-determination. For immigrants and refugees with agrarian histories, cultivation may be about creating spaces of belonging and refuge in a new country.

The increasingly popular practice of urban agriculture is not without complications. Race and class inequalities are prevalent in urban agriculture, just as they are in the overall food system (Alkon and Agyeman 2011). Observers note that the arrival of urban agriculture projects in a city may also inadvertently trigger dislocation and dispossession of lower-income residents (McClintock 2013). UA is valued as an amenity in urban neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with UA sites attract higher-income homebuyers, pushing up real estate prices, and pricing out longer-term residents. Elders on fixed incomes are especially impacted. Gentrification is often racialized, pushing lower-income residents of color out of neighborhoods. UA practice is also subject to elite capture. For example, some residents may be more proximate to localized networks of power (especially to municipal policy actors and networks) and, therefore, more readily able to access land and avail the benefits of urban agriculture. Information asymmetry between individuals or groups about accessing public (or private) land or navigating municipal policies and regulations also perpetuates inequitable access to urban agriculture within cities. The twin phenomena of elite capture (of UA) and information symmetry (between policymakers and residents and between groups of residents) have effectively undermined the potential of urban agriculture. Discussions about urban agriculture that decouple ‘place’ from ‘people,’ and overlook disparate access to policy power run the risk of turning the otherwise good idea of urban agriculture into a mechanism for perpetuating inequitable outcomes for particular groups of people in cities. How urban planners frame, understand and engage with urban agriculture mediates its potential for fostering an equitable and just city, an idea we explore in this book.

Urban agriculture is intertwined with the socio-political history of US cities (Lawson 2005), not unlike the practice of urban planning itself. Even before the Civil War era (1861–1865), people in cities raised crops and animals for human consumption. People of African descent enslaved in the United States grew food on lands adjacent to their dwellings for subsistence and trade (White 2018). In the decades following the Civil War and Reconstruction, between 1877 and 1900, the country experienced significant levels of industrialization. The arrival of electrification, trolley cars, and other new technologies changed how people lived in cities. Significant rural-to-urban migration and immigration in the late nineteenth century led to population growth in cities. Many new arrivals were likely people with agricultural skills but were employed in the rapidly industrializing urban centers. An economic upheaval between 1893–1897 rekindled interest in urban agriculture: Businesses (especially railroads) went under, banks failed, and unemployment rose, leading to hunger and economic duress. In 1894, Hazen Pingree, then-Mayor of Detroit, Michigan, called on landowners to lend their properties to impoverished families so they could grow food to feed their families. Property owners provided access to land, and the municipal government prepared lots for production. Historians report that nearly 500 families in Detroit began growing food on garden allotments of 0.5 to 0.75 acres of land on what came to be known as Pingree’s Potato Patches (Warner 1987 [2019]). Several cities across the country followed suit in the subsequent growing season, launching urban agriculture programs to fend off hunger among unemployed families. Buffalo, New York, and Detroit, Michigan – cities with thriving contemporary urban agriculture movements today – had the most extensive programs, feeding up to a couple of thousand families each growing season. Municipal support for urban agriculture was driven by a desire to mitigate the challenges of the economic upheaval rather than from a perspective that growing food was essential to urban life.

Significant social, technological, and economic shifts in the 1900s likely shaped how city residents engaged (or did not) with agriculture. Economic prosperity fueled population growth in US cities. For some Black Americans, northern cities were an escape from the racialized segregation of the US South. Though slavery had been abolished (in 1865), the persistence of racialized laws and structures in the US South – or so-called Jim Crow laws – catalyzed the Great Migration of Black Americans in the 1900s to northern cities (though northern municipalities, too, had Jim Crow laws such as sundown laws). Many southern Black Americans migrating to northern cities also brought the knowledge, practices, and memories of growing food. For example, Black urban gardeners in Buffalo, Boston, and other cities reference their experience gardening with their parents and grandparents in the US South.

