Productive Landscapes Project
Photo Credits: Alexy Irving
The Productive Landscapes project seeks to support the development and vibrancy of Chicago’s urban agriculture scene through addressing one of the most significant barriers growers and farmers face: stable and long term land access. This project has four overarching goals, detailed below.
OUR GOALS
Create transparent land-use pathways between Chicagoland residents and large land owning institutions to increase urban agriculture, community gardens, and green space in Cook County.
Encourage land owning institutions to amend their land policies to be more flexible, to in turn make urban agriculture projects more feasible.
Map vacant land in Cook County to understand available land parcels, what institution currently owns it, what the land has been used for in the past, and how suitable the land is for urban agriculture.
Create a comprehensive flow chart of the options residents have to secure land for urban agriculture.
Chicago Land Access Pathways Website
The Chicago Land Access Pathways (CLAP) website was designed by graduate student Ken Pan. The purpose of the site is to serve as a centrally located information hub for farmers to alleviate the challenge of not knowing where and how to look for land they’re interested in purchasing or leasing. For more information about the conception of CLAP, download Lauren Drumgold’s field report on Supporting BIPOC and Low Income Communities .
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PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPES IN CHICAGO
AND THE SOUTHLAND
A Framework for Fostering a Vibrant Community-Based Urban Agriculture Cluster
The Millennium Reserve Area, covering Chicago’s South Side and suburban municipalities in southern Cook County, holds enormous potential for a system of productive landscapes. Over the course of six months, between October 2016 to March 2017, 31 participants took part in a series of conversations concerning how various stakeholders could help foster the growth of urban agriculture in this area. Out of these conversations — which included representatives of 27 organizations including farms, non-profits, universities, land trusts, community organizations, funders, and federal, state, regional, county and municipal governments — it became clear that there is both the opportunity and interest to create a organizational and policy framework that supports the growth of productive landscapes. This report outlines this framework, based on insights and outcomes from these conversations
This report was made possible by support from the Illinois Coastal Management Program of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
