Keywords

1 Introduction

Building on the city’s long history of community-led food systems work, the Mayor and City Council of Denver have accelerated food-focused policies in the past decade. Such efforts culminated in Denver Food Vision (Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council 2017), the first long-term plan about food. Led by the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council (SFPC), hundreds of community members, community-led organizations, and adopted by Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock in October 2017, the plan is one of the dozens of food-focused city-county plans in the country to provide specific priorities, strategies, and actions regarding land use, investment, and public-private partnerships to strengthen food systems.

One idea championed in Denver Food Vision was to dedicate 99.2 acres of land, an area equivalent in size to 25 city blocks, to food production (i.e., urban agriculture) by 2030. This idea stemmed out of a policy advisory meant to incentivize responsible growth in urban agriculture within the City and County of Denver. Although the initiative was included within the plan (a success), it never passed through the mayor’s office as an approved policy (a fail). This chapter seeks to capture why the idea did not reach fruition, what it means for cities to attempt bold policy moves like this, and what some intermediate steps might be that could create pathways to a bolder policy goal of this nature. Further, this chapter tackles questions of equity and ethics in the policy-making process by questioning the motivations in rejecting an initiative championed by both community groups and a mayoral-appointed board (the SFPC). Such questions bring issues of racial justice, neoliberalism in land use and the real estate market, and gentrification into the conversation about how we approach challenges and opportunities in the food system. Lessons learned will be critical as an increasing number of municipalities across the United States and Canada begin to engage further in food systems planning work. This chapter analyzes data and literature available before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has amplified the challenges presented in this chapter.

Local and regional governments’ (LRGs) interest and engagement in food-related work has been rejuvenated within the United States and Canada over the past two (Raja et al. 2008, 2018). Unlike transportation and land use, food was previously “not seen to be an issue of municipalities” (Dahlberg 1994, p. 1). In recent years, however, LRGs have increasingly heeded the calls of residents, community groups, and other municipal stakeholders to develop contextually-specific initiatives (e.g., policies, plans, and programs) to strengthen community food systems (Raja et al. 2018).

While there are various ways to classify policy (Salamon 2002), Raja et al. (2018), Raja and Whittaker (2018) categorize LRG policies as (i) soft policies, (ii) official plans, (iii) ordinances, bylaws, and regulations that are legally enforceable, (iv) actions that provide physical infrastructure and (v) fiscal enactments that influence community food systems. The first two policy classifications are intended to provide guidance to LRGs, while the latter three classifications are meant to encourage implementation. Although LRGs typically utilize a combination of any or all policy typologies in their work, this chapter will focus on official or formal plans.

The scope of official plans varies widely by municipality, region, and governance arrangements. Most often, particularly for municipalities early on in the food system planning process, food-related guidance is embedded within comprehensive plans (also known as general or master plans). Comprehensive plans are long-term planning documents that address a variety of interconnected issues within a municipality (or region), including economic development, housing, land use, and transportation. Integrating food as a component(s) in comprehensive plans holds immense opportunities for municipalities and/or regions because of comprehensive plans’ intrinsic systemic view, as well as the legal nature of the plans themselves. Comprehensive plans’ legal nature sets the typology apart from other types of plans in which food may be a component, such as sustainability plans, transportation plans, and economic development plans (e.g., strategic plans), not all of which are typically legally binding (Hodgson 2012). Overall, municipalities vary significantly in regard to their food systems planning efforts (i.e., scope, goals, involved stakeholders, governmental oversight). Resources such as the nationally-recognized Growing Food Connections database have begun to document the extent of food systems planning efforts across the United States and Canada.Footnote 1

Despite the importance of outcomes (i.e., the adoption of food system plans and/or policies) to LRGs, equally important is the process of developing, implementing, and sustaining plans and/or policies (Hodgson 2012). Plan and/or policy-making serves as an opportunity for a diverse set of stakeholders (i.e., individuals, civil society organizations, and governmental officials/agencies) to actively shape the future of communities (Berke and Godschalk 2009). Oftentimes, however, the ‘gatekeepers’ (i.e., those with power to control policy input and formation) are disconnected ideologically or via ‘frame’ from the ‘targets’ of policies (e.g., food insecure individuals, small farmers, etc.). Although there may be a genuine desire amongst LRGs to engage with various stakeholders, many targets are excluded from submitting input through the policy as a result of differing frames.

The resulting gap between involved actors often generates ineffective, and inequitable, outcomes that disproportionately affect the targets of policies.

