"Animal City: The Domestication of America" featured on the "Living on Earth" radio show

I don't listen to radio, especially NPR, as much as I would like, because I got into the habit of listening to the radio mostly in a car, and not being particularly car-bound, that means not much radio.

But I was making a dish, Ina Garten's Corn and Avocado Salad, which requires about an hour of chopping, and I turned the radio on to NPR affiliate KCPW, and they were broadcasting the environmental topics show "Living on Earth."

One of the segments was "Animal City: The Domestication of America," featuring Andrew Robichaud, author of the book of the same title, discussing how food animals had once been a key element of cities, dairies which I knew about and "feed lots" which I didn't, and the process of removing those functions first to the outskirts of cities and then out of cities altogether.

It's definitely worth a listen.

It's an important history that still comes up from time to time, because today's zoning regulations typically restrict animals even chickens on residential properties, and forbid even small scale slaughtering and other types of food production, including craft brewing and distillation, even large scale baking, in industrially zoned lands.

This came up last year in Alexandria, Virginia.

Their zoning regulations no longer forbid animal slaughtering and some residents opposed the approval of a small halal poultry operation ("Halal slaughterhouse and shop wins approval from divided council in Alexandria, Va.," Washington Post).

Opposition was complicated.  Some was about concerns over the potential for smell and improperly handled waste, as well as anti-Muslim beliefs or anti-meat consumption.

As a small scale operation nothing like a Swift meatpacking plant, many of those concerns were overblown, or not relevant to a discussion on zoning and allowable uses.

In the episode Professor Robichaud mentions an area of San Francisco once called "Butchertown," where animals were kept and slaughtered.

It reminded me of the real life Butchertown district in Louisville, where there is a Swift slaughterhouse/meatpacking plant (still operating today) and the distinct ever present smell of animals, at least when I was there in 2004.

Back when I ran a historic preservation study on the H Street neighborhood, one of the elements covered in the neighborhood history section was how the area had once been on the outskirts of the city, that there were "market gardens," small plots used to grow produce for sale in the city, and abattoirs, slaughterhouses for animals.

Horses.  We also discussed a bit why there were stables and carriage houses, and drayage.  When leading a walking tour once, someone asked a question about "what happened to all the horseshit?" but I didn't have a good answer.

Another book on this topic is The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century, which came out a few years after our study.

Issues around "the horse in the city" still comes up in the modern day.

Depending on the city, there may still be horse stables and public access to horse riding. Many police departments also have horse-mounted police units ("Long Legs of the Law : Mounted police units are valued for crowd control and park patrols--but training takes more than horse sense," Los Angeles Times) and there can be complaints about how they are deployed in crowd control.

(In DC, both the US Park Police and the Metropolitan Police Department have mounted police units. The US Capitol Police had such a unit for a brief time, but Congress disbanded the unit over costs.)

Other issues I am familiar with include:

• in cities like New York City, animal rights activists fight the continuation of tourist oriented carriage rides ("In His 5th Year as Mayor, de Blasio Finally Acts on Horse-Carriage Pledge," New York Times).  These horses are still stabled in the city.

• in Baltimore, "a-rabbers" sell fruit and vegetables from horse-drawn carts and animal rights activists are opposed as well ("As Baltimore's arabbers become a thing of the past, a photographer aims to preserve the tradition," Baltimore Sun").

• and in some trail planning processes, although more in suburban and exurban areas, it is common to include access to horses alongside pedestrians and cyclists. 

Food animals and cities today.  And re-legalization of small scale, "backyard" animal husbandry has been an issue for awhile.  I call the opportunity to do this with your neighbors "Block supported agriculture."  Post columnist Tamar Haspel just wrote about this in the context of the rise in chicken raising as a result of the pandemic ("7 tips for raising backyard chickens, from picking a breed to having an exit strategy").

Seattle may be the most liberal city in the US when it comes to such regulations, whereas many cities aren't interested in going that far, and may or may not be comfortable with chickens.  DC is definitely a laggard on that score.

Animal agriculture and land use master planning.  Some counties have divided their land uses in ways to permanently protect rural lands.  Baltimore County, Maryland was one of the first in the late 1960s.  The way they militate against sprawl is to refuse to provide "city water" service to rural areas of the county.

Greater Portland is known for its Urban Growth boundary, although all areas in Oregon are required to urban and rural zones as part of master planning processes.

Montgomery County Maryland has a large Agriculture Reserve, about 30% of the county's 507 square miles, although as one former planning director commented, "all that did was displace sprawl past it to Frederick County" ("Montgomery seeks new crop of farmers," Washington Post).

