191416 New ruralism: Revitalizing regional agriculture and local food systems

Tuesday, October 28, 2008: 11:10 AM

Sibella Kraus , SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture Education), Berkeley, CA
     
New Ruralism is a framework for creating a bridge between smart growth/new urbanism and sustainable agriculture/local food systems. Sustainable agriculture can help bring cities down to earth, to a deeper commitment to the ecology and economy of the surrounding countryside on which they depend. New Ruralism embraces the power of place-making that can help American agriculture move from an artificially narrow production focus to encompass broader resource preservation values. As a place-based and systems-based framework, the New Ruralism nurtures the symbiotic relationship between urban and rural areas. New Urbanists and ‘critical regionalists' have articulated and demonstrated the potential for a renewed movement of place-affirming urban planning. Our regional rural areas need a similar call to action. To seed this movement, New Ruralism is being developed as a framework of principles, policies, precedents, and practices.

Learning Objectives:
Participants will learn about four projects in which the conceptual framework of New Ruralism is being actualized: 1) the Rural-Urban Connections Strategy of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), a ‘greenprint’ corollary to its Land Use Blueprint, for its six-county region; 2) the San Francisco Urban-Rural Roundtable, which is a follow-up to the recently released San Francisco Foodshed Assessment; 3) the Fresno South East Growth Area (SEGA) master plan, which includes a significant agricultural component; and 4) the Angwin Ecovillage which includes a local food systems farm as an integral element in the overall sustainability of the development.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I direct the Agriculture in Metropolitan Regions program at UC Berkeley and I direct a nonprofit, SAGE, that develops Urban Edge Agricultural Parks and other innovative urban-rural linkages
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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