While it is easy to direct attention towards the actors themselves, Raja et al. (2018) and Clark et al. (2017) argue that a critical assessment of the policy-making process is key in ensuring that questions of equity and ethics are addressed throughout conceptualization and are later reflected in implementation and outcomes. In contrast to dominant policy discourse, which begins with who is invited to the policy development table, Raja et al. (2018) posit that the first step should instead address questions of “who is setting the table and designing the policy process in the first place. The design of the process—the writing of the agenda—sets the parameters for what is on the table (and off the table)” (p. 6). In essence, this framing forces scholars and practitioners to consider not only who benefits from local government planning processes, but who is driving the planning process in the first place.

1.1 Food Policy Councils and the Policy-Making Process

Although LRGs are engaging in food-related work at an unprecedented rate, an increasingly broad network of individuals, civil society organizations, and other groups have begun working locally to improve food- and health-related outcomes (Gupta et al. 2018). Food policy councils (FPCs) are defined here as organizations that “consis[t] of representatives and stakeholders from many sectors of the food system who work with city and state governments to promote the social, economic, and environmental health of local and regional food systems” (Harper et al. 2009; Gupta et al. 2018, p. 12). FPCs play key roles in “connecting the dots” between neighborhood- and/or community-based initiatives and formalized policy work (Harper et al. 2009). Similar to the rise of LRG engagement in food systems-related work within the past two decades, the number of FPCs operating across the country has risen considerably in recent years, with over 300 active FPCs currently operating across the United States and Canada (Sussman and Bassarab 2017).

Perhaps due to the vast number of active FPCs across the United States and Canada, the structural typology of FPCs varies widely by context. Unlike the earliest FPCs, all of which were situated within a local government body (Dahlberg 1994), the newest generation of food systems leaders have begun creating FPCs as grassroots and/or community-based organizations (Sussman and Bassarab 2017; Gupta et al. 2018). According to the 2017 Johns Hopkins survey, the most common form of an FPC is a county-based grassroots coalition (33%), followed by being situated within government (21%), and operating as an independent non-profit (20%) (Sussman and Bassarab 2017). Despite the recent shift in structural typologies, (Gupta et al. 2018) argue that it “is [still] common for FPCs to have multiple links to government, including having government employees as members, receiving county, city, state, or federal funding, and/or operating under official government mandates” (p. 13).

Although FPCs engage in a variety of activities, previous work completed by Harper et al. (2009) report that the most common activity FPCs engage with is policy work, particularly in the realms of procurement (e.g., institutional purchasing from local sources) and agriculture (e.g., urban agriculture, farmland preservation). The degree to which FPCs engage in policy-related work, however, is a matter of debate, and depends on FPCs’ structural type (i.e., grassroots v. government mandate) and/or partnerships with other individuals and agencies within local government (Siddiki et al. 2015), amongst other factors. Regardless of FPCs’ structural typology, previous work by Scherb et al. (Scherb et al. 2012) found that, within policy-making processes, FPCs primarily engage in problem identification and education rather than developing policy proposals or directly advocating to government officials. The lack of direct advocacy and policy development is due in part to a lack of resources (e.g. funding, human capital) (Scherb et al. 2012). Clayton et al. (2015) report that FPCs face a variety of other challenges in their work: “[s]ome struggle to navigate thorny political climates; balance policy and program priorities; evaluate their impact; and identify sufficient time, funding, training, and skills to advance their policy agenda” (Joseph et al. 1997; Boron 2003; Clancy et al. 2007, p. 2; Scherb et al. 2012).

To overcome such barriers, scholarship has suggested that FPCs invest meaningfully in partnerships with both government officials, who add credibility to FPCs’ work, as well as policy experts, who assist FPCs in navigating the policy landscape (i.e., key topics, stakeholders, etc.). In what Clayton et al. (2015) refer to as “strategic engagement,” working with policy experts allegedly facilitates FPCs’ ability to “tailor their policy efforts to the needs and interests of the local political context and may increase FPCs’ visibility and legitimacy as a key stakeholder in the food policy arena...a benefit that some [stakeholders] attribut[e] to the difference between success and failure in food systems policy change” (Schiff 2008; Harper et al. 2009, p. 12).

Although LRGs and FPCs are engaging in food policy at increasingly rapid rates across the United States and Canada, there are few cases that explore multi-pronged partnerships between local governments, food policy councils, community-led groups, and other stakeholders. In other words, little information exists on how LRGs and FPCs are engaging directly with individuals and community groups to strengthen community food systems, nor how varying perspectives, values, and goals are reconciled into equitable food system policies and initiatives.

