Keywords

1 Introduction

Planning education has played a key role in the emergence of food systems as a subfield of planning practice. As early as 1977, graduate students in a course taught by Robert Wilson in Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote a report that pointed to inequities in the city’s food system. Students recommended the formation of a city-wide council to address these inequities. Subsequently, in 1981, a resolution by the city council led to the formation of what became the country’s first food policy council. We begin with this story to illustrate the historic connections between planning education and food systems change in the United States.

In subsequent decades, a number of planning programs around the United States began offering planning studios (and/or courses) focused on food systems. Among these were the programs at University of Wisconsin-Madison, University at Buffalo, and Wayne State University (Whittaker et al. 2017). All of these studios have engaged in remarkable action-learning initiatives with real world impacts. Many, if not all, of these studios were taught by faculty who had trained with or were colleagues of Jerry Kaufman and Kami Pothukuchi at UW–Madison. Yet, there is little to no systematic examination of the long-term impact of food systems planning studios.

This chapter is a 16-year retrospective examination of a community-engaged studio focused on food systems, the Food for Growth Studio, taught at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (UB). On its face, the studio had several successes: (1) students won a series of local, regional, and national awards for the best student project, including the national AICP award, the first time such an award had been given to a food systems project; and (2) the studio seeded a long-term action research partnership between the community partner and the university (faculty member), benefiting both the community partner and the faculty.

This chapter offers a retrospective examination of the long-term possibilities and challenges of teaching a community-engaged food systems planning studio. The chapter explores a series of related questions: (1) How, and when, does a (food systems) studio experience influence student, community, and faculty pathways? (2) How, and when, do questions of ethics/equity drive or surface in the studio experience? (3) What are the limitations and challenges of teaching a community-engaged food systems planning studio?

2 Experiential Learning and Food Systems Planning

2.1 Experiential Learning Education

Experiential learning is a key part of any urban planning curriculum, a way to bridge the gap between theory and practice while giving students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom to a real world setting (Pojani et al. 2016; Rosier et al. 2016; Vidyarthi et al. 2012). Some of the most common types of experiential learning are planning studios and service learning courses. In a planning studio, a community partner serves as a client for a group of students who commonly write a report for the client. Studio courses allow students to gain experience working with community partners while developing the practical skills they will need throughout their career (Dearborn and Harwood 2011; Larsen et al. 2014). In experiential learning courses, students blend studying and volunteering. Often for universities, experiential learning also serves as a way of engaging in the community, strengthening community-university partnerships (Aftandilian and Dart 2013).

Community-university partnerships can amplify and strengthen community led-planning as well as serve as a tool for leveraging policy change (Sweeney et al. 2015; Whittaker et al. 2017). Food systems planners may engage in studio education as a venue for activism. By adopting a framework of equitable engagement, encouraging shared responsibility and shared learning, food systems researchers and food activists can build upon community assets and create transformative change (Sweeney et al. 2015). This blending of academic research and activism is powerful, but it can be challenging to maintain partnerships, find outside funding, and build community capacity long term (Mendes et al. 2011; Whittaker et al. 2017).

2.2 Food Systems Education

While much has been written about how the food system was decoupled from and then reintegrated into urban planning (Pothukuchi and Kaufman 1999, 2000; Soma and Wakefield 2011), less attention has been given to the evolution of food systems education (Greenstein et al. 2015). Food systems education reaches beyond the scope of what many would consider “traditional” planning as it “provides a systematic and comprehensive approach to identifying food system challenges and opportunities within a community and developing public policy tools to address them” (Growing Food Connections n.d.). Food systems education is deeply intertwined with themes of globalization, sustainability, public health and urbanization, and racial justice, and requires developing both critical and creative thinking (Brekken et al. 2018; Mendes et al. 2011).

In recent years the field of food systems has burgeoned with dozens of universities implementing university-wide food systems initiatives. According to a recent survey of syllabi from planning programs, the number of programs that include food systems in their curricula tripled from 2004 to 2012 (Greenstein et al. 2015; Mendes et al. 2011; Christiansen and Fischer 2010). For the purpose of this review, we have looked at both explicit and implicit food systems experiential learning.