As rural areas suburbanize there are often conflicts between new residents and extant agriculture operations ("‘Right To Farm’ Laws Allow Ag To Be Stinky And Noisy, But Some Neighbors Cry ‘Fowl’," Colorado Public Radio; "Suburban farms meet opposition as they look to change business," Baltimore Sun; "Beer-fueled fight in Fairfax prompts officials to look at state farming law," Washington Post).  Often such disputes end up in court.

Communities with agricultural land typically have an agriculture element within their land use master plans, while cities typically do not.  Although this is changing as the interest in Urban Agriculture grows.

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(Not related to animals.) 

Front yard gardening.  Another issue is front yard gardening, which many people consider "messy" and many zoning codes forbid ("The Battlefront in the Front Yard," NYT).  But depending on if you have a backyard and whether or not it gets enough sun, it might be the only option people have for growing vegetables.

Related is the concept of the Edible Landscape/Foodscaping.  More about this some other time.

Public meeting on urban agriculture in DC: Wednesday September 11th

From email:

On Wednesday, Sept 11th the District’s Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE) will be hosting a listening session on urban agriculture. DOEE welcomes interested individuals and organizations to share their priorities for a new Office of Urban Agriculture. The event will include a short walking tour of THEARC farm - appropriate footwear is encouraged for those who would like to participate. Please RSVP at the link below.  For those unable to attend in person there is an online survey where you can share your thoughts; the survey link is included below. 

Event: Urban Agriculture In The District - Listening Session

Venue: THEARC - Black Box Theater

Address: 1901 Mississippi Avenue Southeast, Washington, DC 20020

Time: 6:30 - 8:30pm

RSVP: https://urban-ag-in-dc.eventbrite.comSurvey (complete by 9/30/19): DC Urban Agriculture Survey

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My response:

while it's great you sent out this notice, personally I believe it is incredibly disrespectful to citizens to provide notice to a public meeting only one or two days before. With such short notice, people often can't attend. (Although note that my life has been so busy lately, I haven't logged into this email account for more than 10 days, and you may have sent out other notices.)

wrt "the issue" there are many elements, including:

1. a pathetic urban agriculture extension program at UDC, compared to other cities

2. including a not very impressive Master Gardener program etc., by contrast Montgomery and Arlington have great programs; Arlington has an "Energy Masters" program too.  The Montgomery County Master Gardener program has a regular schedule of appearances at county libraries throughout the spring and summer.

3. "County" fairs as opportunities to promote agriculture and the environment, e.g., I go to the Arlington and Montgomery County Ag Fairs frequently, in large part for the community organizations tables, the master gardeners, etc.

4. the city could do a lot more in planting fruit trees in tree planting strips and remnant "triangles". E.g. with my neighbors I do pick serviceberries from the bushes in the planting strips, planted near my house in Ward 4, and I make great pies.

Marina with one of our pies, made from berries we pick off bushes planted by the city in the "planting strip" on streets in Ward 4, including 3rd Street NW near the Takoma Recreation Center.

(Note that recipe for "Saskatoon Berry Pie," where you simmer the berries first, to release some of the juice and make them softer, is better than pie recipes for serviceberries that don't call for first simmering the berries.)

A neighbor has unofficially been planting tomatoes and doing other nice things in a reservation (the odd shaped triangles of land formed when the avenues cross the traditional street grid) down the street.  But such reservations could be used for what are called "food forests."

-- "Community gardens 2.0: Beacon Food Forest, Seattle," 2012

5. Cheaper sources for compost. (E.g., if we travel in "rural areas" and we need compost, I try to stop and buy some at a "farm store" like Agway. In effect, the savings compared to buying locally pays for the cost of a rental car.

6. Legalizing Chickens. E.g., what I call "block supported agriculture"

"Block Supported Agriculture: Poultry, etc."

The concept of BSA can be built upon and extended.

7. The WMPT PBS television program "Maryland Farm and Harvest" is an awesome show. Perhaps working with the Office of Cable Television, a similar kind of program could be created "for DC." I learn a lot from it.

WETA (and WJLA) also broadcast a different farm related show, "America's Heartland." But when WETA shows it, it's at 6am on Saturdays and they don't repeat it.

WMPT also broadcasts the PBS Create Channel, which includes a number of "gardening" related programs such as Growing a Greener World and P. Allen Smith. These are great resources.

8. There is an agriculture academic/career program at an urban high school in Philadelphia.

9. Also in Philadelphia, a cool nonprofit community urban nursery, GreensGrow Farm, that is located in the core of the city, in the Fishtown neighborhood

Why not use some of the parking lot at the RFK campus for such a use?