The early 1900s also marked the professionalization of the fledgling urban and regional planning field as cities struggled to provide services to a growing population. For many urban poor, daily life involved living in overcrowded housing with inadequate facilities. Formal city plans, including Burnham’s 1911 Plan of Chicago, laid the groundwork for grand improvements such as new parks, lakefronts, and civic and cultural centers that characterized the City Beautiful movement. These City Beautiful plans failed to protect agriculture-related activities as a core function and land use in cities. Many agricultural and allied land uses – such as fresh markets – were planned out of urban landscapes during the City Beautiful era.

Across the Atlantic in Europe, urbanists promoted the idea of a Garden City, which incorporated agriculture as a central tenet of planning new settlements (Howard 1902). Howard’s ideal Garden City included farms, pastures, and fruit orchards integrated alongside housing and transportation networks. Howard’s view of agricultural and food-related land uses was nuanced. In his view, agriculture land uses varied in scale (e.g., small farms and large farms), by type of crops (e.g., vegetables and fruit farms), and by type of grower (smallholder farmers versus people with health challenges growing for themselves). Howard’s principles informed the design of the earliest Garden City, Letchworth, England, in 1903.

Translation of the Garden City idea in the US ushered in an era of planned new towns with green and growing spaces (e.g., Mariemont, Ohio, and Radburn, New Jersey). In Mariemont, Ohio, founded in 1923, landscape architect John Nolen planned allotment gardens for working-class families. But, the translation of the Garden City movement to the US failed to address the country’s racial inequities and settler-colonial history. For example, the Garden City of Radburn, New Jersey, founded in 1929, was a sundown town that restricted Black Americans out (Loewen 2005). Planners’ vision of greener new towns or cities that incorporated agriculture did not, in fact, welcome all groups of Americans.

US engagement in World War I (in 1914) fueled an unexpected interest in agriculture in cities. Leaders invoked patriotic fervor to encourage people across the country to plant gardens to assist with the war effort. The US federal government urged people to voluntarily consume less and produce more through what came to be known as war gardening. Several public programs were launched to support agriculture in urban and rural settings.

War was not the only societal upheaval that drew attention to urban agriculture. Leaders proposed relief gardens during the economic recession, or the Great Depression, of the 1930s. The US involvement in World War II (1939) following the Great Depression again rekindled interest in victory gardens. With food rationing in place (in 1942), gardening gained new fervor: Estimates suggest that in 1944, nearly 20 million victory gardens produced about 40 percent of fruits and vegetables consumed in the US. Some scholars have suggested that interest in formal urban agriculture initiatives waned following World War II (in the 1950s). This period also coincided with the hyper-industrialization of the food industry and with a shift toward producing processed foods (fueled partly by the investment in war-related manufacturing in the food processing sector). The decade of the 1950s saw the arrival of frozen peas, canned whipped cream, chicken nuggets, the first TV dinner, and other ‘convenience foods’ that are now ubiquitous on US grocery store shelves. Sure, many people in urban areas continued to grow food for themselves and their families – but without the fanfare that accompanies today’s trendier forms of urban agriculture.

Growing environmental justice and health consciousness refueled people’s interest in urban agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s. The publication of now-classic books such as Silent Spring (1962), Diet for a Small Planet (1971), and Food for People, Not for Profit (1975) drew people’s attention to the links between the environment and health (and food). Environmental justice advocates noted that many urban vacant lands were often used as waste/dumping sites in communities of color. Tired of waiting for governments to fix their problems, community organizers and residents reclaimed vacant lots for community gardening. In areas on the outskirts of cities, people fought for the protection of farmlands in the face of (sub)urbanization. Some rural farms were protected even when completely engulfed by development: In Santa Barbara County, California, for example, Fairview Farms, established in the 1950s in what was a rural setting (Ableman 1998), operates today surrounded by subdivisions and development in the somewhat youngish city of Goleta, California (incorporated in 2002).

