Market Insights
HIGH DENSITY AGRICULTURE: THE WAY OF THE FUTURE?
Author: Clare Burnett Urban Developer
Plans are in the works for ‘agrihoods’—residential communities with working farms—in Far North Queensland.
“Dig for Victory” was a World War II homefront battle cry, and Victory Gardens were hailed as a solution to drought, labour and import shortages as the war raged on.
But after the war, the ability to grow your own food in the area in which you live, whether in allotments or back gardens, gradually fell by the wayside. “Ironically, I think we probably did agricultural neighbourhoods informally in the past a lot more than we do now,” says John Doyle, associate dean of architecture at RMIT University. But new developments are revisiting this old idea. RMIT is exhibiting a proposal for an urban farm in North Melbourne as part of Melbourne Design Week in May, 2024, and there are plans in the works for a Cairns ‘agrihood’ —integrating new housing development with farming uses. “The idea of agricultural neighbourhoods is very scalable…an agricultural neighbourhood could be something as simple as a suburb in which households grow produce in their backyards.” Challenges of farming in high-density environments One of the most popular models in Australia is the community garden. City farming organisation Community Gardens Australia listed 700 gardens in its national online directory in 2023. Developer-led examples include Brunswick Group’s Six Degrees Architects-designed West Melbourne apartment development that features a food-waste system, rainwater tanks and a communal rooftop garden, while Nightingale’s Fairfield project [pictured above] has a shared rooftop with vegie patches.
Pudong Agriculture Development Group proposed a 100ha urban farm for Shanghai.
But models of agriculturally focused built environments are varied. “It’s easy to integrate agriculture into low-density developments such as detached or semi-detached housing which includes backyards or common gardens,” says Doyle, who has a PhD in architecture and design. “The issue here is really around articulating a value proposition for giving up saleable land for the common good but many planning schemes require public open space or common space.” But there are many challenges when integrating agricultural components to developments and often management structures can be problematic.
12 – April / May 2024
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