As previously mentioned, urban agriculture is a tool that many LRGs and FPCs use as a lever in policy work to increase food production in the region. Initiatives around urban agriculture (i.e., zoning and ordinances, public-private partnerships, and budgeting) are intended to make both food and land more affordable or accessible, a strategy especially pertinent to low-income communities and communities of color that are historically more food insecure (Masters et al. 2014; Zenk et al. 2014; Thibodeaux 2016). While such initiatives encourage urban growing and greening in disinvested and economically marginalized communities, without precautionary protection of land tenure (through long-term leasing or contracts), the outcome can often be green gentrification. Economic developers are able to capitalize off the green initiative and investment as the land, intended to improve the communities’ quality of life, becomes too expensive to lease and is turned over for opportunities that offer greater economic pay-off (Alkon et al. 2019; Sbicca 2019). Urban agriculture initiatives are filled with contradiction: the greening that is supposed to improve the wellbeing of marginalized communities is also the initiative that is displacing them. It is imperative for LRGs and FPCs to approach food systems policies, including food production, through a social and economic justice lens in order to mitigate the risk of further marginalization of well-intended initiatives.

2 Case Study: Urban Agriculture and Planning-to-Implementation Barriers in Denver, Colorado

The City and County of Denver is among the growing number of municipalities across the United States that utilize interventions in the food system to not only increase food security, but to also improve community health and vibrancy. Over the past decade, Denver has legitimized its commitment to food-focused work through the development of formalized policies (e.g., food systems plan, food policy council, climate adaptation plan, health improvement plan). Despite these successes, the city continues to face barriers when transforming plans into tangible action, thus challenging the progress of food-focused work.

Officially known as the City and County of Denver due to its consolidated city-county government (Uncover Colorado 2020), Denver is the capital and most populous municipality within the state of Colorado (Uncover Colorado 2020). With a vibrant economy, arts scene, and access to nature, Denver is one of the fastest growing cities within the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). From 2010 to 2018, Denver grew from 600,158 to an estimated 716,492 residents (U.S. Census Bureau 2020), representing an almost 20% increase in total population. Currently, Denver’s residential population is 81% White, 10% Black or African American, and 4% Asian. Thirty percent of Denver’s population identifies as Latinx or Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau 2020).

Despite the recent population influx, Denver’s labor market is tight: as of July 2019, only 2.7% of the population was unemployed. Personal income has increased, with the median annual family income of $63,790, which is less than the Colorado state median ($68,811) but higher than the national median ($60,293) (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). While the average income within Denver is comparatively high, income levels vary significantly across the metropolitan area with over 15% of individuals living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). In fact, Denver is ranked eighth among Colorado’s counties in terms of income disparity; the top one-percent of families average an income of $1.5 million annually, while the remaining 99% earn an average of $52,503 annually (Svaldi 2016). Rising incomes and broader forces of economic inequities and gentrification have shifted poverty in the Denver metropolitan area. Almost twice as many people are currently living in poverty in the surrounding suburbs as the city (Aguilar 2017). Furthermore, home ownership has shifted within the past few decades as 49.3% of the housing units in Denver in 2018--down from 72% in 2002--were occupied by their owners, compared to the 63.9% national average (DataUSA 2020).

Given Denver’s growing reputation as a “food city,” it is no surprise that the city’s economy relies on various food system sectors. The food system is a source of economic opportunity for over 2200 businesses and 56,000 employees within the city. Over the past decade alone, 1 in 10 workers were employed within the food system, representing a 34% increase from the past decade. In total, the food system generates an average of seven billion dollars of revenue for the city annually, or 6% of the total economic activity (Angelo and Goldstein 2016).

Denver’s food system has benefitted from decades of work by committed food-focused organizations, agencies, and other entities. Urban agriculture in Denver is particularly strong and has roots in mid-twentieth century victory gardens and, later, mayoral encouragement under the 1970’s Mayor’s Community Garden Program, led by then-mayor Fredrico Pena. In a formal sense, urban agriculture in Denver was launched in 1985 by Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), a non-profit organization established to support residents in creating food-producing community gardens. After the initial launch of three community gardens, DUG quickly expanded to operate 21 gardens by 1993 (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.). Within four more years, DUG had supported the establishment of 32 new gardens and the DeLaney Community Farm (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.). DUG continues to expand and currently, as of 2019, operates over 181 gardens across six counties in the Metro Denver Area (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.). DUG continues to expand and currently, as of 2019, operates over 181 gardens across six counties in the Metro Denver Area (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.).

In 2004, DUG partnered with the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) “Gardens for Growing Healthy Communities” initiative, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.). This community-based initiative broadly seeks to understand how community gardens support health and well-being. The initiative is led by a conceptual framework that describes community gardens as multifunctional in the sense that they serve as individual, social, cultural, health-based, and ecological places (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.). Research findings corroborate the various benefits of community gardens, such as increased vegetable consumption, physical activity, and social involvement (Litt et al. 2011), enhanced feelings of friendship and mutual trust with other community members (Teig et al. 2009), and improved mental health (Hale et al. 2011).