The growing civil rights, anti-war, and environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s re-ignited interest in the food system. Black nationalism advocated for radical control of the food system, distinct from the mainstream capitalist food system in the United States. Black leaders viewed agriculture as a lever for freedom and social transformation. Fannie Lou Hamer, for example, founded Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) in Ruleville, Mississippi, in the late 1960s to help Black farmworkers regain control over their livelihood and lives. FFC had a comprehensive view of the infrastructure, services, and environments necessary for low-income Black people to thrive in Ruleville. In addition to establishing a cooperative farm to generate income for landless families, FFC ran complementary programs focused on education, housing, food, anti-poverty, and political organizing. White (2018) describes Hamer’s work as akin to that of Gramsci’s organic intellectuals who emerge in all social strata; are aware of their economic, social, and political function; and can organize, strategize, and advocate. Hamer remains among the most powerful examples of leaders who used the food system for social transformation, even though she may not have used the phrase ‘food system.’ Urban agriculture sites have also been the site of fractious, oppositional, and confrontational actions by community organizers who sought to “fix” their communities in the face of apathetic or inept public institutions. For example, People’s Park in Berkeley has a decades-long history as a protest site, initially rooted in a land-use dispute (in 1969). The site emerged as a locus of anti-war and anti-policing protests and continues to be a site of contestation today. Across these varying periods in the city’s history, people have used People’s Park for growing food.

The 1970s saw the rise of some progressive urban gardening programs supported by municipalities, likely fueled by the larger political climate. For example, on the East Coast, the city of Syracuse (NY) launched an ‘adopt-a-lot’ program, encouraging residents to garden on vacant land. In the Northwest, the city of Seattle (WA) launched the well-known P-Patch program, which continues today. The 1980s were a difficult time for US cities as the federal government cut federal aid and reduced anti-poverty programs (coincidentally, the 1980s were also challenging for rural farming). Businesses and capital exited older industrial cities, and land vacancy grew. The use of the so-called emergency food system, including food banks and soup kitchens, increased in response to hunger and food insecurity. Enthusiasts advocated for urban agriculture practice as a buffer against urban disinvestment. Interest in community gardening and urban growing (for food) peaked again in the late 1990s. Concerns about the rise in chronic disease in the US drew public attention to the role of structural determinants of health. Urban agriculture – and, more broadly, urban food systems – attracted the attention of public health advocates as possible means for promoting better nutrition. This focus on urban agriculture as a lever for supporting community health has grown over time.

Decoupling urban agriculture from the dynamic socio-political history of cities – and the history of city planning itself – is short-sighted. Urban agriculture has existed and evolved in relationship to cities themselves. Significant societal, political, and economic events rekindle Americans’ interest in urban agriculture, as evident in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. Urban agriculture has often, if not always, been about more than growing food: it has been a tool for social transformation with deep connections to social, environmental, and other political movements.

Like in the past, today’s practice of urban agriculture is often an expression of agency and resistance. Consider an example from Buffalo, NY. Gail Wells, a Black leader in Buffalo’s food justice movement and Master gardener, launched Buffalo Freedom Gardens in the wake of COVID. The program provides raised beds, seedlings, soil, and technical assistance to first-time growers, especially in the city’s Black neighborhoods. The initiative encourages residents to grow food in their backyards and front yards and emphasizes community building. Gardeners work with community networks to draw attention to food injustice (e.g., in 2021, gardeners supported the agricultural pavilion at Buffalo’s Juneteenth celebration). Freedom Gardens in Buffalo is a praxis of liberation and resistance in the face of challenging conditions (e.g., poor food environments in Black neighborhoods). Similar expressions of collective agency and resistance are evident in cities around the country including Detroit, Philadelphia (Gripper et al. 2022), and others.

UA can be a lever for promoting social justice in the city and a space within which people can seek justice. Equitable urban agriculture is an ideal that demands attention to fairness and justice. Such an ideal requires attention to the processes and outcomes that impact who can access urban agriculture and who can benefit from it. City planning plays a role in mediating the possibilities of equitable UA. How does local government planning for urban agriculture serve the interests of marginalized people? How are questions of equity and ethics addressed in planning for urban agriculture? Answers to these questions must inform, and we argue, precede, planners’ and policymakers’ engagement with urban agriculture. Failure to do so makes city planning a tool for exacerbating inequities in and through urban agriculture. Consider the example of the city of Minneapolis, which adopted the first known urban agriculture policy plan in the United States in 2012. Yet, some growers in Minneapolis today – primarily Black, brown, and indigenous – hold a dismal view of how the city has implemented the urban agriculture plan. [Tragically, Minneapolis was also the site of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, exposing the deep racial injustices that are the undertone of US cities.] How might urban planning engage with urban agriculture by explicitly addressing questions of ethics, equity, and justice?

