Agritopia: a new kind of urban green space

[FireLane]

Here's an interesting article about "agrihoods" - planned residential communities built around working farms. People who live in these developments can reserve space to grow their own gardens, or buy the produce that the communal plots produce, CSA-style. (I assume they hire workers and don't depend on volunteer labor from the people living there.)

https://apnews.com/article/phoenix-arizona-agrihood-agritopia-farms-neighborhood-sprawl-a749ddd6ae3a08d8bb7d37bebda1c163

The article is about Agritopia, a walkable community in Phoenix, AZ designed around an 11-acre organic urban farm. I like the "kid pod" of houses that all back onto a shared green space, where kids can play without their parents needing to worry they'll get lost or wander into traffic.

The neighborhood features narrow streets and homes within walking distance of restaurants, bars, shops, small parks and fitness businesses. The farm is at the center of it.

Johnston said he knew “not everyone’s going to be passionate about agriculture.” That’s why he was intent on creating a village where people have spaces to come together; it’s up to them how much, if at all, they want to be involved in farming.

Still, farms are a selling point for developers especially across the Sun Belt who compete to offer pools, gyms, parks and other perks to would-be residents who have a wide range of planned communities to choose from, said Scott Snodgrass. He’s founding partner of a developer that created Indigo, an agrihood outside Houston, and also of a company called Agmenity that runs farms for agrihood developers.

Between this place and Culdesac, Arizona is doing a lot of experimenting with walkable and sustainable-by-design neighborhoods. It would be pretty cool to live in a neighborhood with its own farm, where you can go into the garden plot next to your house and pick some things for dinner as an alternative to going to the supermarket.

[GuitarStv]

What they're showing there . . . is not a farm.  Working farms near residential areas can work, but often tend to not work out well.  People complain about the smell of manure and fertilizer, don't like pesticides, hate the noise of tractors running during harvest time, complain about equipment blocking roadways when they are trying to drive around.

In this, there's barely a parks worth of land sandwiched between a bunch of single family homes with a few low rises nearby?  If it's really well maintained and your crops work out well, you're going to grow enough food for 3, maaaaaybe 4 people for a year on an acre of land . . . so this is making food for 30 - 40 people max.  But it also says that it's a communal plot.  And (from experience) that tells me that it's not going to be well maintained.  Probably getting a max yield of enough food to feed 20 people?  There's no way this is 'sustainable living' as sold.  This is some kind of weird half gentrification of farmland half farming cosplay thing.  Don't get me wrong, I like that they seem to have tried to make things slightly more walkable, but it feels like it's playing up to an idealized, imagined idea of what farm life is like.  Like, c'mon.  'Fitness businesses' within walking distance?  I don't know too many farmers who need to hit the gym after a day of work.  :P

[Weisass]

Very cool, @FireLane . Thanks for sharing. I like the emphasis on small village life, and building community through good design.

[FireLane]

In this, there's barely a parks worth of land sandwiched between a bunch of single family homes with a few low rises nearby?  If it's really well maintained and your crops work out well, you're going to grow enough food for 3, maaaaaybe 4 people for a year on an acre of land . . . so this is making food for 30 - 40 people max.  But it also says that it's a communal plot.  And (from experience) that tells me that it's not going to be well maintained.  Probably getting a max yield of enough food to feed 20 people?  There's no way this is 'sustainable living' as sold.  This is some kind of weird half gentrification of farmland half farming cosplay thing.  Don't get me wrong, I like that they seem to have tried to make things slightly more walkable, but it feels like it's playing up to an idealized, imagined idea of what farm life is like.

It's true this small farm isn't going to feed the entire community, but I don't think the developers ever pretended otherwise.

I gather it's being sold as a lifestyle amenity. The draw is that you're living somewhere you can be close to the earth. You can spend time in nature, get your hands dirty, show your kids where food comes from.

You're not going to supply all your food needs from this; you still have to go to the supermarket. But it's a throwback to an older, simpler lifestyle that lots of people still say they want. I'd certainly take a place like this over one that's next to a soulless shopping mall or a manicured golf course.

