Key to the City, page 12
Part of what I have tried to illuminate in this chapter is the way in which outcomes are predetermined by infrastructure, which in turn is determined in significant part by zoning. The task of changing how we organize our living and working environments requires, perhaps above all, an effort of imagination—and not only by planners and civic leaders, but by regular citizens accustomed to the way things are. The facts around us demand that we question the status quo and revise our assumptions. But we often default to skepticism about alternatives, even to an unexamined and fatalistic belief that this status quo reflects a “natural” state of things. It doesn’t. Any given arrangement of social reality is in fact the result of hundreds of decisions made in the past.
Anyone interested in working for change is helped enormously by existing examples of where we might like to get to. Sometimes we find these examples in unexpected places. For those skeptical about market demand for transit-oriented development, I recommend a visit to Disney—not the one near Crystal Cathedral, but the campus on the East Coast. An all-American kingdom of forty-three square miles, Florida’s Disney World is about the same size as San Francisco and bigger than Hartford and Garden Grove combined. It moves over a million people a week with a sophisticated, multimodal transportation fleet. Upon arriving there, visitors must park in one of the vast lots accommodating thousands of cars each, all located on the periphery of the theme parks. Once they abandon their cars, Disney Transport whisks them to their various destinations. The Disney system boasts 350 buses (the third largest fleet in Florida), a gondola, 750 boats (making it the world’s fifth largest navy), a monorail with twelve trains (among the most used in the world, with 150,000 daily riders), and small-capacity vans (called “Minnie Vans”). Surveys show that riders do not complain about leaving their cars behind. Far from it. Instead, most revel in a feeling of freedom. For a few fleeting days, Disney World charms them, as one of the only self-contained communities in America to ban personal cars. Though Disney World itself lacks typical zoning authority, its enduring popularity suggests that people might actually be willing to use, and might even enjoy using, modes of transportation beyond the car. In an America that’s still all too dependent on cars, making it possible to experience life without cars is part of the magic of the Magic Kingdom. Through zoning, we can make that magic more viable in more places.
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Over half a century ago, just up the road from the site of what would soon become the other Disney, the very first Hour of Power service ended with an exhortation that Robert Schuller later made the title of a bestselling book: “Remember: You can become the person you want to be.” As it stands now, most of us are Reverend Schullers, called by higher forces to practice an automobile ministry, surrounded by our asphalt sanctuaries. But is that who we want to be?
Change never stops, and in figuring out how best to transport ourselves we will need to continue to adapt as new ways of moving emerge. Among current trends, car-share and ride-hailing services have changed our patterns of traffic, requiring more loading areas and diverting both riders and revenue from public transportation. Self-driving autonomous vehicles are laying claim to our streets. And massive subsidies of personal electric vehicles and charging stations reinforce the car as the primary way of getting around. I’ve laid out how we can start to reverse the ways in which zoning has perpetuated a reliance on cars via an infrastructure that forces us to use them. The creation of this reality, as we have seen, was a multifaceted project. Our strategies must be similarly multifaceted if we want to curb cars’ strong hold on our communities and move toward a richer mix of transportation options, one that makes our lives better.
7
You Reap What You Zone
Just north of Hartford’s downtown sits an indoor-outdoor concert venue which, in 2018, hosted Farm Aid, the annual benefit concert created by music legends Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp. Farm Aid first convened musicians and fans in 1985 to promote family farms, bring young people and veterans into farming, and curb the influence and spread of industrial agricultural operations. Centering its mission in its operations, the organization invites local producers and regional farms to sell their goods, offers farming demonstrations in its “Homegrown Village,” and composts on a truly epic scale. In the days before the actual concert, Farm Aid also hosts local events, including the community panel where they asked me to discuss the role of zoning in promoting sustainable food production. I’ll never forget hearing the incredible Chris Stapleton for the first time a couple days later—and seeing Willie Nelson perform live once again.
As someone who grew up working in family restaurants, I’ve always had a strong interest in food. And next to housing and transportation, it’s among the most basic of human needs. Yet, while serving on Hartford’s planning and zoning commission, I realized how little I knew about the economic and social policy dimensions of our food system. Fortunately, members of the city’s Food Policy Commission had the patience to help me and my fellow zoning commissioners understand the urgency of food insecurity, defined by the USDA as the lack of consistent access to enough food for each member of the household to lead an active, healthy life. About one in ten Americans, and a third of those living below the poverty line, suffer from food insecurity. In Connecticut, high housing and transportation costs (driven in large part by zoning policies) take a disproportionate chunk of household income, and the state’s food insecurity is worse than the national average, afflicting one in six residents—and 28 percent of those living in Hartford and the state’s other cities.
