Chicago Urban Farming: City Council Approves New Ordinance

The Chicago City Council approved a zoning code amendment allowing for more widespread urban agriculture Thursday.

As WBEZ reports, the zoning code has expanded the size of community gardens to 25,000 feet, thus accommodating commercial farms within city limits. The ordinance also trims some of the red tape both farms and gardens face.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel lauded the amendment as a "job creator" that will also capitalize on otherwise vacant land.

"This policy is about taking land that we have here in the city of Chicago that is literally sitting fallow both as land as well as a revenue base or tax base and turning it into a job creator and a revenue creator. And there's great parts of the city where that exists," Emanuel said, as reported by WBEZ.

"The City worked with its sister agencies, urban agriculture experts and community members in an effort to help strengthen community ties and turn available empty lots into viable, productive urban green spaces," the mayor continued in a statement commending City Council for approving the ordinance.

The new rules will also allow for limited produce sales in residential areas, relax parking and fencing rules for larger urban farms and allow for aquaponics -- sustainable, symbiotic food production systems -- to be used, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Emanuel announced his support for the urban farming ordinance at the Iron Street Farm in Bridgeport in late July. Though the mayor's predecessor, Richard Daley, was nominally a proponent of urban farms, farmers say the ordinance he supported sought to place too many restrictions on how and where urban farms could be established. The ordinance approved Thursday by the City Council, under Emanuel's tenure, is considered to reverse that course.

Comments

[shirleycox]

05:03 AM on 10/24/2011

Growing organic gardens can have an access to their own healthy food containing lot of nutritious and free of pesticide and another way is to encourage a healthy economy. Organic farming is so easy when it come to hydroponics, and now in this era hydroponics became so popular among growers. Best way to know about hydroponics http://bit.ly/9d5jAV

[KarlaElisa]

05:13 PM on 09/14/2011

why don't they pass something giving people the right to grow vegetables instead of lawns?

[ChiProgressive]

08:33 PM on 09/12/2011

The poor people eating these abandoned lot vegetables would be better off eating flaming hots and double cheese burgers.

[Chase Miller]

11:13 AM on 09/12/2011

I am so happy that Ag is in vogue!

[KarlaElisa]

05:14 PM on 09/14/2011

X2. but let's not stop here. chicago still gives people sticking veggies in their front yards a hard time.

[greenboy31]

10:55 AM on 09/12/2011

That is a great initiative and I'm glad governments are taking part in cleaning the environment and not expecting citizens to do it on their own. Look at what some cities in Europe are doing. Which one do you like best? http://ecomobility.tv/2011/07/06/tour-europe-eco-cities/

[TheGreatRenewal]

11:28 PM on 09/11/2011

Well done ...and here's a list of millions of other jobs that can be created right now and thus lead the way toward a Great Renewal. We must invest our time and energy into renewing, regenerating, revitalizing, replanting ... and the Earth will bloom anew.

Build millions of miles of bike and horse paths
Replant diversified forests, grasslands and hedgerows
Tear down derelict buildings and parking lots and plant urban farms
Retrofit all buildings
Build light rail and high speed, trollies
Clean up every creek, stream, river, lake, beach
Put solar hot water and micro wind on all buildings or micro wind
Develop clean energy
Put water catchment on all buildings
Modernize water, sewage systems
Put all power lines under ground

[Anne Mccormick]

04:55 AM on 09/12/2011

horse paths? you may be willing to go back to the horse and buggy days but i'm not. now, if you're talking high speed trains, more efficient cars, etc. then i'll all for it.

[KarlaElisa]

05:15 PM on 09/14/2011

i LIKE the horsepath idea. why not encourage ALL zero emission travel?

[Justin Stamper]

07:45 PM on 09/11/2011

I hope people install barriers for road runoff.. You really dont want that stuff in your food. Something I have been concerned about as a suburban gardener.

[Matt Hotz]

07:31 PM on 09/11/2011

Brilliant idea. With a few years of proper attention and caring for the land to bring the soil back into shape for what it is MEANT to do. The 30,000 some odd vacant and otherwise underutilized lots Chicago has disbursed around the city could provide pockets of locally grown goodness for its residents.
Chicago has what it needs if it allows the residents to take charge of the money of the TIF program and not the corporations.

