FARMING THE CITY: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON
URBAN AGRICULTURE & FOOD SECURITY
SPEA-E 400 (Class #15628)
Summer 2013: First 6-Weeks, 3-Credits
Meeting Times & Location: M-F
4:00-5:15 PM @ IU’s Hilltop Nature Center
Instructor: Dr. John D. Galuska
Course
Description: Feeding
the world’s ever-increasing urban population presents both significant
challenges and surprising opportunities. As cities continue to grow,
individuals, families, food activists, organizations, urban planners, and
governments are turning to forms of urban agriculture to help confront food
security issues. Urban agriculture practices involve the growing, processing,
and distribution of food and other products through intensive plant cultivation
and small-scale animal husbandry in and around cities. From Bloomington to
Brazil, from Cuba to Cambodia, from Toronto to Tanzania, well-established forms
of urban agriculture thrive alongside a range of innovative food sovereignty
initiatives and projects.
Farming the City examines how forms of urban
agriculture are providing cities and citizens with access to local food
sources, new employment opportunities, and are positively transforming urban
ecologies. The course begins with a focus on the concepts of food security and
food sovereignty. Next the rapidly growing urban agriculture movement is
examined through readings that feature the work of pioneering urban farmers and
innovative non-profits. A second set of readings then explores the major
benefits and risks associated with urban farming techniques and practices in
multiple cities around the world. Throughout the course students will have
meaningful opportunities to visit local farms and gardens on and off campus.
Each student will also select a site for a service-learning project as part of
a “taking action” assignmnent. Together, the course readings, service-learning
experiences, and work sessions at gardening sites, will provide students with
practical knowledge related to growing food productively in urban contexts. The
final paper students write will make cross-cultural, regional, or technical
linkages between specific urban agriculture practices in multiple cities of the
world.