Many food-insecure households live in “food deserts,” or areas with limited access to healthy and affordable foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy products. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports more than 6,500 Census tracts qualify as food deserts, noting that the incidence of food deserts is higher in Census tracts where residents have high poverty rates, lower income and education levels, and higher unemployment rates. Cities are, by definition, crowded places, and we tend to think of them as having correspondingly numerous basic amenities. A lot of people, a lot of groceries, right? Too many parts of Hartford, including the Albany Avenue area that I toured that hot summer day with Denise Best, lack conventional grocery stores with full produce sections, reliable farmers’ markets, or other equivalent fresh-food outlets. Instead, they have only convenience stores selling canned or processed foods—and fast-food restaurants selling worse.
The issue of food production taken up by Farm Aid and the issue of food security addressed by the Hartford Food Policy Commission are intricately linked. The public sector has a huge influence on how farmers farm, and how much they produce, through a variety of means: production and insurance subsidies, guaranteed contracts, conservation incentives, land trusts, and international trade deals. But zoning can play a large role, too. It can promote sustainable food production by specifying the location and the scale at which farming and ranching are allowed, from community gardeners to industrial farms, and can also dictate where and how fresh food may be sold. One way of combating food insecurity is to make it easier for people to produce food near where it’s needed most.
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In colonial days, life in Boston revolved around residents’ ability to produce food. The early city was rich with common grazing and farming lands, including the Boston Common, used as a pasture for the city’s wealthiest families starting in the 1630s and continuing for two hundred years. During that time, virtually every Boston household used vegetable gardens or raised chickens, goats, or other animals, which together provided easy access to fresh, healthy food and allowed families to be self-sufficient. No doubt some nuisances arose: roosters crowing early in the morning, animals roaming the streets, and rats feasting on gardens. But people recognized agriculture as a critical part of urban life.
Things started to change in the mid-nineteenth century. As Boston’s residential density increased, so did complaints about farm animals by residents living in closer quarters. Local leaders acted to mitigate their concerns. Boston was among many cities that passed laws prohibiting the keeping of swine, which had previously roamed streets eating waste. In 1830, the mayor banned cows from the Common, and in 1836 removed its pasture fencing. By the turn of the twentieth century, the city had instituted dispersion requirements for dairies, keeping them 300 yards from marshes and other farm animals. In cities across the country, animal husbandry was waning, and zoning’s arrival in the 1920s sounded the death knell. In Boston, a 1924 ordinance banned horses, cows, goats, rabbits, bees, pigeons, and chickens. Two city-planning scholars have explained that these agriculture bans “redefined the economic geography and opportunities of the city, especially for the poor,” who relied on their access to livestock for survival. For the low-income families living in Boston’s tenements, this meant losing the food security that they had previously, if tenuously, enjoyed.
For almost ninety years, the zoning code and other ordinances made it difficult—often impossible—to grow or raise your own food within Boston city limits. These regulatory barriers, hindering both food production and food security, resulted in a city that sourced its food from beyond its borders. And often far beyond. Across New England, food-producing land has diminished to just 5 percent of total land, and 90 percent of the food residents eat comes from beyond the region. The current dynamic is wholly incongruent with the region’s agricultural, fishing, and hunting past.
This reality has proved displeasing to many Bostonians, including a local agricultural entrepreneur named Glynn Lloyd. He had founded several commercial and nonprofit enterprises, making him one of the most prominent leaders of the region’s food industry, and in the late 2000s he was beginning to feel that the city needed to get back to its food roots. His personal tipping point occurred when he set out to convert some vacant city lots to food gardens, only to find himself thwarted by zoning rules. Lloyd bent the ear of then-Mayor Thomas Menino, and in 2012 the mayor convened farmers, neighborhood leaders, and advocates in a working group to consider whether and how Boston could facilitate agricultural activities. Two city agencies—the Redevelopment Authority (which handles zoning issues) and the Office of Food Initiatives—participated, giving the discussion broad institutional backing. These groups also held several dozen public meetings to work through their ideas. Lloyd later recounted how at 8:45 a.m. on each public-hearing day, “agricultural activists, farmers, beekeepers, rooftop growers, and compost specialists” gathered in the overflow section of city hall.
In 2013 the group emerged with what became Article 89, a comprehensive law promoting urban farming. The law allows a broad range of agricultural uses, from farming (including aquaponics and hydroponics) and farmers’ markets to composting, hen keeping, and beekeeping, regulating each of these activities to capture the benefits of food production while mitigating potentially negative impacts. As of right, the code allows “urban farms” both on the ground and on rooftops, permitting them in most places, after a review conducted by the city’s zoning staff. This review focuses on design issues, with specific provisions for “compatible” structures, perimeter fencing, landscape buffers, lighting, and vehicular circulation. Providing clear standards for size, bulk, materials, and design, the code ensures that prospective farmers understand exactly what they need to do to obtain a permit. Regarding size, the code allows ground-level farms up to an acre in all types of zoning districts and farms over an acre in all industrial districts; larger farms must undergo commission review. It also allows roof-level farms of any size as of right, except in residential and small-scale commercial districts, where farms 5,000 square feet or more must undergo commission review.