A key theme raised in this review is the importance of how faculty frame issues and guide student interactions with regard to the communities and organizations they serve. Experiential learning is held up as a way to increase student understanding of social inequities and multicultural awareness; however, sometimes faculty and students exacerbate these issues in the ways that they engage with community partners. For example, if a student has a self-reported internal bias against individuals of a particular race, it is not appropriate to place them in a service learning experience where they would be in a position of authority over young adults of that race (Einfeld and Collins 2008). It is crucial that faculty not only be purposeful in their framing of issues of ethics and equity to ensure that students do not learn at the expense of communities, but also critical that faculty have done their own work with respect to white supremacy, structural racism, classism, and privilege. Otherwise, faculty run the risk of not modeling appropriate behaviors for their students (see Denckla Cobb and Bingham 2024).

2.3 Reflections on Experiential Learning in Food Systems

A literature review on food system-focused experiential learning found that community-university partnerships are more likely to result in positive outcomes reported by communities and increased awareness of the complex political, social, and economic issues within the food system on the part of students, when there is emphasis on the systemic nature of these challenges (Aftandilian and Dart 2013; Porter et al. 2008). Lessons can be reinforced by faculty through course readings and assignments on the following: cases of social injustice related to food, social issues such as environmental justice and environmental racism, or through meetings with community members who are also engaged in food systems work (Aftandilian and Dart 2013; Larsen et al. 2014). When the systemic nature of social issues is emphasized, student evaluations indicated that participation in experiential learning increased their awareness of the institutional barriers faced by low-income individuals, people of color, and other minority groups while expressing desire to improve programs and policies at the local, state, and federal levels (Porter et al. 2008).

Also key is that faculty invest significant time in building relationships with community partners and seek partner input on all aspects of the course including developing curriculum, establishing learning outcomes, evaluation criteria, establishing division of labor, and compensation for the community partners (Aftandilian and Dart 2013; Porter and Wechsler 2018). By doing so, faculty emphasize to students that community partners are sources of knowledge, have the final say on how projects will be executed, and that the aim is to help partners achieve their long-term goals (Aftandilian and Dart 2013). That said, community partners may be more concerned with addressing proximate issues through experiential learning courses rather than affecting long-term change. Faculty who fail to frame and treat community partners as experts and equals in the partnership were not able to achieve the same positive impact, as students failed to grasp broader concepts of community and social justice (Bauer et al. 2015). This resulted in students focusing on short-term problems instead of working with a community to generate long-term change (Bauer et al. 2015; Niewolny et al. 2012), and the period of time in which they are involved in the course sometimes puts blinders to the larger, systemic issues. Experiential learning courses that fail to frame the course as such lack critical examination and may not only fail to yield positive outcomes, but can result in harm to the community.

Many challenges exist in successfully executing an experiential learning course. Building relationships with community partners needed for experiential learning is often time consuming and labor intensive for faculty members. While institutions enjoy the positive publicity and improved community relations, they do not always provide formal support such as funding to execute the course or acknowledgment under faculty evaluation and reward structures (Niewolny et al. 2012; Whittaker et al. 2017). Community organizations also face myriad challenges in partnering with universities. Many community partners are underfunded or understaffed; engaging in experiential learning may drain their time and resources (Harris 2004; Niewolny et al. 2012; Porter and Wechsler 2018). Rather than being seen as an equal partner and source of knowledge, community partners may be relegated to a diminished role (Herrera 2018). It can be easy for students to fall prey to a “savior” mentality with regard to the communities they are serving (Bauer et al. 2015).

Food systems, in particular food production, is inexorably linked to a history of racial and social injustices (Sweeney et al. 2015). Therefore, addressing issues of equity, and racial and social justice are integral to any food systems planning course; failure to do so is a failure to teach about the reality of food systems. Between the challenging nature of such topics, the self-work that is necessary before faculty can approach them, and the time constraints of a semester, a deep dive into issues of racial and social justice can seem daunting to many faculty members. Nevertheless, it is crucial that studios highlight these embedded issues. Those studios that are willing to face these challenges see increased levels of personal investment from students and stronger community-university relationships (Aftandilian and Dart 2013; Herrera 2018; Larsen et al. 2014).

The literature on experiential learning most frequently features voices of faculty members, with few articles including student perspectives on the studio and almost none including the perspective of a community partner (Miller et al. 2012; Neuman 2016; Self et al. 2012; Smith et al. 2014; Wright 2006). This disproportionate representation poses a challenge when trying to evaluate the long-term success of experiential learning, and it is necessary to question on whose terms success can be defined.

One limitation in the literature on food systems education is the dearth of courses on food systems in rural areas. Out of a survey of food systems courses, 45% focused on food systems in urban areas, 52% addressed the linkage between rural and urban communities with regard to food, and only one course explored food systems through a rural lens (Greenstein et al. 2015). Faculty who wish to engage in experiential learning with a rural focus would benefit from examining the outcomes of other types of service learning in rural areas (Harris 2004). Faculty should also be mindful that their course material reflects issues of racial and social justice in rural contexts.