Urban planners must understand better how their choices amplify or limit the potential of urban agriculture to foster equitable cities. More than 300 local governments around the United States are engaging in food systems policy and de facto planning, some more actively than others. Many are passing ordinances and laws to regulate urban agriculture. Zoning continues to be the ‘intervention’ of choice. Some local governments are investing in urban agriculture as public infrastructure, though at lower levels than other urban amenities such as parks. And, to our knowledge, few local governments are centering questions of ethics in their approach toward urban agriculture as a public infrastructure. We need better theoretical frames to understand equitable urban agrarianism, more robust empirical evidence about its impact on people and places, and more effective policy implementation tools that move us toward equity.

Building on the legacy of food systems planning scholar, teacher, and advocate, Jerome (Jerry) Kaufman, this book examines the potential and pitfalls of planning for urban agriculture in the United States. An emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the long-time Board President of Growing Power, a pioneering urban agriculture organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the time of his passing (in 2013), Jerry blended the roles of activist, practitioner (of planning), scholar, and teacher throughout his professional life. Jerry was a quintessential planner, diving into disparate questions if the answers got him strategically closer to making places work better for people, especially those pushed to the margins. In his essay, Jerry’s son, Dan Kaufman, provides a window into Jerry’s lived experience and intellectual trajectory; principles of fairness and justice were a central tenet of Jerry’s life and work. Jerry wrote about a host of topics spanning conflict resolution, urban education and race, gender in planning, planning practice (Kaufman 1963, 1969; Goodman 1965; Kaufman and Vance 1965), planning ethics (Dotson et al. 1989; Escuin-Rubio and Kaufman 1993; Kaufman 1993; Hendler 1995) – and, of course, food systems (Kaufman 2001; Kaufman and Bailkey 2000, 2004; Pothukuchi and Kaufman 1999, 2000). He taught a course on why planners should focus on inner cities while teaching at a historically white institution in the Midwest (UW-Madison) and courses on planning ethics. Jerry never published writings that explicitly connected his scholarship on planning ethics with his later work on food systems. The editors surmise that Jerry’s early preoccupation with planning ethics influenced his openness toward food systems, a topic that was largely overlooked in formal urban planning practice in the US. His close colleague and co-editor of this book, Dr. Marcia Caton Campbell, notes that Jerry was incredibly broadminded about what planners ought to be considering as they practiced their profession.

This book brings together a collection of works inspired by Kaufman’s work on food (Kaufman 2001; Kaufman and Bailkey 2000, 2004; Pothukuchi and Kaufman 1999, 2000) and planning ethics (Kaufman 1987), connecting the history of food systems planning literature and practice with a Kaufman-esque vision to the future. Jerry’s contribution to the field of planning ethics preceded his work on food. His work on food – which kicked off with his leadership of the Madison Food System Project at UW-Madison in the mid-nineties – led to an impactful scholarship and tireless advocacy that encouraged planning practitioners to think about food as part of their ethical responsibility (Raja et al. 2024). His work, along with his colleagues Kami Pothukuchi and Deanna Glosser, resulted in the American Planning Association (APA) recognizing the food system as a legitimate area of professional practice (Pothukuchi and Glosser 2024). Today APA has a formal division dedicated to food systems planning, the APA Food Systems Division (APA-FOOD, founded in 2020), with over 300 members at the time of this writing. Jerry trained a cadre of planning students and collaborated with emerging scholars, inspiring them to think about both food and ethics. Many of these individuals, beneficiaries of Jerry’s intellectual nourishment, contributed to this volume.