10.  Use of interstitial land at public housing complexes.

11.  When Sheila Dixon was mayor of Baltimore, she supported urban gardening, and herbs like rosemary were among the plants growing around city hall.  I don't seem to have a photo.  But there are plenty of opportunities to demonstrate support for urban agriculture on city controlled land.

12.  Farmers Markets, and Eastern Market, are a great place to deliver urban agriculture programming.

Etc.

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Note that I argue one of the foundations of the community development field is derived from the community economic developments initiatives out of the Agriculture Extension program, which is one of the US's greatest achievements (the creation of Land Grant Colleges--federally supported agriculture colleges also providing support to farmers on a county-by-county basis).

Three examples of L'etat c'est moi/Not invented here/Executive authority (in DC local government)

1.  Legality of chickens.  Over the weekend there was a story, "Do you raise chickens in D. C.? Their days may be numbered," in the Washington Post about how successfully bested the city in a lawsuit concerning the legality of chickens, not via building regulations and zoning, but the definition of animals within the city's public health laws.

Even though the city talks a good game about urban agriculture, it hasn't moved forward legalizing poultry, although many other (more) innovative cities and counties have already done so, such as Seattle and Salt Lake City (""An update on Block Supported (Poultry) Agriculture").

The original proposal for allowing poultry in some of the discussions in the Zoning Rewrite were so strict that they likely eliminated eligibility from more than 98% of DC residential properties. (50 feet setback from each lot line--meaning a property would have to be about 110 feet wide and maybe the same distance in length.) That being said having some limitations is reasonable, but DC has never proposed reasonable limitations.

Rather than taking the opportunity to correct lack of vision, Mayor Bowser has put language in the FY2018 Budget legislation explicitly and directly changing the definitions in the public health law to ban the practice.

There is a petition organized by the successful plaintiffs, aiming to influence City Council to extract that language from the budget bill.

-- DC City Council: Lay off the hens; support backyard chickens in DC

1220 Maple View Place SE is one of the properties in question.  Photo: L'Enfant Trust.

2.  There has been coverage of the battle between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch over how to deal with four nuisance/disinvested properties in the Anacostia neighborhood ("Four Anacostia houses are at heart of an affordable housing struggle," Washington Business Journal; "DHCD Refuses to Comment on Derelict D.C.-Owned Anacostia Houses," Washington City Paper).  The properties have continued to decline and languish while under the control of the city's Department of Housing and Community.

Neighborhood residents convinced the City Council to transfer the properties to the housing rehabilitation program of the nonprofit L'Enfant Trust, which has restored a couple of houses in the neighborhood.

Instead of going along with the legislation, the Executive Branch has ignored the law passed transferring the properties, and separately is marketing the properties for sale.

3.  The nonprofit National Mall Coalition has been floating a concept for a number of years to build a parking structure/stormwater capture facility under the National Mall.  The revenue from parking would pay for the facility.  Granted the National Park Service, which controls the land, isn't too keen on the idea. But the NMC has offered to pay $100,000 for a feasibility study by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is willing to do the preliminary study.  But the request, even if paid for by a nonprofit or private sector initiative, has to come from a local government.

DC's Executive Branch is not willing to put forth such a request, so NMC is trying to get City Council to pass legislation authorizing the study.

I have some reservations, not about the initiative, but about there needing to be more "visitor management planning" wrapped around the proposal ("A National Mall-focused heritage (replica) streetcar service to serve visitors is a way bigger idea than a parking garage under the Mall").  To their credit, NMC added my recommendation of a visitors center to their original concept.

The National Archives McGowan Auditorium was flooded during a stormwater overflow event in 2006, costing millions of dollars in damage.

Still, what's "the harm" in a study, especially because it is in response to stormwater-related floods that caused millions of dollars of damage in 2006 ("With National Treasures At Risk, D.C. Fights Against Flooding," NPR) and maintaining the economic viability of the central business district ought to be a key element of the city's economic development and risk management policies.

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What each of these examples share is that the initiative for action did not come from the Executive Branch, which seems to believe that only it knows what's best for the rest of us.

It's not a good way to behave or model behavior and it is definitely counter to language in Mayor Bowser's inauguration speech:

I will encourage creativity, risk-taking and innovation. It is my pledge to take sometimes the road less protected, to see jobs and opportunities when others see only the costs, and to praise my staff when they get it right and be the one to tell you if we get it wrong.

Now you know this, I’m not a “pie in the sky” politician. I believe in making both bold and pragmatic plans and executing them every day. At the end of every day, week or quarter—our team will have to show results. Not just during election season, but for the four full years.