This review is not to suggest that experiential learning is too challenging to effectively engage in or that its role as a foundational piece of planning education is misplaced. Rather, it is a reflection on the deep and meaningful learning that can come from such an experience coupled with the acknowledgment that cultivating experiential learning takes a great deal of time, thoughtfulness, and investment on the part of the faculty, students, and community partners.

3 Methods

Sixteen years after the studio took place we contacted nine students, one community partner, and one faculty member involved in the studio. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with participants in the studio to gauge the following: their planning education as a whole, their experience participating in a studio focused on food, and whether or not there was sustained impact or change from their involvement in Food for Growth. Furthermore, we reviewed the course evaluations that all students in the course completed.

Interviews were conducted both over the phone and in person. Of the eleven students that were in the studio, we were able to contact nine of them. Four students participated in interviews along with the primary community partner, Diane Picard of Massachusetts Avenue Project and the faculty member, Dr. Samina Raja, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Additionally, we reviewed documents from the studio including the 150-page studio report and anonymous student evaluations from the course.

Limitations exist in our research. Unfortunately, we were not able to interview every student that was in the course. Those that responded were the students more involved in the studio; a few of them continued working on the report once the semester was over. Additionally, one student still directly engages in food systems work and two are in regional planning; thus, food is on their radar and they may have been more likely to respond. We hope that including the student reviews from all students involved in the studio addresses this issue.

4 The Buffalo Experience

4.1 Massachusetts Avenue Project

Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) was formed in 1992 by neighborhood residents in West Buffalo, NY. Initially MAP aimed to provide opportunities for youth to engage in purposeful activities and reduce violence and drug activity in the neighborhood. After incorporating in 2000, their vision broadened. In 2003, MAP founded the Growing Green program with the goal of addressing youth unemployment and food insecurity. At the time, 40% of the neighborhood was under age 18. While there was a Boys and Girls Club nearby, they served a younger population. Teenagers wanted to work, but few employers were hiring them. Since Growing Green began, over 650 youth jobs have been created (Massachusetts Avenue Project n.d.). Impressively, 98% of high schoolers enrolled in the program graduate, while in 2018 63% of students from City of Buffalo schools graduated (New York State Education Department 2018).

In the past decade MAP has become involved in more food policy work, including but not limited to advocating for legalizing backyard chickens, supporting the establishment of a city-county food policy council, and arguing for establishing zoning for urban agriculture in the 2016 city zoning code (see Fig. 23.1). In 2019 MAP’s long-awaited farmhouse opened, providing a community space, commercial kitchen, cold storage, and two apartments (see Fig. 23.1).

Fig. 23.1
A photograph of the community food training center.

MAP’s Farmhouse and Community Food Training Center opened in 2018

Full size image

4.2 West Buffalo

The City of Buffalo grew as a leader in food storage and transportation with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, allowing grain and goods to move easily from the Eastern Seaboard through the Great Lakes. The city’s population grew, reaching a height of about 580,000 in 1950 (US Census Bureau 2015). Due to the closure of industry, the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway, and white flight, Buffalo’s population decreased steadily to 261,000 by 2010 (US Census Bureau 2015). West Buffalo, where MAP is located, has historically been a neighborhood of immigrants. One of the most diverse areas of Buffalo, neighborhoods in West Buffalo include Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, Black and white residents (McManus 2016). While Italian immigrants first settled here, in recent decades the neighborhood has become home to growing numbers of Puerto Ricans and those arriving in Buffalo as refugees.

West Buffalo experienced decades of disinvestment from the city and crime rates rose. Residents and organizations – like those involved in MAP – worked to keep their neighborhoods safe. Between 1990 and 2000, West Buffalo experienced the following changes: a 11.9% decrease in the average median family income, a 19.8% decrease in population, and a 27.8% decrease of families not in poverty (Almeida et al. 2003). The city as a whole experienced an increase in median family income but also lost population, although not as much (US Census Bureau 1990, 2000).

In recent years West Buffalo has changed: new businesses, toast cafes, multiple urban farms, and bike shares have popped up. People have begun talking about gentrification a concept that in 2003 few were discussing. The neighborhood surrounding MAP saw an increase in the average income as middle class residents moved in, and low income residents were pushed out by increasing rent prices. As of 2010 approximately 24% of households were below the poverty line; by 2017 only 20% of households were below the poverty line (US Census Bureau 2015, 2017). Throughout these neighborhood changes, MAP has adapted to the needs of the populations they serve.