The book includes Kaufman’s early scholarship, such as a foundational article in the Journal of the American Planning Association co-authored with his close colleague Kami Pothukuchi, which asked why food was absent from the field of planning (Pothukuchi and Kaufman 2000). Jerry was an avid proponent of reducing the academy-practice divide in planning, often writing for an audience of practitioners. With his then-doctoral student, Martin Bailkey, Jerry wrote one of the earliest reports on planning for entrepreneurial agriculture in cities, commissioned by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (Kaufman and Bailkey 2000). In keeping with this spirit, this volume includes chapters written by and for planning practitioners, including a reflection on the landmark Lincoln Institute report on entrepreneurial urban agriculture.

Building on a series of books on urban agriculture from the fields of planning and landscape architecture (Dawson and Morales 2016; Hou 2010; Ilieva 2016; Redwood 2012), and the need at this time for critical reflection on food systems planning practice, this volume ties practice back to theories of and in planning. Where do urban agriculture and food systems planning fit in planning and governance today? What is the relationship of urban agriculture to equity, community development, democracy, and neoliberalism? With food systems planning and urban agriculture being practiced in jurisdictions across North America, what do current academics and practitioners need to be aware of when attempting to shape the contemporary city? How do we examine urban agriculture with a critical lens? How does planning for urban agriculture address questions of equity and justice? Within the urban agriculture domain, who is planning, who is being planned for, and at whose expense? Authors in this book address these questions, using a post-facto lens as well as making suggestions about the future.

The book has five parts following the introduction. Part I, curated by Branden Born (2024), provides a theoretical foundation for the book. Since the publication of Kami Pothukuchi and Jerry Kaufman’s early pair of articles in Agriculture and Human Values (1999) and the Journal of the American Planning Association (2000) that introduced planners to the ideas of urban food systems, numerous articles, special journal issues, and books have explored the how and why of urban agriculture and urban food systems (Born and Purcell 2006; Caton Campbell 2004; Gorgolewski et al. 2011; Scherb et al. 2012; Thibert 2012; Vallianatos et al. 2004; Viljoen et al. 2013). These works have generally focused on how to approach the practice of urban agriculture, who might be involved, why it should be done, or why it is essential in a given context. What they have mostly lacked, however, has been a close connection to theories of planning—or that relate to planning—which is somewhat ironic due to Jerry’s interest in theory. In fact, Jerry often taught the Planning Theory graduate seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In this part, the chapters describe foundational work in areas like ethics, community engagement, and roles of planners that Jerry explored, which collectively helped set the stage for the introduction of food systems to urban planning. The chapters also begin to assemble the contemporary use of political and social theory as it is applied to urban agriculture and urban food systems (for example, Frimpong Boamah (2024)). Part I also includes the classic article by Pothukuchi and Kaufman (2000) published in the Journal of the American Planning Association and a second piece, a reflection on the landmark report on urban agriculture published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (Kaufman and Bailkey 2000). Other chapters in the section include pieces that propose new theoretical and conceptual ways – including frames for governance, justice and systems thinking – to unpack how planners engage in food systems.

Part II, curated by Alfonso Morales and Nick DeMarsh (2024), examines how civic agriculture is unfolding across urban landscapes, primarily led by not-for-profit and community organizations. In a growing number of cities, suburbs, and small towns, community groups and entrepreneurs are developing innovative approaches to producing food, and in doing so, they are fashioning various ways that consumers can relate to producers. Concrete activities connecting people to production characterize contemporary urban agriculture, and scholars are conceptualizing and describing these practices, using various methods and towards various ends (Jarosz 2008; Raj et al. 2016; Veenhuizen 2006). Scholars detail how motivations for urban agriculture vary considerably, a feature that is largely overlooked in local government approaches (and tools) for engaging with urban agriculture. McClintock and colleagues, for example, describe motivations for urban agriculture as radical, DIY secessionist, entrepreneurial, educational, social, or eco-centric (Mcclintock and Simpson 2018). Failure to understand the nuanced motivations, varied participants, and disparate impacts of UA limits local governments’ ability to engage with UA in ways that produce equitable outcomes. In the words of Morales (2021), addressing the concerns of urban agriculture practitioners can “transform wicked problems into wicked opportunities.”

