Building a Local Economy through Urban Agriculture

Chicago, IL

Population: 500,000 - 1,000,000 | Government type: City | Topic: Equitable Urban Farming

Photo: Fourteen East

The Program

Urban agriculture is a real and viable way to help communities through land redevelopment, as opposed to housing or commercial uses. Urban farming can help communities reimagine their relationship with their land, and highlights the importance of reclaiming and remediating urban land as a source of food and as a community resource.

In 2011, the city of Chicago established its commitment to urban agriculture with amendments to sections of the Chicago Zoning Ordinance. The changes defined and permitted community gardens and urban farms across most of the city’s zoning districts— mostly as a matter of right—which removes lengthy permitting processes.  The city’s vacant land was plentiful and ripe for such innovative efforts. The city also helped support start-ups, nonprofits, and urban farms. Urban farming projects can also serve as an innovative workforce development approach that supports local community members to learn urban agriculture skills and act in the role of a conservation corps.

As of January 2021, the Chicago Urban Agricultural Mapping Project chronicled 890 urban gardens across the city. This combined community and city success helped leverage $3 million in state grants, along with a federal EPA loan, to secure a total of $32 million dollars for a redevelopment project on a nine-acre brownfield site.

Collaborative Governance

The Urban Growers Collaborative (UGC) was founded in 2018 with the goal of addressing systemic racism in the food system and supporting the health of the Black community. They work closely with more than 30 community partners and support eight urban farms on 11 acres of land. Through their work, they mitigate food insecurity and help increase access to affordable, healthy food. The network of farmers had been trained to approach urban farming as an economic tool and a means to feed people. The Collaborative continues to push the city to deliver on remediating land and turning over ownership to Black and Brown communities for stewardship. Remediation includes cleaning up the soil and addressing high rates of sarcoidosis and chronic inflammatory health diseases that result from toxins and soil-based irritants. They also are advocating for a framework for the whole urban agricultural community that ensures access to water and land.  

Grow Greater Englewood (GGE) was founded in 2015. At the time there was talk of a Whole Foods coming to the Englewood area. The community organized for a community benefits agreement and helped secure Black presence and Black leadership in the area’s urban agricultural movement, which at that point was largely white. The organization has four pillars: community wealth, engagement, advocacy, and policy. One of their major projects is the $50 million dollar redevelopment of the 59th Street line, a 1.7 mile stretch of former elevated rail line in the Englewood neighborhood. The neighborhood is historically majority Black and has suffered from a lack of investment since the 1980s. As a result, it has high vacancy rates and is one of the city’s most violent areas, although this is slowly changing. Residents experience higher levels of poverty and significant health inequities; they have a 60-year life expectancy, compared to neighboring Streeterville where life expectancy is 90 years and the median income is $100,000. 

The framework for the elevated trail, initially zoned as commercial and light manufacturing,  includes contracts to increase work and jobs in the local community. Farms adjacent to the trail will interlace to create a network of community farms. GGE stepped into the role of stewarding the land and working with the city. The network approach supports community progress in addition to backyard and gardening activity. Communities are now more actively engaged in discussions about why people should be reclaiming land and farming it, including buying up vacant odd shaped lots in neighborhoods. 

Low-income and vulnerable Black and Brown communities have long been stripped of land ownership and the ability to build community wealth. The 2011 zoning adjustment supported widespread urban agriculture as a matter of right, but advocates continue to push the city to invest resources in the completion of the Englewood trail projects and other projects that incentivize homeowners to stay in the neighborhood and avoid speculation that may occur in a revitalized area.

Increased public education has helped community members take advantage of the urban agricultural model. Easy access to fresh and healthy food is particularly helpful for women who are the heads of their households and who manage both caretaking and employment. Advocates continually push the city to center the community and its diverse needs as part of the Englewood trail development to ensure that the investment benefits the community and builds community wealth instead of contributing to displacement.

Emphasis on equity

Black and Brown people suffer from an open and ongoing assault from the extractive model of racial capitalism that began with slavery. After the Civil War, racial discrimination made it difficult for Black people to own and farmland in southern states.  The first generation of Black homeowners, many of whom moved north for industrial jobs during the Great Migration, found themselves zoned into neighborhoods disadvantaged by environmental degradation and suffering from a disproportionate rate of violence and incarceration. Black farmers in the north also struggled to access capital to finance the purchase of land and even more recently experienced discrimination as sellers on the market. 

Urban agriculture supports the political sovereignty of underserved communities. The model of circular local urban agriculture removes the speculative elements of the economic cycle, creating local employment opportunities, centering resources for public projects, and ensuring that the community owns its product. Organizations like the Urban Growers Collaborative help create local markets and feed people through locally grown food. As a result, neighborhood improvement efforts are community-centered and do not lead to increased exploitation and gentrification. A key benchmark is to increase the percentage of land converted to community land trusts and expand hyperlocal contracts that allow whole communities to secure long-term ownership over the land on which they reside.

Analysis

• Preemption: Local governments have wide authority over zoning and what is permitted by right.

• Impact: Over time, local communities have leveraged the change in the zoning code to take advantage of significant vacancies in certain areas and build a robust and vibrant culture of urban agriculture in some of Chicago’s most vulnerable and low-income neighborhoods.

Last updated: January 26, 2021

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