The emphasis on community and community-centered knowledge is not unique to the “Gardens for Growing Healthy Communities” initiative but is rather critical to DUG’s broader mission. The organization is explicit in its desire to facilitate ownership and partner with community members “to build and support community gardens…[DUG] need[s] to come alongside neighborhoods, in a support role, and they work to create their own urban community gardens. [DUG] seek[s] to enable, unite and empower residents to reach out and build their own community” (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.). Community members must fill out an application to start a new garden with DUG, rather than the organization selecting plots across the city. If DUG feels as if the community garden project is not quite ready, the organization will provide technical assistance and capacity building training to increase the likelihood of beginning a community garden within the area in the future (Denver Urban Gardens n.d.).

Despite the strength of urban agriculture and other food-focused organizations, peri-urban and rural food production/agriculture has faced challenges maintaining viability. Similar to trends across the United States, Denver has an aging agricultural workforce: 80% of farmers are 35 years or older, and of these, 20% are 65 years or older. Perhaps as a result, Denver has lost an average of over three farms per year from its peak in 1935 (279 farms) to 2017 (Cornell University 1935). More recently, from 2007 to 2017, the number of remaining farms halved from 24 to only 12. The decreasing number of farms is likely due to challenges such as barriers accessing agricultural inputs (i.e., land, water) and viable markets, extreme weather events, and a lack of consumer education about food production (Angelo and Goldstein 2016).

Likely due to growing economic disparities within the city, not all Denver residents are benefitting from the growth and increasing prominence of the local food system. For example, approximately 1 in 6 households experience food insecurity or hunger. This rate is even higher for children (1 in 5) (Angelo and Goldstein 2016). Further, approximately 70% of children within Denver Public Schools are eligible for free or reduced-cost meals (Angelo and Goldstein 2016). Low access to food disproportionately affects lower-income communities within Denver, such as Westwood, Barnum, Barnum West, Villa Park, Sun Valley, North Park Hill, Northeast Park Hill, East Colfax, Elyria Swansea, Clayton, Cole, Globeville, Five Points and Montbello. Overall, almost half of low- to moderate-income neighborhoods lack “convenient access” (i.e., transportation and presence of affordable options) to grocery stores.

Like many cities across the country, food insecurity maps closely with diet-related diseases. For example, in Denver, 1 in 2 adults (and 1 in 3 children) are overweight or obese, and 33% of the population eat less than one serving of fruit and vegetables per day (Angelo and Goldstein 2016). Likely as a result, 6 of the 10 leading causes of disease in the city are chronic diseases: cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, diabetes and chronic liver disease (Denver Public Health 2014). Within Denver, data indicate that risk factors for chronic disease vary considerably by race and ethnicity. For example, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes are all higher for Black and Hispanic adults than for White adults living within the city (Denver Public Health 2014). Similarly, Black and Latinx children are almost three and four times more likely, respectively, to be obese than White children, which in turn raises Black and Latinx children’s’ likelihood of developing chronic disease(s) as adults (Denver Public Health 2014).

Despite clear health disparities, food assistance programs are lagging behind clear health disparities within the city. Although the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) operates widely across Denver, both the city and the state of Colorado consistently lag far behind national enrollment rates. For example, in 2009, Colorado ranked 50th among the entire United States and the District of Columbia for residential SNAP enrollment (Lang and Kim 2011). To increase SNAP enrollment, as well as to encourage supermarkets to locate in underserved communities, the Denver Department of Environmental Health received a grant to convene the Denver Food Access Task Force. The 38-member task force, consisting of leaders from civic, health, food retail, economic development, government, and philanthropic organizations, prepared a report in 2011 titled Healthy Food For All: Encouraging Grocery Investment in Colorado. The report identified barriers to healthy food access within target neighborhoods, as well as provided nine policy recommendations to increase food and health outcomes for city residents. Broadly, the outcomes centered around three primary themes: to (i) “enhance Denver City and County systems to support healthy food retail development in underserved areas; (ii) establish a fresh food financing fund modeled on the successful Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, which provides access to capital for developing supermarkets and grocery stores,” and (iii) increase SNAP enrollment throughout Denver (Lang and Kim 2011).

The efforts of the Denver Food Access Task Force yielded slightly positive outcomes throughout the city of Denver and the state of Colorado. For example, the Task Force did achieve its goal of developing a Colorado Fresh Food Financing Fund (based on the Pennsylvania model) as a public-private partnership loan/grant fund to finance food retail locations in communities with low food access throughout Colorado. However, despite the Fund’s initial plan to invest an estimated $20 million in target underserved communities (Colorado Fresh Food Financing Fund n.d.), SNAP enrollment continues to remain low within Denver: less than two-thirds of eligible individuals are currently enrolled in SNAP (Ferguson et al. 2018). As a result, much of the current efforts on increasing food security have centered on alternative means, such as supporting urban production and distribution.