[KarlaElisa]

05:16 PM on 09/14/2011

'pockets of goodness'....i really like that phrase.

[ltcaffey]

08:35 AM on 09/11/2011

Are vegetables that grow on polluted land contaminated?

[kwaut lizard]

05:19 PM on 09/11/2011

Depends on the vegetable type and the type of contamination.

Bioremediation is the use of microorganism metabolism to remove pollutants. Technologies can be generally classified as in situ or ex situ. In situ bioremediation involves treating the contaminated material at the site, while ex situ involves the removal of the contaminated material to be treated elsewhere. Some examples of bioremediation technologies are phytoremediation, bioventing, bioleaching, landfarming, bioreactor, composting, bioaugmentation, rhizofiltration, and biostimulation.
Bioremediation can occur on its own (natural attenuation or intrinsic bioremediation) or can be spurred on via the addition of fertilizers to increase the bioavailability within the medium (biostimulation). Recent advancements have also proven successful via the addition of matched microbe strains to the medium to enhance the resident microbe population's ability to break down contaminants. Microorganisms used to perform the function of bioremediation are known as bioremediators.

Phytoremediation (from the Ancient Greek φυτο (phyto, plant), and Latin remedium (restoring balance or remediation) describes the treatment of environmental problems (bioremediation) through the use of plants that mitigate the environmental problem without the need to excavate the contaminant material and dispose of it elsewhere.

[TheGreatRenewal]

11:30 PM on 09/11/2011

Keep telling people. Most of us don't know this stuff ... even those of us who know something.

[KarlaElisa]

05:17 PM on 09/14/2011

i recently read an article about the folks in oakland, ca that spoke to the people who bought homes painted with lead paint experiencing contaminated soil when they tested before planting their crops. they have to put something down and build soil on top of it to a depth that allows the crops to root without sucking up the lead. so yeah, it's worth getting your soil tested.

[Kenz300]

08:45 PM on 09/10/2011

Community gardens are GREAT ! ! !

This is an idea that should spread to other cities and communities large and small.

[flyingfortresb17]

06:08 PM on 09/10/2011

Maybe the Mayor of Detroit should do the same.

[earthotter]

09:17 PM on 09/11/2011

I think there are plans to turn wide areas of Detroit back into forests and parks and I would assume community gardens would fit in.

[mikey09]

04:17 PM on 09/10/2011

In theory it sounds great...but lots of old lots, etc in urban area's have soil contaminated with lead, etc....so test the soil first....and if a garden or farm uses pesticides what abt them going into the sewer system etc... Hope it works, I could not stand to eat commercial grown foods all the time.

[earthtoearth]

01:41 PM on 09/10/2011

This is great, urban farming is the solution to so many of the issues facing us today. For more information please check out SAVE THE FARM, a 30 min. documentary on urban farming directed by Michael Kuehnert. Available on Netflix, itunes, Hulu.

www.savethefarmmovie.com

http://www.facebook.com/savethefarmmovie

[mystshy]

01:32 PM on 09/10/2011

huh???????????????? this is busy work to keep folks from thinking,about how bad life is now for them.......................
this is an oldddddddddddddddd trickkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

[girldog]

04:21 PM on 09/10/2011

huh??? This is a great idea who's time is long overdue. Think local.

[Howmanyreally]

09:49 PM on 09/10/2011

IT's fabulous and we should have been doing this all along. When I was stationed in the UK, and Germany, many people had garden plots. This was back in the 80's.

[robodawa]

11:04 PM on 09/10/2011

I think it's called the allotment system in the UK. I know that Berlin is ringed with those small plots. The Asian and Slavic gardeners at North Park Village grow as amazing amount of food on the small plots. The annual club meeting there is in late October.

[BluePhantom2]

10:22 AM on 09/10/2011

How regressive! Next they will probably tax agro-business to try and sustain this urban farming and all will loose.

[Justin Stamper]

07:46 PM on 09/11/2011

Are you crazy?

[earthotter]

09:19 PM on 09/11/2011

WhatTF? Is Kraft paying for you to post on here? And its "lose" unless you wanted us all loose for some reason.