5 Studio as Part of UB Curriculum (in 2003)

In 2003, one studio course was required as part of the Master of Urban Planning (MUP) program at UB. At the time, students routinely enrolled in a studio course in their third semester as an opportunity to blend the theory and methods they learned in their first year of coursework. Now, two or more studio courses are offered each semester and students choose a studio (though a choice is not always guaranteed). Studio courses are six credits, allowing students to engage in about 10 hours of dedicated class time a week with a total of 15–25 hours of work.

In 2003, Dr. Samina Raja was an assistant professor at UB, teaching a studio course for the first time in this role. While pursuing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison she had worked as a research assistant with Jerry Kaufman, Kami Pothukuchi, and Marcia Caton Campbell, who introduced her to food systems planning. Raja saw teaching a studio focused on food as an opportunity to clarify her own research agenda and to bring a new and novel subfield of planning to the department and UB.

Raja met with Diane Picard, then Program Manager for the Growing Green program at MAP. Picard described the group of community gardening stakeholders across the city she was convening. The intellectual ideas unfolding in Raja’s head were being practiced by Picard and MAP. The two decided that working together on the studio was a good place to start, with the goal of conducting a community food assessment for the West Side. Unfortunately at the time there was no funding to conduct a food focused studio. Raja spoke with the then Chairperson, Dr. Kathryn Foster, who approved the studio.

Over the next decade, food became an integral part of the curriculum at UB. Currently, UB MUP students can choose community health and food systems as an area of specialization. A food systems planning course is offered yearly in the program. Concurrently, Raja and MAP continued to work together, and won an award for excellence in community-university engagement in 2016.

6 Food for Growth Studio: Content, Process, and Impact

The purpose of this planning studio was to draft a neigborhood food systems plan in collaboration with residents and organizations in a neighborhood on the West side of Buffalo. Students were instructed to treat their work in the course as if they were working as a planning consultant; each student had both an organizational and thematic role in the studio. The semester was organized by the traditional components that are included in a comprehensive plan, such as “visioning” and “data collection”. Through extensive surveys (and interviews, focus groups, and site visits) with residents and store owners in the neighborhood and GIS analysis, UB students drafted a report to strengthen the food system in this neighborhood. The draft plan was reviewed by residents, and ultimately submitted to the community organization for their use.

In 2005, Food for Growth won the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Student Project Awards at the American Planning Association (APA) National Conference in San Francisco (American Planning Association n.d.). The news was covered in the local newspaper (The Buffalo News 2005), and some students and faculty from the course traveled to the conference to receive the award.

Lessons from the studio were disseminated nationally. Raja wrote a prospectus about the studio, Seeking Common Ground in Smart Growth and Food System Planning: Lessons From the ‘Food for Growth’ Studio, published on the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) website (Raja 2006). In the report Raja details how smart growth and food systems planning can be integrated, smart growth having an impact on food access. Importantly, findings from the studio were used locally and the course was the beginning of a long-term partnership, as the University at Buffalo and MAP still work together today. The report was used to guide MAP’s programming as well as in future grant proposals. Raja and Picard have gone on to collaborate on various food systems planning work in Buffalo: from advocating for a food policy council which was enacted in 2013, to co-authoring a journal article, Rustbelt Radicalism: A Decade of Food Systems Planning Practice in Buffalo, New York (Raja et al. 2014).

7 Lessons Learned

While Food for Growth was not the first studio course focused on food, food was not yet a topic routinely covered in planning. According to students in the course, the food system was a new topic area for them. Various lessons were learned, including, more generally, the role of studios in planning education as a way to practice theory, methods, and justice in an environment where mistakes can be made. We lay out the benefits and challenges that come with studio education, and particularly food planning studio education, in the context of the Food for Growth studio. We acknowledge that reflecting on a course 16 years later was challenging for interviewees, which is why we supplement the interviews with an analysis of course evaluations.

With respect to food, the Food for Growth studio was an opportunity to introduce new topics to the planning program and a way for Raja to both explore and expand her research. After meetings with MAP, one theme in particular emerged: that there was a tendency for planners and researchers to come to a neighborhood with ideas on what will work, without asking the community about their issues and ideas for solutions (not a problem unique to UB). We answer the following questions: (1) How, and when, does a (food systems) studio experience influence students, community, and faculty pathways? (2) How, and when do questions of ethics/equity drive or surface in the studio experience? (3) What are the limitations and challenges of teaching a community-engaged food systems planning studio?