3 Food Policy in Denver

Denver has a rich set of plans and policies that seek to strengthen the local food system. While efforts were largely led by community-based organizations throughout the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century, the municipal government has accelerated its involvement in food-focused policies in the past decade, as illustrated in the timeline in Table 17.1. In more recent years, there has been increased collaboration across public and private entities on food policy which has resulted in both greater attention to local context and greater tension among stakeholders and solutions.

Table 17.1 Timeline of adopted food policy in the City and County of Denver, Coloradoa
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Steps taken to involve municipal government in food policy began in 2005 when Mayor (later Governor) John Hickenlooper launched Denver’s Sustainable Development Initiative (Goldstein 2011). The initiative was informed by businesses and community partners and sought to integrate environmental impact concerns into existing municipal policies and programs. To facilitate this process, in 2006 the City and County of Denver created Greenprint Denver, a 5-year citywide action plan that sought to reduce global warming emissions by 20% through balanced and renewable energy and green industries by 2020. In terms of food, the plan focused on materials required for food-related infrastructure, production, and food waste management. Greenprint Denver was the first major policy within Denver that formalized a vision for the city’s environmental responsibility, including in the food sector.

Likely due to the significant number of urban gardens in Denver, the next major policy update was to the city’s zoning code. The city adopted a new zoning code in 2010 that legitimized urban agriculture as a land use (Elliot et al. 2011). In what was referred to as a “standout example” by the American Planning Association (Mukherji and Morales 2010), the revised code allowed for both small and commercial gardening in various capacities throughout the city (City and County of Denver 2010). In 2018, Denver’s zoning code was further updated by the Denver City Council. The city’s zoning code defines agriculture as a primary use. Within agriculture, urban gardens are allowed as limited use (with zoning permit review) in all districts, and gardens as accessory to residential and nonresidential uses (with limitations) in all zoning districts of the city. The code also stipulates the rules for the sale of fresh produce grown in urban or accessory gardens (as part of home occupation). Keeping of urban livestock (chickens and ducks) without a zoning permit is allowed (American Planning Association 2021, City and County of Denver 2010).

Aside from the latest update of the zoning code, the majority of formalized food-focused plans and policies were passed by current Mayor Michael B. Hancock from 2011 onwards. Mayor Hancock has declared food as a priority area for his leadership, having adopted multiple plans (Be Healthy Denver, the Denver Adaptation Plan, Denver Food Vision and the Denver Food Action Plan), programs (FRESH, SEEDS, Denver Food Matters), and projects (Healthy Corner Store Initiative, Baseline Reports, and Food in Communities). Many of these initiatives have built off of or grown out of one another to expand the reach of policies in the food system.

3.1 Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council and Denver Food Vision

Denver’s experience suggests that even in progressive municipal landscapes policy creation, adoption, and implementation is a complicated process. Well-intentioned policies can be created but may not come to fruition in the way imagined by proponents. One experience for those interested in food policy comes from the ways in which policies proposed by Denver SFPC were adopted or not.

The Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council (SFPC) was established in 2010 under then-Mayor Hickenlooper at the request of the Department of Health with a primary purpose of promoting food policies, advising city agencies and entities on food-related plans and programs, providing recommendations to the City and County on regulations, and building public and political will to support changes within the local food system (Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council 2017). The SFPC is comprised of twenty-one members, with two co-chairs, twelve appointees from across the food system sectors, and four ex-officio non-voting members that work in city agencies, who serve as a channel between the SFPC and other departments within the city. New members must receive mayoral appointment and approval to serve on the council, and are chosen to “represent the diversity of the food system stakeholders and the Denver community including industry sector, demographics, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and geography” (Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council 2017, p. 2). Since its inception, the SFPC has advised the Mayor on various food policies, including the City Food, City Land initiative which failed to be adopted.

Table 17.2 Summary of Denver Food Vision: Section 1 by goal, priority, and strategy
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Much of the SFPC’s past and current work centers on Denver Food Vision, the city’s first food system plan. Approved and adopted by Mayor Hancock in October 2017, the plan is meant to serve as a blueprint for Denver’s food-related work until the year 2030, as well as to align various initiatives (i.e., local food policies and programs) that were approved by the Denver City Council in years prior. Denver Food Vision was a result of over 2 years of work and public engagement with individuals, organizations, and food system stakeholders. Initial planning began in 2015 with a series of monthly meetings held by the SFPC, which led to the conceptualization of the plan’s initial purpose, guiding principles, and definitions for success. According to the Vision, the SFPC was a leader in community engagement during the planning process by fostering new partnerships and providing extensive outreach.

