Download Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge

Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge
Geography 298, Section 2
Week 2: Framing the Peri-Urban Interface and Feeding Cities
Robert Eric Dickinson was raised and educated in England, mostly at Leeds. He wrote
extensively on geography, and taught at Syracuse University in New York for 11 years. He
returned to Leeds, but came back to America numerous times as a visiting professor at
several different universities.
Dickinson, Robert Eric. 1964. City and Region: A Geographical Interpretation. 554576.
 Lack of effective regional governments and inappropriate political boundaries results in
malfunctioning metropolitan areas.
 Cities have grown “too large to offer the best conditions for human living”(559), so planning
authorities are trying to encourage decentralization. Need regional authority for this.
 Regional economic development: locate industry on new, decentralized sites to provide
employment to “surplus cultivators”(561). Locate small-scale industry in small towns. Farms
“are transformed into residences or shops placed between the original farmsteads.” (564)
 Growth of big cities remains unchecked. “Planning for the future should aim at reducing the size
of the great urban agglomeration, while improving and making more widely accessible the
amenities of city civilization in town and country alike.” (566).
 Cities are too big and countryside too depopulated for either to properly provide services and
amenities to their populations. Need a regional government to redistribute taxes, tax industry to
increase revenue.
 Given that planning practice has been unable to stop or slow the growth of big cities, need to
change tactics and accept “natural trends toward the increasing growth and expansion of urban
regions.” (570). Create a hierarchy of small cities organized around a common “mother city”.
 Six stages of the growth of cities: Eopolis (village), Polis (city-state), Metropolis (mother city),
Megalopolis (obsessed with bigness and power), Tyrannopolis (parasitic), Necropolis (selfdestruction). Currently at the stage of Megalopolis. Out of scale with human values and needs.
 “Megalopolis is growing through its own momentum faster than powers of public opinion can
control it.” “Swollen bureaucracy.” “Little concern with social values.” (572).
 To avoid Necropolis, must work against trends that further Megalopolis. Reassert local ties.
Restore local community life. Reassert schools as center of neighborhood life. “The vast
megalopolitan mass should be replaced by self-contained urban communities.” Surround by
greenbelt, locate near “mother city” for cultural needs. [See Ebenezer Howard.]
 Need general thinkers to guide this, not just specialists like architects, planners, engineers. Need
people studying ekistics [the scientific study of human settlements].
Ebenezer Howard was raised in England, and spent several years in America as a young man.
Influenced by Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, he became concerned with improving
quality of life. Upon his return to England, he worked as a record-keeper for Parliament, but
also founded the Garden Cities Association in 1899, and Letchworth Garden City (45 miles
north of London), was designed following the principles he laid out in Garden Cities of Tomorrow (originally published as To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform).
Howard, Ebenezer. 1946. Garden Cities of To-morrow. 41-57, 138-150.
 “How to stem the drift from the country is one of the main problems of the day. The labourer
may perhaps be restored to the land, but how will the country industries be restored to rural
England?” (43). Reversing trend to move into “awful” overcrowded cities was great concern.
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Town magnet, country magnet, town-country magnet. “Marry” town and country to obtain
advantages of both: human society, and beauty of nature. [One might say our modern suburbs
seem to have the advantages of neither]. This would entice people back out of cities.
Vision for “Garden City”, a 1000 acre town in the center of a 6000 acre estate, held in trust for all
inhabitants of town. Grand boulevards mark out several districts. Central park at center.
Housing shops in heart of town, industry at the outskirts. All surrounded by agricultural land.
Individual initiative emphasized.
Exercise Parliamentary powers to establish new towns. When a given town is built out, it will not
build on its greenbelt/zone of country, but rather will establish a new community a small distance
away, with its own zone of country, and connected by railways.
Crowded cities are considered results of selfishness; a society concerned with the well-being of
all its members would instead build Garden Cities. Howard feels it will be necessary to start over
on fresh land rather than retrofit poorly built cities.
