GETTING UNDERGROUND
A JOURNAL ABOUT FITNESS, HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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AMBITIONS
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CASE STUDY : CHICAGO
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CASE STUDY : PITTSBURGH
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CASE STUDY : DETROIT
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ASPIRATIONS
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Community Gardens and Urban Farms have become exceptionally more popular in the United States over the past 10 to 20 years. Urbanists have created and sustained a solutionist rhetoric that sees empty city plots as opportunities to help the underprivileged. These gardens and larger farms are often built on vacant land in disadvantaged neighborhoods in post-industrial cities. At first glance, these seem like fantastic solutions to food insecurity and community engagement. Although both may be true, architects must first question the origins of these land uses both politically and ecologically. Essentially, getting underground the problemsolving mentality to create greater opportunities for cultural creation and healing. GETTING
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Chicago
The word “Chicago '' comes from the indigebous word for wild onions once found in the area, shikaakwa later become “Checagou '' and then Chicago. This past seems to show that urban farming was also fitting for Chicago. The city’s slogan, “urbs in horto” or translated from latin to “city in a garden” originates to when Chicago was incorporated as a city. Chicago is one of the American leaders in urban agriculture. To date the city claims the world’s largest rooftop farm and the country’s largest indoor aquaponics farm.
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FARMS OF INTEREST : Sweet Water Foundation:
https://www.sweetwaterfoundation.com/ Windy City Harvest and The Farm on Ogden:
https://www.chicagobotanic.org/urbanagriculture Advocates for Urban Agriculture :
https://www.auachicago.org/ Urban Canopy :
https://www.theurbancanopy.org/home City Farm : https://cityfarmchicago.org/
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Pittsburgh
Today, the current economic drivers in Pittsburgh are large tech companies. Pittsburgh must be concerned about the trends of a decreasing and aging population, but also proud of a diminishing unemployment rate due to work provided by these companies. Through all this, urban farms are thriving in Pittsburgh. The city made national news for having the nation’s largest urban farm back in 2017. The city has an “Adopt-A-Lot” program that grants residents access to cityowned vacant land in their communities. This program has produced many urban farms and community gardens.
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FARMS OF INTEREST : Grow Pittsburgh :
https://www.growpittsburgh.org/ Hilltop Urban Farm :
https://www.hilltopurbanfarm.org/ Oasis Farm and Fishery :
https://www.oasisfarmandfishery.org/ Food City :
https://www.facebook.com/foodcitypgh/ Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers Cooperative of Pittsburgh :
https://www.facebook.com/blackurbangardeners/ GETTING
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Detroit
Urban farming in Detroit like the other case study cities shown here came out of the lack of access to fresh food in certain neighborhoods. WIth half the city living below the poverty line and an increasingly high unemployment rate, it is especially important in Detroit to provide access to free or reduced cost food sources. Detroit is an ideal location for urban farms with so many vacant lands left from so many people and businesses leaving the city in the past six decades. The city has a long history of urban agriculture, but the industrialization of the 1900’s faded this past, so in a way Detroit is only returning to its roots.
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FARMS OF INTEREST : Oakland Avenue Urban Farm :
http://www.oaklandurbanfarm.org/ EarthWorks :
https://www.cskdetroit.org/earthworks Keep Growing Detroit :
http://detroitagriculture.net/’ ROI Urban Farms :
https://www.roiurbanfarms.com/ D-Town Farm and The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) : https://www.d-townfarm.com/ GETTING
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Exploring agriculture in the city unearths a plethora of urban problems that plague our cities. From racial redlining and blight remediation to gentrification and “urban renewal” and even back to the great migration and escape from sharecropping. In digging deeper, urban farms are often built on complicated relationships between Black Americans and land ownership, city officials, and food as a whole. How can urban farms become a larger space for healing of these traumas? Can these spaces enhance collective work and responsibility at the neighborhood scale? Is there a way to apply cooperative economic business models to the structure of urban farms? What role does food play in all of this? For architects interested in creating spaces of cultural production and communal connectivity, community gardens and urban farms become intriguing case studies. “Getting Underground” aims to take these case studies and imagine new realities while unveiling the hidden stigmas and dogmas we tell ourselves. GETTING
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GETTING UNDERGROUND SERENA BREWER