Table 17.3 Summary of Denver Food Vision: Section 2 by priority and strategy
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Along with the series of public meetings led by the SFPC, an Interagency Working Group was established to coordinate community engagement sessions, analyze responses, and write the full document. The working group was comprised of members from the Office of Economic Development, Community Planning and Development, Department of Environmental Health, Denver Health’s Public Health Office, Colorado State University Extension in Denver County, and the Office of Children’s Affairs. Community listening sessions were held in all 11 city districts to understand community residents’ vision for an ideal food system within the city by 2030. The sessions sought to gather information on various food-related challenges within different parts of the city, as well as necessary steps for future implementation of the plan’s goals and strategies. To ensure inclusivity within the planning process, simultaneous translation of the community listening sessions were available in Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, Amharic, Ethiopian, and Burmese.

Focus groups were also held with 11 food-related industries. In contrast to the community events, at which the majority of attendees were residents, the industry focus groups fostered a deeper understanding of the specific needs of Denver’s food system stakeholders and helped to ensure that the resulting vision encompassed their needs and industry-specific aspirations. Industry focus groups were convened with: producers; processors; distributors; small and mid-sized grocery and farmers’ market retailers; restaurants, food trucks and caterers; institutional food buyers and food service; hunger relief providers; cooking and nutrition educators; and urban agriculture educators. Two regional focus groups were also held with state and regional experts in agriculture and community economic development, public health, and healthy food access.

The resulting food system plan has four focus areas: to be a city that is more (i) inclusive (Table 17.2); (ii) vibrant (Table 17.3); (iii) healthy (Table 17.4); and (iv) resilient (Table 17.5). Further, Denver Food Vision’s four focus areas are organized within a three-pronged action framework: (i) priorities, or statements of priority focus areas within the scope of influence of the city that must be addressed to achieve the Vision; (ii) strategies, or specific actions/requirements necessary to achieve the priorities; and (iii) winnable goals, or tangible, measurable impacts that demonstrate the achievement of the priorities.

Table 17.4 Summary of Denver Food Vision: Section 3 by priority and strategy
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Shortly after the adoption of Denver Food Vision, the city released the corresponding implementation-focused document, the Denver Food Action Plan. Denver Food Action Plan aligns with Denver Food Vision’s implementation strategy of releasing incremental action plans to maximize funding and reach across the city in the most equitable means possible. While urban agriculture hasn’t been the priority in the policies that have come out of the two plans, they have spurred on four policy focuses/projects since its adoption: food waste, food access and food justice, the Good Food Purchasing Program, and the Healthy Food for Kids program (Table 17.5).

Table 17.5 Summary of Denver Food Vision: Section 4 by priority and strategy
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Efforts around urban agriculture as a means of accessible food production have been picked up by individual stakeholders and organizations across Denver where conversations among the government and SFPC have left off. The Mile-High Farmers agricultural cooperative, a co-chapter of the Young Farmers Coalition and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, has separately taken up the mission to grow and develop agriculture in the Denver metro area “through urban farmer advocacy, collaboration among farmers and their communities, and eater education” (Mile High Farmers 2019). The network has 12 farm/market locations throughout the City and County and is always looking for new members while mapping the location of Denver farms for the public.

3.2 Urban Agriculture and the City Food, City Land Policy Advisory

Urban agriculture had been the primary lever of change of the SFPC in its beginning years and was thus the focus for their first championed initiative: City Food, City Land. The initiative aimed to tackle issues around land ownership and accessibility as well as food production, especially in low-resource communities--issues falling along contours of racial and economic inequities which also led to the initiative’s downfall.

City Food, City Land was a policy advisory, proposed by the SFPC, that was never realized, signaling the importance of both political and community context in both civic engagement and policy-making and adoption. The policy advisory sought to dedicate 100 acres of public and private land for UA within Denver. For context, very few for-profit farms exist within Denver while there are many small community gardens and non-profit farms scattered throughout the City and County. There is a deep racial thread that runs through the relationship between who is farming, versus ‘gardening,’ and where. The vast majority of the farmers and gardeners—those who have the time and access to both physical and financial resources to produce their own food—in Denver are White, despite the fact that most residents in neighborhoods with community gardens are people of color (Teig et al. 2009). What’s more, land ownership closely follows these relationships of race, income, and location, with urban farms and gardens using leased land, either public or institutional, that has the potential of being sold out from underneath the growers while growers in the surrounding area have the stability of income and food source from land ownership.

City Food, City Land was proposed by the SFPC over the course of 2014–15, during which the SFPC conducted significant public engagement with local food system actors and stakeholders to gain input and understand potential obstacles in implementation. Community engagement didn’t end in the planning phase, but was a component of the advisory itself, seeking to continuously engage the public throughout site selection and production, including notifying residents when a site was selected, and structuring Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to require food producers to solicit feedback from community residents who may be potentially impacted by newly established urban agriculture sites.