7.1 Food Systems Studios and Student, Community, and Faculty Pathways

As one of the early food systems studios in the United States, we were curious whether and how the UB studio experience affected participants both when it was occurring, as well as in the subsequent years. Studio courses are a cornerstone of planning education, as they give students an opportunity to use both theory and practice learned in other courses. While other disciplines may offer service learning classes, they do not have the depth that a six-credit planning studio provides. Raja reflects on the role of studios in planning education:

Studio is where we blend technical expertise with the art of making judgment. The key essence of planning is to be able to think what we want a future community to look like. And I think the exercise of what the future ought to be is best tested out in a studio. So that’s the piece that I don’t think we get in any other course. We may learn the methods, we may learn the theory, but [the place] you put it all together is in the studio. The studio is truly reflection in action, but with a little bit of a safety net. You try all these ideas while you are still a student but you also have the protection of being in a studio so you can test out some things. But it’s not naive like a seminar course where you are not answerable to an external client. So the blend of both having the space to stretch a little bit, which comes in an academic setting but then being accountable to an external party, I think, makes the studio a really good learning experience.

Numerous students, both in interviews and course reviews, report that the studio was their first opportunity to put into practice what they had learned in other courses. Recalling their graduate education, one student said, “I would have likely enjoyed the program more if I was doing a studio every semester, or at least twice a year. That is where I got to see planning in action, which you don’t often get in a classroom setting.” They also stated that “you stay within the four walls of your academic building [in other courses], just to be able to get out in the world is really important.”

Studio education allows students the opportunity to work with a community that to many, may be unfamiliar. Working with a new community “brought me more compassion for the people that are there,” while another stated that “there was so much more to planning than what was in the classroom and it gave me just so much more compassion for the people that we plan with and for and just the whole idea of planning with, not planning for. That idea was reinforced and that is something that I have tried to bring forward into my career.”

Not only does the studio experience provide a wider lens through which students can view the world, but it provides an opportunity to work with different audiences. In Food for Growth, students worked with a variety of community members, from store owners, to youth involved at MAP, to residents living in senior housing. A student reflected on one community engagement experience, saying that when going into neighborhood markets where owners were sometimes suspicious of outsiders, the students chatted in order to put people at ease. Students learned how to overcome barriers as outsiders, a skill crucial in their planning careers. Additionally, they were required to present their findings to a variety of audiences including the city common council and the community partner.

Multiple subfields of planning are covered in food systems planning, and a food studio course gets students to consider multiple facets of planning. One student, now a regional planner, discussed how food systems planning prepared them for a career in regional planning:

Regional planning is big picture planning. You’re looking at holistic systems, we touch almost everything except education. Whether it be economic development, environment, transportation, land use, cultural and historic resources…all those different things…And the concept of food planning is very similar to that. Because it’s not just about the food, it’s not just about getting food to people that are hungry, it’s about economic planning, it’s about transportation planning, it’s about land use planning, it’s about agricultural planning. So I think the fact that something like food and food systems touches upon almost all the different areas of what planning and planners get involved in helped prepare me for a career in regional planning because regional planning is about the big picture, the food system that sort of touches everything.

Students and faculty recall other planning topics that came up in the studio that were not routinely covered including gender, and the role of immigrants. Many students report that their planning education was improved specifically by being in a food studio and that “We had never heard about food systems planning until then”. One student had known about food systems planning, as she saw Jerry Kaufman’s keynote at the American Planning Association conference in Denver the previous spring and was inspired to take the studio course. Another student said “I feel that I was fortunate to end up in that studio. Being able to work with a community group, working in a part of planning that I didn’t even know existed, but doing it in a very tangible way, it gave me so many skills that I am still realizing that I am benefitting from.” Students were surprised and moved by the experiences of community members. Multiple students discussed the shock they felt learning about people’s experiences with food. One recalled, “to hear it took them [residents] two hours on a bus to get to a grocery store…that blew my mind coming from suburbia USA. To think about something so simple as going grocery shopping, for many in our community is so much more than that, it is an all-day affair.”

The studio did influence one student who went on to work in the field of food systems planning. Two other students, while not food systems planners, work in regional planning and say that food is a sub-field of planning they now think about, in part because of the studio. Overall, Food for Growth gave students an opportunity to thoughtfully engage with a community.