The Edible landscape

I write from time to time about how street planting strips could be planted with edibles, for example fruit trees or bushes, as a way to support "urban agriculture."

Photo from Joel the Urban Gardener blog.

There are many examples over time, such as how communities in Texas planted pecan trees on their town squares.

When Sheila Dixon was Mayor of Baltimore, the planting beds in front of City Hall included herbs such as rosemary.

In Greater Takoma, there are a couple blocks where the planting strip has been planted with serviceberry (juneberry) bushes, which when they mature, produce a berry suitable for pie.

Last year, the berries had some kind of fungus and couldn't be harvested, but the year before we picked enough to make one pie.

This year, with the next door neighbors, we picked enough berries to make three pies, and I broke down and finally got over my fear and made the crusts from scratch (pretty simple actually).

After picking the berries, I happened to come across another block with even bigger bushes.

But the period in which the berries are ripe and suitable for picking is brief, about one week, and the berries are thin skinned which makes them hard to transport, so you're won't find them at a supermarket or even a farmers market--picking and cooking such cultivars makes you appreciate more of the backstory behind the creation of an industrialized agricultural system.

For whatever reason there is a very old persimmon tree at the Takoma Recreation Center that still produces.  But the fruit tastes awful and isn't worth trying to cook. (I did once make persimmon cake from fruit given to Suzanne by one of her colleagues.)

That is my extent of knowledge of DC purposefully having fruit trees or bushes in the public space.

I don't know the hows and whys behind the planting of the serviceberry bushes.

In our own yard we've planted blueberries and raspberries.  The latter have never taken off.  The former are taking years to get to the point of bearing fruit and one of the three bushes died.

One household on the 100 block of 4th Street SE plants treeboxes with basil, tomatoes, and other plants.

We have wild blackberries (we only figured it out the year after we moved in) and in the last year (seven years after moving in) they've become particularly fruitful, but it is always a struggle to harvest in the face of competition with the birds.

The birds deposit of seeds elsewhere in our yard facilitates the spread of the blackberries.

Our next door neighbor has planted one each of peach, pear, and plum, a grape arbor (stiff competition for fruit with raccoons, but very good), and a fig bush which has struggled in the years since particularly cold winters.

From a gardening show on PBS, I learned about Urban Tilth in Richmond/Contra Costa County, California, and how along the Richmond Greenway shared use path they've planted community gardens, including produce, where picking is open to everyone.

Photo from the Student Conservation Association.

The logical next step would be to plant fruit trees along multiuser trails.  (Although dropped fruit is attractive to rodents and other animals.)

Community garden grant promotion from Scotts Miracle Gro

Scotts grant recipient marker, Tallahassee, Florida.

Leading up to and in honor of the company's 150th anniversary in 2018, Scott Miracle Gro launched a multi-year program to promote the development of community gardens and green spaces across the country, with the goal of fostering the development of 1000 new gardens and spaces.

This year's program offers up to $1,500 to community groups to support their efforts to create "edible gardens, flower gardens and public green spaces" in their neighborhoods.

Eligibility: US organizations must be 501(c)3 nonprofits.
Grants are also made to Canadian and European organizations through separate programs.
Deadline: 2/13/2015
Webpage with more information


Median green space beautified and maintained by the Quesada Gardens Initiative
on 3rd St. in San Francisco.  Photo by Chris Carlsson.

Granted the grants are small, but can help. One past grant recipient is the Quesada Gardens Initiative in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood.

See "From Gangs to Gardens: How Community Agriculture Transformed Quesada Avenue" from Yes Magazine. and "Quesada Gardens wins national award," from the 5800 3rd St. blog.

Another grant recipient is the Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone in Cleveland (ICIC story; case study from Sustainable Cleveland)

Urban/Community Composting

In San Francisco, green containers are for composting, blue for recycling, and black for trash.  SF Environment agency image.

San Francisco and Seattle have required separation of food waste in the "trash collection" stream for many years.

A few years ago, when SF put more requirements on multiunit buildings and commercial facilities, participation rose significantly, for example, leading to more than 70% of apartment and condominium buildings participating ("San Francisco Credits New Law with Increase in Composting," CBS).

More recently, SF's efforts at reducing trash waste have plateaued with an increase in the amount of "trash" going to landfills, because many people throw away as trash items that could be recycled or composted ("San Francisco Stalls In Its Attempt To Go Trash-Free," 538).

I have this book, which I first saw at the Green Festival, but I haven't read it yet.

We have a ways to go before we become more "European" and build a wide variety of waste reduction behaviors and practices as unthinking routines ("Too Much Water Doesn't Damp Germans' Thrifty Habits," Wall Street Journal).