The City Food, City Land policy advisory failed to be approved by the Mayor’s Policy Review Committee when proposed in 2015. Despite the input received by the SFPC, one basic concept had been overlooked: there was simply not enough vacant land within Denver (much less appropriate for farming/gardening) to meet the hundred acres goal, city-owned or otherwise. Additionally, the SFPC initiative was competing for the little land that was available with other economic development initiatives from both the public and private sector, given the tight real estate market.

Due to the time and effort involved in creating the policy advisory, many members of the SFPC who worked on City Food, City Land advisory stepped down due to feelings of frustration and defeat, and the SFPC went through a period of rebuilding with little advancement of food initiatives. The impacts of the policy effort’s failure were not isolated to the SFPC but were also felt across the networks involved in the advisory and public engagement processes given the optimism around the SFPC’s goal and the nature of the large-scale community leadership and participation. During the subsequent phase of SFPC turn-over, what had previously been a predominantly White council, witnessed an increased representation of people of color. This, coupled with a change in leadership, has prompted a refocus towards food justice.

Yet, the idea promulgated in City Food, City Land showed up again in Denver Food Vision, Denver’s food systems plan, with the hopes the initiative might be reinvigorated. Denver Food Vision (in the community-engagement phase when the City Food, City Land policy advisory was released by the same SFPC members) calls for the conversion of 99.2 acres of land, an area equivalent in size to 25 city blocks, to food production (i.e., urban agriculture) by 2020. Although it was classified as a ‘Winnable Goal’ in the plan, the initiative has been sidelined for other projects.

4 Discussion

Although the City and County of Denver made significant strides in advancing food policy over the past two decades, the City failed to formalize one specific policy idea for integrating food production in Denver’s public spaces (Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council 2016). The reasons why the winnable goal and City Food, City Land advisory were not formalized or adopted are significant in examining the structural inequities and bureaucracy in mobilizing food systems changes through policy.

While community input is critical in achieving equitable outcomes, it is often ignored during planning processes (i.e., top-down planning), or included to varying degrees (i.e., tokenism) (Arnstein 1969). Yet, as is clear through the outreach process of both City Food, City Land and Denver Food Vision, the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council (SFPC) leveraged ongoing food-related work in the city by conducting a significant amount of engagement with local residents, producers, small farmers, non-profit gardeners, a cohort engaged in urban agriculture activities. Further, the SFPC sought to continuously build relationships with, and gain input from, the communities in which they worked. In Denver’s case there appears to have been an initial commitment to asset-based community development, which has made significant strides in planning practice over the last two decades (Kretzmann and Mcknight 1993). In particular, the actions of the SFPC deliberately sought to capture the experiences of local residents, groups, and organizations, and continue to involve communities by building capacity and seeking support for future decisions (Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council 2017).

Despite the SFPC’s equitable engagement strategy, there were subsequently major consequences in focusing too heavily on citizen engagement and not including local government agencies or entities throughout the policy-making and adoption process. Although the City Food, City Land policy advisory states that the proposed policy is aligned with “numerous goals, policy recommendations, and operational mandates within the City and County of Denver” (Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council 2017, p. 1) there was little direct outreach to local government to gain their input on the strategy, or make recommendations leading up to approval and/or implementation. While Raja et al. (2008) have showcased instances when community-based organizations successfully “circumvent, challenge, or advocate for alteration of municipal policies that affect their food system practice” (Raja et al. 2008, p. 185), the SFPC’s bold policy advisory necessitated that local government share the same ‘frame,’ or understanding of the problem and policy solution (Clark et al. 2017) with the SFPC and community groups. Had there been deeper dialogue and collaboration between the SFPC and the City and County government, the criticism that the policy idea faced (lack of enough vacant public space) may have been flagged earlier as an unattainable goal that required deeper revision.

The lack of collaboration and conversation between the government and SFPC could stem from the fact that the policy advisory was the first to be produced by the SFPC. Given the specific nature and framework of a mayoral advisory, in addition to the lack of established relationships between city agencies and the SFPC, the document may have lacked the strength and the SFPC the experience to form an effective and implementable policy. However, it is worth noting that mayoral advisories follow layers of processing and review before they are presented to the mayor. One such layer is a review by the Department of Public Health and Environment, the agency to which the SFPC is tied, and the agency that could have cut the review process short, keeping the advisory from ever reaching the mayor. The fact that the Department of Public Health and Environment did no such thing implies that the policy advisory for City Food, City Land was structured and practical enough to continue the review process, regardless of the fact that it was the SFPCs first document of the kind.