Both faculty and community partners benefitted in the long term from partaking in the studio experience. Raja reflects on her experience in the studio:

If we were to identify different anchor points in my life as a scholar, researcher and educator, I would say the studio is a key anchor point because it did several things. It helped me understand really what role planning could play in food, it also helped me understand how food actually impacts people’s lives in a community setting, and it helped me draw the linkages between food and other areas of planning. In some way the studio was an exercise for the students and myself on how to unravel how food is connected to planning. It was probably as much a learning exercise for me as it was for the students.

While studios technically only last a semester, the work can nevertheless be deep, facilitating much learning in a short period of time. As stated above, studios can facilitate learning beyond the classroom, setting the stage for research and partnerships. MAP’s Picard also reflected fondly on the experience, stating that the studio report influenced the work MAP has engaged in since then.

7.2 Ethics and Equity in the Studio Experience

In reflecting on Food for Growth, we aimed to understand how issues of ethics and equity surfaced. While these were not themes that were deliberately included in the course, multiple interviewees discussed the approach that students in the studio took to their work as incorporating ethics and equity. These include thoughtful collaboration and utilizing a bottom-up approach.

Community-university partnerships need to be equitable and ethical in their interactions to be successful. While a long-term relationship allows trust between community and university partners to develop, an equitable relationship must be established between the partners from the beginning. In Raja’s work with MAP, this deliberate approach to an equitable and ethical relationship is evident in how the role of the community partner was framed within the studio. MAP was involved in multiple aspects of the course including developing the studio, establishing desired outcomes and providing feedback on student work performance after the completion of the studio. Raja worked to make sure that the studio aligned with MAP’s organizational mission and long-term goals. Additionally, Raja ensured that the division of labor between the university and MAP accounted for the inequity in resources between the two organizations. In addition to the creation of the Food for Growth plan, students created multiple posters as part of the studio. These were given to MAP as an acknowledgment of the time and resources MAP invested in the studio and were used by MAP as educational tools. Raja and the students also presented their findings to the city common council and advocated on behalf of MAP.

While the studio was the first opportunity for Raja and MAP to work together, this spurred a long-term collaboration. MAP has become a strong community partner and collaborator with Raja, and Picard and Raja have published together on multiple occasions. While some faculty work with a different client or community partner each semester, maintaining a long-term relationship has many benefits, including strengthening the relationships between community partners and universities.

Food for Growth used a bottom-up approach to planning, involving community members in each step of the planning process. The West Side neighborhood had experienced decades of disinvestment and outmigration, leaving many vacant lots and houses. While outsiders had proposed solutions, few had worked with the community. Raja reflects on the studio’s aspirations for their planning process:

Some of the things that were driving us [in the studio] is that we were acutely aware, after our first few visits, that there was a tendency for planners and maybe researchers to come to the community with predefined ideas of what works. There were a lot of inequities in the neighborhood that nobody was lifting up and there were also solutions in the neighborhood that no one was lifting up. So I would say, implicitly, the ethics behind the studio were that we wanted to delve into questions of poverty and access, but I also think that we were acutely aware of how important it was to have direct voices of people in the planning process.

Student work examined the interconnected ways that access to affordable and nutritious food was affected by multiple issues such as income, disinvestment, and transportation, coming from the viewpoint of community members. Students in the studio tried to listen before presuming. One student reported that you need to “be willing to ask questions and to hear answers that you have not have thought of.” The students were also mindful of being inclusive in the planning process and engaging with community members to learn from the community what their needs were. One student said of the process:

[We were] really going to the most marginalized groups. For me, as a planner, you want to try and be as inclusive as possible, and for us in that studio we were really reaching out, we were going to where people are, not asking them to come to us. As far as what we aspire to, we need to go to the places where people are and where they have their communities and where they have their needs, in order to better understand them (the needs that they are talking about) but also to be a face to whatever issues is, to actually put a face to the issue, because it’s not just an issue it’s a person.

While equity was not explicitly discussed within the report, the students took an equitable approach to the research and writing the report by engaging and checking in with community members throughout the process. Picard discussed working with many academics during her time at MAP and recalled that the students involved in Food for Growth listened to what the community needed, then designed their report, coming in with no preconceived notions. This is spelled out clearly in the report:

Public involvement is an essential component of any planning process. Without community involvement, a food system plan runs the risk of being cursory, irrelevant, misguided or ineffective. Because their personal accounts most accurately reflect the community’s existing food security issues, residents must guide the planning process to ensure short and long term community food security. (Almeida et al. 2003, p. 12)

In the report, recommendations clearly build on the “seeds of a community food system” that MAP had already planted (Almeida et al. 2003, p. 68). In putting community members first, students and faculty must work from the assets that already exist in a community.