As for selling what you grow, where the prior code forbid farm-stand commerce, Boston’s farmers can now retail their produce on-site. Alternatively, they can sell at farmers’ markets, and Article 89 allows farmers’ markets as of right anywhere the zoning code allows retail stores, and in all other zones with a conditional permit (and extra review). Boston’s code also now allows composting, hen keeping, and beekeeping as accessory uses, if these activities follow some specific, common-sense requirements. Compost bins must be set back five feet from property lines when on the ground and must be enclosed when on a roof. Hen keepers must house hens in coops or runs made of “washable and sanitizable material such as fiberglass reinforced plastic,” subject to reasonable minimum and maximum sizes. (The code forbids roosters and on-site slaughtering.) Beekeepers must keep honeybees in a maximum of two hives, set back ten feet from the public sidewalk, and facing away from windows and doors. For each of these activities, other rules—such as public health codes and state regulatory requirements—apply. By articulating these uses and providing clear conditions for allowing them, Boston’s revamped code eliminates some of the barriers zoning had presented for food security.
Article 89 has changed life in Boston. A few years ago, I sat on a panel with Marie Mercurio, a planner from Boston who helped craft and implement it. Proud that the city had empowered those seeking to grow their own food, she noted the creativity with which Bostonians approached this new opportunity. And she talked animatedly about the law’s success in facilitating an entire ecosystem of small- and large-scale producers who are now growing food for profit. There is something special about buying produce from a neighbor, as opposed to a big-box chain. Instead of outsourcing the economic benefits of growing to rural and suburban areas, the zoning changes restored city residents’ ability to benefit economically from urban land. Word of these transformations spread widely. In 2017, the British newspaper The Guardian heralded “Boston’s rapidly growing reputation as a haven for organic food and urban farming initiatives,” citing the expansion of a container-farm company that, among other things, brings leafy greens to area farmers’ markets, and singled out Fenway Farms, a rooftop hydroponic facility that sits atop the famous baseball stadium.
Glynn Lloyd remains hard at work too, expanding beyond directly selling vegetables to area restaurants to leading a community development financial institution to capitalize and support Black and Latino entrepreneurs, including agricultural entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, nonprofits have been teaching community members more about the business of the food industry, helping them to become self-sufficient growers, and more food-secure themselves. They have also offered training in the variety of jobs needed to participate in the agricultural economy. In 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced the creation of a new cabinet-level office named “GrowBoston,” which will focus on food production and work in partnership with the Office of Food Justice to address the inequities in access to the food system.
I first learned about Boston’s permissive approach to agriculture when the Hartford planning and zoning commission began researching ideas for our own code. Hartford, like Boston before Article 89, had long banned virtually all agricultural activities, though it allowed community gardens to operate on a few city-owned lots and informally sanctioned farmers’ markets run by reputable nonprofits. But Hartford remained a resource-poor city full of food deserts, and local advocates and the city’s Food Policy Commission urged us to modify the zoning code to find new ways of bringing fresh produce to residents. In 2015, we followed Boston’s lead, duplicating many of its provisions and allowing community gardens to operate virtually anywhere. When we completely overhauled the zoning code in 2016, we authorized many types of commercial agricultural growing, including aquaculture and medical marijuana production facilities, in the definition of “craftsman industrial” uses. We wanted to be sure that zoning erected no barrier to these creative pursuits. Of course, we placed a few reasonable conditions on these uses, just as Boston did.
The zoning changes quickly ignited small bursts of agricultural activity within city limits: community gardens with improved fencing and water supplies, some new beekeepers, and a dozen or so regular farmers’ markets. But no beneficiary of our code has made me happier than the Keney Park Sustainability Project, which should be a national poster child for urban-agriculture strategies that work. I first got to know the project’s visionary founder, Herb Virgo, in 2014, when I solicited a walk with him during my first few months as a zoning commissioner. He took me, my husband, and our three kids to the historic horse trails of Hartford’s Keney Park (“Keney,” to locals), a 693-acre tract of land gifted to the city by wealthy grocer Henry Keney. The city hired the firm founded by native son Frederick Law Olmsted to design the park as a sylvan landscape, filled with meadows, forests, and trails, and the newly designed park was opened to the public in 1924. Ninety years later, the park was showing its age, and Virgo had been hired to clear out the horse trails brush, invasive species, and trash. On the walk, he showed us his progress—but then started talking about an idea he had about finding a place in or near Keney to start agricultural activities in a serious way.
