C40 Cities Challenge: Edible City

Imagine a future, in which communities, landscape and agricultural professionals come together to plant edible landscapes across cities and towns, in parks, streets, gardens, and allow the grown food to be freely picked by anyone. This is not a huge theft scene. Instead, the paradigm shift here is altering the notion of food as a purely commercially traded product to also an interactive landscape element as well as a public good from public investment.

The benefits are evident. It lowers food mileage, thereby reducing carbon emissions and air pollution. Moreover, when communities come together for co-farming, physical health and social cohesion can be improved. Treating food as a public good, in the same “take as you need” spirit of food banks, renders food access more equitable. But Edible Cities are more than that: food becomes an interactive landscape element for people to engage with.

Central governments are to invest in Edible Cities by giving grants to local governments. Each local authority would then have to prepare an Edible City Plan. Funds would be used to hire landscape, horticulture and agricultural consultants to partner with local communities in the design of new edible landscapes. Besides, Edible City Managers would be hired to organise local community volunteering for long-term maintenance of the edible landscape. Nutritionists can also be consulted for crop selection by examining local health data. With the environmental, public health and equity benefits, the spending is not merely an expenditure but an investment, and even a cost-benefit business case can be prepared to properly examine this potential.

The selection of crops has to be sensitive to context. For instance, in historical urban cores, edible landscape should blend in with perennial landscape and have a stronger inclination towards the ornamental value of food planting. In contrast, in suburban areas, a slightly more farm-like approach can be tolerated with a greater focus on yield.