Chapters in this part of the book document various approaches people are taking to urban agriculture and describe and theorize the modalities of our understanding. Chapters explore how people are using various technologies and tools, such as social networking tools, mapping technologies, emergent land tenure arrangements, and embryonic business models, in the practice of urban food production. Chapters show how the growth of urban food production varies by the goals different people and organizations hold, and how questions of ethics, equity and justice fold into these goals. Finally, chapters bring readers back to the theme of this part of the book by looking at cities, which Jerry loved, as hubs of activities, each activity somewhat independent of the others, but also bearing on each other in different ways. Cases include a range of cities and regions from across the US, including Albany (GA), Buffalo (NY), Madison (WI), Denver (CO), and New York (NY). The case from Albany, GA (Hall et al. 2024) and Buffalo, NY (Griffin et al. 2024) grounds contemporary urban agriculture and food movements within historic Black-led movements for democracy and self-determination. Buffalo’s story is especially poignant given that the authors focus on a Black neighborhood that, on May 14, 2022, was the site of a massacre of 10 individuals by a white supremacist in one of the few supermarkets in the area (the chapter was written before the massacre). Food spaces are both the sites of acute and chronic violence – and continued healing and resistance by Black, brown, and indigenous peoples in the United States.

Part III documents municipal policy and planning responses to the civic practice of UA, focusing on ways in which municipal UA policies address questions of equity. Authors report a growing interest in UA from local governments across the United States (Horst et al. 2017 [Reprinted 2023], this volume, Chap. 6), as many adopt and enact policies encompassing urban agriculture. The authors explore the limits and possibilities of new governance mechanisms, planning processes, and policy implementation tools designed to support urban agriculture. Drawing on comprehensive, national-scale research (Raja et al. 2018), the overview chapter describes the myriad ways in which city governments are planning for urban agriculture. Within municipal planning practice, UA continues to be either thinly understood or thickly ignored by those working on behalf of local governments. The predominant approach of local governments is to regulate rather than invest in urban agriculture. Local governments driven by neoliberal development imperatives continue to view urban agriculture as a beneficial but temporary land use until more traditional, large-scale development projects arrive on the horizon.

The section also recounts the history of the professionalization of food systems planning within the American Planning Association, a paper co-authored by Kami Pothukuchi and Deanna Glosser, close colleagues of Jerry Kaufman. Kami was Jerry’s faculty colleague at UW-Madison when he began work on food; she brought substantive knowledge of food systems to their collaboration (having studied food systems with John Nystuen at UW-Michigan). Deanna, a planning practitioner, was a critical American Planning Association (APA) member. Collectively, the trio led a successful effort to push for the design and adoption of the first policy guidance on food systems planning by the legislative body of the APA. Policy change is also explored in this section through deep-dive case studies about cities engaged in urban agriculture planning and policy. Chapters report experiences from Baltimore (Buzogany et al. 2024), Cleveland and Detroit (Pothukuchi 2024), Denver (Gosch et al. 2024), and Seattle (Hodgson 2024) – in all chapters, authors reflect on the implications of municipal planning/policy for advancing or hindering equity and justice.

Part IV, curated by Marcia Caton Campbell and Alexandra Judelsohn, explores the possibilities for a compassionate, equitable, and just pedagogy of planning for urban agriculture. Urban agriculture offers a valuable opportunity for students (and faculty) to interrogate, teach, and learn about questions of (in)equity and ethics. The first community food assessment completed in conjunction with a planning department was published in 1977 at the University of Tennessee (Blakey et al. 1977). It took almost another 20 years for the next two to be completed, at UCLA in 1993 (Ashman et al. 1993) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997, under Jerry Kaufman and Kami Pothukuchi’s leadership (Allan et al. 1997). There were few/no urban planning classes on food systems at the time, but such courses were just about to arrive on the academic scene. Caton Campbell taught the first regular course on food systems planning in an accredited planning program at UW-Madison in 2001. Janet Hammer’s 2004 survey of community food systems and planning curricula demonstrated a high watermark. Also in 2004, the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) gave its national award for the best planning studio project to one focused on food systems (taught by Raja at the University at Buffalo). Since then, teaching about and teaching with the food system as a topic for experiential learning has become a standard feature of planning programs across the US and Canada (Whittaker et al. 2017). Yet, the degree to which coursework about urban agriculture and food systems wrestles with questions of equity and justice remains unclear.

