Feed Northampton: First Steps Toward a Local Food System

Here’s an alternative way to look at land use in Northampton’s “infill receiving areas“. Sustainability might not mean covering good soils in these areas with buildings and pavement, but preserving them for food production. The Northampton Food Security Group and the Conway School of Landscape Design issued this report last April:



See also:

Grow Food Northampton

Gazette: “Health, fiscal woes seed local vegetable gardens”; Freeman Dyson Sees Future Gold in Green (5/4/09)
Note the true mixed-use character of Dyson’s vision. Energy production and industry are gently woven into residential areas. There is not the rigid segregation of uses of sprawl zoning, nor the segregation of greenspace from residences found in some unfortunate variants of Smart Growth. Dyson’s vision might not pan out, but then again, maybe it will. The wise urban plan of today makes room for this kind of uncertainty.

Urban Community Gardens Flourish in Holyoke (2008)

Springfield Republican: “Victory gardens fight price wars” (6/24/08)

Gazette: “As food, other costs rise, more stake hopes on home gardens” (6/14/08)
Among those trying to be more resourceful and experiment with backyard gardening is Karen Bellavance-Grace of Northampton and her neighbors. [Bellavance-Grace is an aide to Mayor Clare Higgins.]

The group of six families, 20 people in all, is tending a new plot in Bellavance-Grace’s backyard at 19 Church St., a small street that runs west from King Street above downtown…

…group members are strengthening their street’s sense of community and producing food…