Overcome opposition by dividing interests like ‘landowners’ into opposing camps who cancel out
each other’s possible influence: city land gets cheaper, ag land gets more expensive, landowners
will be divided in opinion, and land reform will thus be easier.
David Simon is Professor of Development Geography at Royal Holloway University of London,
and is Director of the Centre for Developing Areas Research. Duncan McGregor is Senior
Lecturer in Geography at Royal Holloway University of London. Donald Thompson is
Departmental Skills and IT Officer in Geography at Royal Holloway University of London.
Simon, David, Duncan McGregor, and Donald Thompson. 2006. Contemporary
Perspectives on the Peri-Urban Zones of Cities in Developing Areas. In The Peri-Urban
Interface. 3-12.
 Simple dichotomy of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ is becoming meaningless in developing areas [and in
developed countries too!]. No neat dividing line; instead, large interface zone. Extended
metropolitan region = EMR. Peri-urban interface = PUI.
 Several types of transition zones, from sprawl to growth corridors, slowly shading into ‘urban’.
 No good term for ‘peri-urban’ in much of the global south; linguistic differences can have an
effect on thought patterns even when there is an equivalent term.
 “Changing international divisions of labour are producing new areas of rapid industrialization and
economic development within or beyond existing metropolitan boundaries.” (7) [The
phenomenon of the global supply region enriches some and impoverishes others]
 Peri-urban zones of experience the greatest ecological impacts in a given metropolitan area.
 PUI can be defined as an area with strong urban influence, access to markets, services, and labor,
but limited land area and high pollution and urban growth risks.
 “no single definition will fit all circumstances and situations unless couched in broad and
functional terms, rather than attempting to set discrete spatial limits.” (10). Better to think about
a rural-urban gradient, with varying rates of change. Consider PUI to be part of city, not a
separate area. This is made difficult by the lack of regional governments in many places.
 Lack of a ‘holistic planning’ tradition. Many local governmental units do not want to take
responsibility for environmental impacts they cause outside their jurisdiction.
Ian Douglas teaches in the School of Geography at the University of Manchester and is Chair
of the Peri-Urban Environmental Change Project (PUECH).
Douglas, Ian. 2006. Peri-Urban Ecosystems and Societies: Transitional Zones and
Contrasting Values. In The Peri-Urban Interface. 18-29.
 “Peri-urban areas are the transition zone, or interaction zone, where urban and rural activities are
juxtaposed, and landscape features are subject to rapid modifications, induced by human activities
(18).”
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These zones are often neglected by both rural and urban administration, have both high value
middle class properties and poor settlements, and have agricultural and industrial development.
Degradation of ecological and human health often results from lack of proper planning and
regulation in peri-urban areas (exploitation of resources, poor handling of waste, water and air
pollution from industry, etc.).
Frank Ellis is a professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of East Anglia and James
Sumberg is the director of the New Economics Foundation and was trained as an
agriculturalist. Both have taught about international agricultural issues.
Ellis, Frank & James Sumberg. 1998. Food Production, Urban Areas and Policy
Responses. World Development 26(2): 213-225.
 The author critically examines literature that represents farming in urban areas of developing
countries as a way to ensure food security or poverty reduction, especially in regard to cities and
towns in sub-Saharan Africa.
 The term “urban agriculture” needs further definition to understand what it includes (commercial,
private, farming, gardening) in the matter of how it relates to poverty reduction and food security.
 He argues that social and economic interactions between rural and urban sectors are essential for
understanding poverty and security because they create the reality that food production in an area
does not equal food security among the population of that location (i.e. food gets shipped to
wherever the growers will make the most money).
D.J. Midmore is a professor at Central Queensland University in the school of Biological and
Environmental Sciences. H.G.P. Jansen is a research fellow at the International Food Policy
Research Institute.
Midmore, D.J., & H.G.P. Jansen. 2003. Supplying vegetables to Asian cities: is there a
case for peri-urban production? Food Policy 28:13-27.