Lastly, this bottom-up approach to planning also required students to confront their own societal privileges around these issues. One student reflected on this process:

Access to food is something which most college students who are coming from a middle class, suburban background just take for granted. That it will be there, and that they have access to it, and that, ultimately, they have some sort of power to be able to get themselves to it and be able to feed themselves affordably and nutritiously…The equity issue was front and center here. You have the lower West Side which is not an affluent neighborhood. People are working class. They don’t have the resources of people in other places to be able to shop where they like or to buy things just because they want them.

While the outcomes were not necessarily about ethics, those in the studio ensured that ethics and equity were included in the process of the studio. This experience, if executed in a thoughtful way, can be influential for planners. It is crucial to be able to understand the experiences of others and listen before making assumptions. Studio courses, especially ones that explicitly bring up ethics and equity, can help to bring these themes to the classroom.

7.3 Limitations and Challenges of Community-Engaged Food Systems Planning Studios

Various challenges exist in teaching a successful community-engaged food studio course. Although studios are often six-credit courses allowing students more time to focus on the course, the short duration of a semester can hinder the depth of community engagement and the resulting final product. One student, in reflecting on her experience sticking to a timeline in Food for Growth said, “Students are learning …that gets sticky when condensing it to a three-month period. Be open and flexible to a timeline. Just because there is this deadline in December doesn’t mean that the work has to end there. Have a gameplan for what happens after.” This should not be an issue if community partners and faculty have an ongoing relationship, but should be discussed.

The tight timeline may lead to other challenges. If it is the first time a faculty member is working with a community partner, they may be unfamiliar with the history of an organization and the area that they serve. Raja reflects on this, as Food for Growth was her first experience working in West Buffalo:

I think what protected us from making colossal mistakes in the studio is that we were engaging with people, we were listening to people. In other words, even though I am now aware that I didn’t pay attention to the history of the West Side, what protected us from doing a bad job is that we had a very heavy community engagement component in the studio. But if we didn’t have that, in hindsight, I think to myself, “wow, we knew very little about the history of this neighborhood.” I think that was an oversight.

While not ideal, strong community partnerships can help ensure that students and faculty are able to successfully navigate communities which they themselves may not be a part of. Community partners can facilitate connections and provide guidance to faculty members on the nuanced relationships which exist in the community.

A further challenge is that while studios can result in a useful plan for a community partner, it is often a big lift for them. Community partners that are smaller non-profits may not have the staff time to dedicate to overseeing and engaging with a studio course. From connecting students to stakeholders, to providing feedback on the report, community partners play a large role in food systems planning studios. Students should not rely on community partners to recount information that can be found from a careful reading of their websites or to write lengthy responses. Students and faculty need to tread lightly when it comes to asking community partners for their insights.

Additionally, studio courses can be taxing for all involved: community partners, students, and faculty members. Raja reflected that she was so focused on the wellbeing of the neighborhood and community partner, especially as a new faculty member, that she did not consider the wellbeing of the students themselves. Students coming from limited wealth may have been especially triggered by the studio experience. It’s crucial to consider both community partners and students in studio courses.

Lastly, teaching what was in 2003 a relatively new topic like food systems brought additional challenges. Many students stated that the studio course was their first introduction to food systems planning. Because of this, students reported needing more time dedicated to seminars. One student review said, “A little more time could have been spent in the beginning of the studio going over the basics of food security. Some people just didn’t get it and it slowed the rest of the studio down,” while another said “Major studio concepts needed to be ingrained in student’s [sic] heads much earlier in the semester” and “I would have liked to have a better understanding of the entire process of the food system. Not just a part of it.”

These challenges are common to many studio courses that cover a topic new to the field of planning. Thoughtful community engagement, clear communication with partners and students, and an understanding of what is doable within the scope of a studio are all important to keep in mind.

8 Directions for the Future

While food systems planning has grown to be a more routine topic in planning in the past 16 years, there is work yet to do. We include both general suggestions for food systems planning studios and recommendations for executing an effective studio course in any subfield of planning.

