CityLab Daily: How One City Turned Urban Spaces into Farms
Also today: How museums are remembering the pandemic, and Washington, D.C., has the money to cover the pandemic rent debt.
Farmers sell their products on a municipal market in Rosario.
Photo courtesy of World Resources Institute Ross Center
Food for thought: In the street markets of Argentina’s third-largest city, Rosario, local farmers sell lush lettuce, and fresh bell peppers and eggplants. Many are grown in spaces that were once trash dumps, empty municipal plots and even a brick factory — the product of an urban farming project that sprouted up in the aftermath of the country’s economic collapse in 2001. The program repurposed vacant land into community parque huertas (orchard parks) and family gardens on which struggling residents could grow crops to feed themselves or sell in the city-operated markets.
On Tuesday, Rosario won the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center Prize for Cities for that initiative, which the group lauded for its innovative approach to tackling both urban inequality and climate change. The city has also cut greenhouse gas emissions by localizing food production and removing long supply chains. I spoke with Rosario’s sub-secretary of social development about the impacts of their efforts. Today on CityLab: How an Argentine City Turned Its Urban Spaces Into Farms and Markets.