 This paper examines the interplay between peri-urban vegetable producers and their changing
production and marketing environments in Asia including income generation, labour use,
management of land and water resources, waste management, and health and food safely.
 The author concludes that in the future peri-urban vegetable production will not be economically
viable because of scarce land and labor resources unless alternative production technologies
become available and the positive externalities generated by the agriculture become internalized.
 In addition to technological advances, integrated economic and environmental analysis and
communication between peri-urban producers, the urban waste management sector, and
municipal planners and consumers is necessary.
Peter Houston is a Strategic Planner in the Development Planning and Policy Unit of the
Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Division, Primary Industries and Resources South Australia.
Houston, Peter. 2005. Re-Valuing the Fringe: Some Findings on the Value of
Agricultural Production in Australia’s Peri-Urban Regions. Geographical Research
43(2):209-233.
 “Peri-urban regions are those superficially rural districts within the sphere of influence of
adjacent urban centres,” especially the urban property market. Ideally, researchers would be
able to define this spatial frame in terms of its connection to agricultural investment and
development (i.e. based on the range of the urban price shadow or on farmland pressure and
conversion), but this is currently considered too resource intensive.
 Peri-urban, as defined through journey-to-work data in Beyond the Suburbs, extends up to 100
km from the business district of each city, and most non-metropolitan growth in Australia has
been concentrated at these commuting limits around major cities and coasts. However, the same
study also found that a significant part of the labor force in peri-urban regions is self-contained.
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“Peri-urban regions, which comprise less than 3% of the land used for agriculture in the five
mainland states, are responsible for almost 25% of total gross value of agricultural production.”
Figures for peri-urban contributions to agriculture may be too low because (1) they tend to leave
out smaller producers (2) they don’t account for sequential cropping on the same land (3) they
are self-administered, so some producers are not counted at all. Thus, decision-makers should
be aware that peri-urban regions contribute significantly to agricultural production but that these
contributions are often under-reported in traditional accounting forms. As peri-urban land use is
highly contested, this awareness is critical but has been absent from public policy deliberations.
Peri-urban agriculture has not been dealt with thoroughly because (1) agriculture reporting and
analysis is typically aspatial and (2) sectoralism dominates policy formation, and peri-urban
agriculture sits between the sectors of urban development and large-scale agriculture.
W.P. Hedden was Chief of the Bureau of Commerce for the Port of New York Authority. He
coined the term ‘foodshed’.
Hedden, W.P. 1929. Chapter II: Watersheds, Milksheds and Foodsheds. How Great
Cities are Fed. 17-36.
 Comparable to a watershed, in which topography determines water flow into various basins, a
foodshed describes the flow of food into consuming markets.
 “[T]he barriers which guide and control movement of foodstuffs are more often economic than
physical,” and include railroad freight lines, protective tariffs, and inspection standards.
 In the early 19th century, large cities depended on nearby farms for their food, but that was
beginning (in the early 20th century) to change, although some foodstuffs, such as milk and
potatoes, were still predominantly produced locally.
 Freight rates were one of the most important factors in determining foodsheds, especially for
foods that were bulky, cheap, and needed to be fresh but less so for high value commodities.
Mileage-based freight rates favored local producers, while other kinds of tiered rates (especially
for transcontinental transportation) sometimes favored long-distance shipping. Although thes
rates were very important at the time, Hedden recognized that this system was beginning to break
down with the introduction of long-distance trucking and continuous refrigeration that made it
economical to ship foods long-distance.
 Other factors determining foodsheds were/are (1) tariffs (“economic dikes” that protect foodsheds
from foreign competition) and (2) sanitary standards and embargoes
 Hedden predicted that (1) the future of foodsheds would depend on new kinds of transportation
and on government policy (2) importation of food from other countries would decrease (3) that
heavier foodstuffs would still come from nearby producers while high value goods would be
without geographical limitation.