[GuitarStv]

In this, there's barely a parks worth of land sandwiched between a bunch of single family homes with a few low rises nearby?  If it's really well maintained and your crops work out well, you're going to grow enough food for 3, maaaaaybe 4 people for a year on an acre of land . . . so this is making food for 30 - 40 people max.  But it also says that it's a communal plot.  And (from experience) that tells me that it's not going to be well maintained.  Probably getting a max yield of enough food to feed 20 people?  There's no way this is 'sustainable living' as sold.  This is some kind of weird half gentrification of farmland half farming cosplay thing.  Don't get me wrong, I like that they seem to have tried to make things slightly more walkable, but it feels like it's playing up to an idealized, imagined idea of what farm life is like.

It's true this small farm isn't going to feed the entire community, but I don't think the developers ever pretended otherwise.

I gather it's being sold as a lifestyle amenity. The draw is that you're living somewhere you can be close to the earth. You can spend time in nature, get your hands dirty, show your kids where food comes from.

You're not going to supply all your food needs from this; you still have to go to the supermarket. But it's a throwback to an older, simpler lifestyle that lots of people still say they want. I'd certainly take a place like this over one that's next to a soulless shopping mall or a manicured golf course.

To preface this . . . something about the whole article as presented just really rubs me the wrong way.  It feels like just more greenwashing.  I'm also not a fan of the in your face Christian nature of the place - the only school in the neighbourhood is a private religious school that focuses on spiritual development and the designer stated his vision was to 'honor [the Christian] God'.  And it's entirely possible this is just a me problem, so if you don't want to delve further into that then read no more.


I get what it's being sold as.  Hell, read the marketing speak in the article - it's sold as being a more sustainable living.  Sustainable how?  The hobby farm doesn't make enough food to actually feed people.  The people nearby live in a cookie cutter planned community exactly like every other Earth destroying cookie cutter planned community:


There are four restaurants in the community, but no grocery store.  Weird that they're not showing where all the SUVs that get driven down to the grocery story each week are parked.

Beyond the adspeak, how is this closer to the 'earth' than gardening in your average single family home though?  Personally, I'd much rather have a quiet wood real greenspace near me than a pretend farm for yuppies.  It would certainly be less environmentally damaging.  Farming isn't 'nature'.  The purpose of farming is to disrupt nature - to bend it to your will, growing whatever things that you want to grow and driving off the pests that you don't.  There are no tractors in nature.  No neat lines of South American crops (potatoes, tomatoes, etc.) growing in North America.

This doesn't seem like a throwback to an older, simpler lifestyle.  Farming in Edwardian or Victorian times was a backbreaking morning to night full time job.  Before that it was even harder.  The second that it was possible to abandon it for the more modern way of doing things, people did.  Like I said, this feels like a weird kind of gentrified* cosplay, packaged and sold to be consumed by people who want to pretend they're not consuming something.



Ah, a planned neighbourhood of low rise single family homes built over what was once used as farmland - but they kept a tiny hobby farm so all is cool.  Looks like lovely sustainable grass growing there in the desert upon which to congratulate yourself for saving the world . . . that the designers had a real challenge with.  In Arizona it's illegal to plant grass strips in residential rights-of-way because of the amount of water required to sustain the grass.  Fortunately they were able to circumvents the right-of-way constraint by legally redefining where the property line was allowing these unsustainable grass planting strips to prevail. (https://www.terrain.org/unsprawl/24/).   Reclaimed water or other alternative water saving landscape features do not exist onsite . . . despite this being in the middle of the fucking desert.




* Nothing says gentrification like a neighbourhood covenant forbidding anyone from renting a house.  Oh, and you won't have to worry about looking at poors either.  Houses start in this planned community at half a mil - about a hundred grand over the phoenix average.  There are multiple listings at over a million (https://www.zillow.com/agritopia-gilbert-az/) . . .