This section of the book highlights the pedagogy of urban agriculture and urban food systems in planning and design education, particularly focusing on issues of equity and justice. Part IV includes chapters highlighting the trajectory of planning education on food systems, including examining the often contentious role of university-community partnerships in food systems planning pedagogy. Written by authors with deep experience in teaching (and studying) about food, the chapters outline elements of a purposeful, equitable, and community-engaged pedagogy of food systems and urban agriculture for students in planning and design fields. Chapters include a reflection on a classic planning practicum – The Fertile Ground Studio – taught at the University of Wisconsin by Jerry Kaufman and Kami Pothukuchi (Allan et al. 1997), which was one of a handful of planning practica of its kind in the country; two prior ones included one at University of Knoxville Tennessee (Blakey et al. 1977) and UCLA (Ashman et al. 1993). Chapters also include a ten-year post-hoc reflection on an award-winning national practicum – Food For Growth (Almeida et al. 2003) – taught at the University at Buffalo that laid the foundation for a long-term community-university partnership traversing education and research, in Buffalo, NY that spans nearly 20 years (Judelsohn and Kelly 2024).

Part V explores the possibility of an equitable agrarian urban future, especially drawing on perspectives that are overlooked in US planning practice. Urban planning practice in the United States tends to be insular and parochial, with little consideration for planning scholarship or practice from the rest of the world (Raja et al. 2023). The first two chapters in this section remedy this oversight. Wayne Roberts (2024) connects the work between the United States and Canada, while Lesli Hoey (2024) shares insights from the Global South. Both allow readers to step outside the confines of a US-centric frame of how urban agriculture should interface with city planning. Moreover, US planning practice and policy rarely center on the experiences of farmers, especially Black, brown, or indigenous farmers. The third chapter in this section, by Riordan and Rangarajan, addresses this oversight by reporting on how growers of color imagine the future of agriculture in US cities.

In the concluding chapter, the authors draw on the legacy of Jerry Kaufman and the contributors of this volume to propose the idea of planning for urban agriculture as an act of public nurturance. The authors suggest that planning as public nurturance is a value-laden proposition that protects the interests of the marginalized, such as urban growers of color, within planning processes. They argue that planning institutions must be co-designed by people – and that planners must build their capacity to be effective co-designers. The onus is on planners, not people, to decode planning processes that impact urban agriculture. Decoding and demystifying planning are necessary to reduce information asymmetry between the marginalized and the privileged and between people and policymakers and, subsequently, decelerate elite capture of urban agriculture in cities.

The idea of nurturance is one that Jerry extended to his role as teacher and mentor, including supporting the editors and contributors to this volume during his lifetime. Four contributors are Jerry’s former students (including two editors), 15 are trainees of Jerry’s former students, and the rest are colleagues who worked directly with Jerry or his colleagues. Readers will find a series of short reflections by early career leaders interspersed in the book. The authors of these reflections are Jerome L. Kaufman fellows at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Chloe Green) and the University at Buffalo (Subhashni Raj, Kristopher Walton, and Sydney Jones). Kaufman fellows offer their vision for a new ethic in city building and challenge the discipline and the profession to do better. Jerry’s intellectual nourishment and generosity are evident over generations of scholars who have contributed to this book.

We hope that the contributions in this volume stimulate readers’ thinking about the role of urban planning in advancing equitable urban agriculture. More importantly, as Jerry would want it, we hope that the volume will guide readers’ actions in the service of equitable and just cities.