8.1 Food Systems Planning Studios

Studios continue to be a cornerstone of planning education, where students have the opportunity to apply the methods and theory they have learned in courses to a real-world client. While food systems planning studios provide an opportunity to work across subfields of planning, they also train students in a systems-based approach, which is the basis of many subfields such as regional planning. Studios give students the opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary setting and acquire experience engaging directly with communities. Studios also provide the opportunity to cover topics not discussed in core planning classes, and for students to gain experience finding commonality among diverse groups. Issues of ethics and equity must be prominent within planning studios to ensure that students are engaging with communities in ways that build on community assets and provide the means for long-term growth. The flexibility of studio experiences also is an ideal way to explore new facets of planning and connect different subfields. They provide space for emerging scholars to engage in research and explore innovative approaches to systemic issues.

8.2 Recommendations

8.2.1 Building Authentic Community Partnerships

It is important for faculty to build authentic partnerships before beginning the studio, and ensure that the community partner is engaged in the process before, during, and after the semester. Food systems are complex; they are influenced by a number of factors including geographic and economic access, local and regional restrictions on food production, and cultural norms around food. The challenges and opportunities present in the local food system may not be readily apparent to academic outsiders. Community partners provide much needed context without which food systems planning will not be effective.

Before beginning the studio, community partners should co-create goals and evaluation criteria to ensure that they are aligned with the organization’s long term mission and needs. The responsibilities of community partners and faculty should be clearly established, and issues such as community partner compensation or the distribution of funding should be addressed. The community partner should work with faculty to decide what deliverables are most useful to the partner, while the faculty member works to determine what is most realistic and appropriate for the studio.

Before beginning the studio, faculty should also ensure that students understand both how it serves the community partner’s mission, what the short- and long-term goals are, and what skills students will have the opportunity to develop during the course. This is also an opportunity for faculty to help students understand how the food system ties into the broader context of local and regional planning; the food system is connected to many other areas of planning and is therefore sensitive to changes in transportation, housing, both local and national plans and policies, and environmental issues. Students should be clear on why they are engaging in this work, what the expectation is, and how food systems connect to other areas of urban planning.

During the studio there should be ongoing communication between the community partner and both faculty and students; assigning a student to be responsible for a liaison role can be helpful. Students should make periodic presentations to community partners as the work progresses, as well as conduct periodic check-ins to ensure the studio is meeting community partner expectations. Ongoing communication is particularly crucial for food systems work given the complexity of the food system. Community partners can provide insight into initial findings, and make recommendations to ensure that students are not overlooking any key areas. Faculty should be mindful that community partners may not have the capacity for extensive mentorship of students and make sure that the time invested by the community partner is not burdensome to them.

After the studio is concluded, the faculty should provide opportunities for community partners to give feedback on student performance and outcomes and incorporate this feedback into future work. There should be continued communication between faculty and the community partner regarding next steps such as a grant proposal or future research. Finally, if faculty seek to publish based on the studio, there must be opportunities for community partners to review and contribute to these publications to ensure that the perspectives of the university and community are given equal representation in the literature. Food is rooted in cultural practices and norms; it is essential to ensure that the community perspective on the food system is represented accurately.

8.2.2 Building on Community Knowledge

Faculty framing of issues is also an important consideration, as it will strongly influence how students approach the studio experience. It should be clear to students that the studio work needs to meet the expectations of the community partner and serve community needs. It is also important that faculty emphasize to students that they are working with the community. Community members should be seen as a valuable source of knowledge regarding the opportunities and challenges that they face. Practicing cultural humility should be emphasized by the instructor, especially when working with diverse communities. Issues of ethics and equity should be emphasized by assigning students readings that discuss issues of systemic inequality and encourage reflection on the systemic barriers many communities face in accessing affordable and nutritious food.

The studio should start in the community and build up, not start in the university and work down. As Picard said during her reflection, “If you’re not a member of the community you are doing work in, it’s important to spend time in the community, get to know people in the community, the things that happen, and how people interact. Unless you do that and really have that community focus, I think your work is not going to have as much impact.” The importance of this cannot be overstated. Faculty and students must be willing to listen to communities without preconceived notions of what a community needs or the challenges it is facing. By maintaining a community focus, studios can bring together the resources of universities and the knowledge of community partners to build upon community assets and create lasting change.

Finally, a clear path for future community engagement should be presented to students at the end of the semester. Faculty should make clear what opportunities for continued work exist and are appropriate. For example, students may want to continue to volunteer with the community partner or help to advocate for policy change. Faculty should clarify for students whether or not they will be notified if the faculty chooses to publish based on the studio, and what opportunities students will have to contribute to that publication. Faculty should also make sure students are aware of other opportunities such as other community organizations looking for volunteers, food systems work by local activists, or classes and conferences where they can continue to engage in food systems education.