Perhaps more significant than the new relationship between the FSPC and the Denver Government were the precariousness of land tenure, the underlying contours around race, and prioritization of economic development over urban agriculture that contributed to the policy advisory’s failure. As previously mentioned, the land proposed to be converted into urban agriculture was not owned by those who would have been farming. Urban farms and community gardens are primarily utilized by Black and Latinx growers; given that the land would have been leased from either the government or institutions, Black and Latinx growers are less likely to have rights to that land. This increases the chances of the land being sold out from under them once their farms or gardens have increased the valorization of the community, contributing to green gentrification. Given Denver’s competitive real estate market, there was already a greater likelihood of this occurring. This raises questions of who is barred access, pushed out, or left behind in a neoliberal context of land ownership and land use, investments, and profitability.

These underlying systemic issues are not unique to Denver. Any area with a hot real estate market faces competing interests that prioritize larger profit margins for stakeholders with greater power, privilege, and positionality.

Although City Food, City Land advisory was never formalized into policy, it may never have truly died; community members in Denver continue to identify with the values and goals embedded in the original initiative. Although the current state of the policy idea is unclear, particularly with the rapid population influx and shifting food systems governance arrangements experienced by Denver in recent years, there may yet be a chance to revive the urban agriculture initiative. Given the localized nature of food systems planning, there is no set way to develop a successful policy. However, in order to increase the likelihood of future approval, involved parties must learn from the last iteration of the policy, discern the motivations of urban greening and economic development, and adopt reflexive methods of policy-making; in other words, to understand what went wrong and what needs to be changed moving forward.

5 Implications for Planning Practice

The experience of Denver allows us to engage deeply with what prevents food policy from being adopted and implemented. We argue that, like urban agriculture successes in Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, and other cities, it is equally important to understand the mechanisms behind a food policy failing, so that other municipalities that engage in similar work do not commit the same mistakes in the future.

In the case of Denver in particular, multiple groups were involved in developing the City Food, City Land policy advisory: community stakeholders (including local residents and producers), the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council, and the Denver City Council, though all to varying degrees. While it is clear the lack of cross-engagement and partnership proved to be a detriment for the adoption of the policy advisory in the long run, the unique configuration and involvement of multiple groups may prove opportunistic for other municipalities engaging in similar large-scale food policy projects in the future. Unlike past cases discussed by Clark et al. (2017), which focus primarily on interactions between local governments and community members, food policy councils may uniquely “connect the dots” between different organizations. FPCs may avoid previously-identified problems in inequitable planning processes, for example by providing resources to community members to participate in planning processes and, in contrast, by training local government staff to rethink how their community engagement process operates. Further, particularly in larger municipalities such as the City and County of Denver, local government entities and agencies can provide technical assistance to increase the capacity of FPCs to craft data-driven policy proposals with increased likelihoods of success within local government. Taking a cue from the case of Denver’s SFPC, involved organizations could leverage assets across involved agencies while crafting mutually beneficial visions for the future.

While there may have been practical reasons for the failure of the City Food, City Land proposal to convert city-owned vacant land to urban agriculture purposes, the failure itself poses broader questions about what it means for local governments to reject a community-led initiative. It can easily be argued that it was entirely reasonable for the Mayor’s Policy Review Committee to reject the proposal due to lack of the initiative’s feasibility, as well as for the SFPC’s disengagement from government agencies. Yet, there appeared to be few, if any, attempts for the Mayor’s Policy Review Committee to engage in adaptive decision making, during which reflections on, and alternatives for, the policy advisory could have been offered. This may have been done proactively; evaluation and reflection are often ignored during policy-making processes, or typically occur after a policy has been adopted and/or implemented (if at all). We argue that evaluation -- of feasibility, resources, capacity, etc. – should occur throughout the policy-making process itself to ensure inclusivity and equity. Such evaluation also increases potential for implementation. While trust between the involved parties is a prerequisite to such an approach, ongoing evaluation ensures that significant amounts of effort are not put to waste on formulating a policy that has little to no chance of being approved by local government officials. However, local governments may also arguably be tasked with developing alternatives to policies reactively, particularly for community-led initiatives. As Clark et al. (2017) write, equitable policy-making is not a linear process, but rather one that utilizes practices that are flexible and adaptive to changing contexts, relationships, and visions within community food systems.

Denver, a self-proclaimed “food city,” has a long history of food system planning and policy-making. Yet, one of the boldest policy ideas in the city--to convert 100 acres of city-owned land to food production--failed to be adopted, causing a restructuring of the then-recently formed food policy council, and a subsequent rethinking of food policy within the city. This outcome requires acknowledging that the way land and its uses are valued relates closely to the intersection of land ownership and structural racism in institutions. While many food system scholars laud innovative municipalities at the forefront of food system planning initiatives, there is limited research that draws lessons from the barriers and challenges in food system planning processes. Although this chapter showcases the experience of only one city, we hope that other food system actors learn from the case when attempting bold policy moves within their respective municipalities.