Seattle has just passed new rules, with ticketing and fines to increase participation in composting. ("Q&A pokes deeper into Seattle’s new composting rules, fines," Seattle Times).  Although the fines are minimal, too low to make giving tickets worthwhile--in order to encourage more residents to compost.

These programs, because they use different processes, can include meats and fats, which typical backyard composting doesn't include to ward off smalls and small animals.

We compost.  As an aside, we have composted on our property since 2009 and in combination with recycling, this has drastically reduced the amount of "trash" we typically generate--about one 13-gallon bag of trash every 10 days.  I suppose we generate roughly 8-16 pounds (one gallon = 8 pounds) of food waste each week (coffee grounds, cue tips, nail clippings, hair, vegetable and fruit peelings, paper towels, pizza boxes, etc.).

Although I am not "religious" about turning the compost--you can make it in a few weeks if you are diligent--so it takes us awhile to convert food and yard waste into usable "dirt" but it happens and it's a pretty cool and exciting process, aided by worms and other insects minus some bird feeding.

But since we lost a big tree which generated half our supply of leaves necessary to stoke the process over the course of the next year--I've taken to "liberating" leaves raked and bagged by neighbors.

In the process, I've discovered that because they see the leaves as "trash" they aren't averse to also throwing in trash like shingles, broken asphalt, and litter into the bags with the leaves. (Depending on how compressed the bags of leaves get, they can convert into "leaf mold" pretty fast, which is a useful form of mulch.  "Throwing leaves away" is a big waste of environmental opportunity.)

Local training opportunity.  In the DC-Maryland area, the Institute of Local Self-Reliance in conjunction with the DC Department of Parks and Recreation, is launching a "community composting training program," a six-week course with classroom and field sessions in November and December. As part of the program, participants will plan and execute a "community composting" project.

From email:

Apply to the Neighborhood Soil Rebuilder Advanced Composter training program today!

• Learn about the compost process, from building piles to using the finished product 
• Gain experience in building and managing compost systems 
• Develop leadership skills and promote community composting

Participants will be certified as an Advanced Neighborhood Soil Rebuilder upon completion of course requirements. Requirements include 30 hours of community service launching a community-scale composting project of your choosing. Once completed, there will also be an option to continue on to the Master Neighborhood Soil Rebuilder train-the-trainer apprenticeship.

Community composting.  Rather than create standardized collection programs in cities like San Francisco, other communities support more ground up projects.

The State of Maryland imposes percentage requirements for waste diversion on all of the local jurisdictions.

Therefore, Montgomery County, Maryland strongly encourages composting, providing resources and bins to residents, and has a separate yard waste collection program where the materials are directed to regional composting facilities--the LeafGro compost available for sale in the region is produced by that system (the state supported the creation of regional composting infrastructure and facilities).  This program is a good example that government can be innovative.

Cities like Montreal have various community composting programs that operate in local parks, and in Manhattan, for many years the Lower East Side Ecology Center has set up collection sites at various farmers markets, so apartment dwellers can drop off food waste--diverting it from the waste stream--which the LESEC then composts.  They do this for free, while in the DC area, for profit businesses have been set up to do something similar.  (I won't pay $10/week to compost.)

Community composting resource.  The ILSR has a report on community composting programs.

-- Growing Local Fertility: A Guide to Community Composting, describes successful initiatives, their benefits, tips for replication, key start-up steps, and the need for private, public, and nonprofit sector support. Produced in collaboration with the Highfields Center for Composting in Hardwick, Vermont, the report profiles 31 model programs.

Other necessary policy changes to support wide-scale urban composting/waste reduction

1.  I've recommended that DC develop more nuanced waste collection policies for the outer city especially, by creating a yard waste diversion program.  See "A way for DC to begin adding yard waste collection as a separate element of waste collection and reduction programming,"

2.  Plus, DC DPR could set up community composting operations at certain parks.

3.  There need to be requirements imposed on food product manufacturers so that more containers are recyclable or compostable, with labeling requirements on the containers so that people know how to "properly" dispose of containers.

4.  Unrecyclable-uncompostable containers and packing materials should be banned--such as styrofoam--in favor of compostable or recyclable materials.

5.  Requirements that restaurants, supermarkets and other commercial establishments "that dispose of at least one ton of organic material per week to donate or repurpose theusable food to create energy from food waste" went into effect in Massachusetts this month ("Massachusetts Leads Again, This Time Bans Food Waste," Sustainable Business).

Focus in this area coudl make a big difference in food waste diversion, especially if requirements vary according to the type and size of the establishment (e.g., less than "one ton per week" for restaurants).

--

Urban farming vs. Urban residential infill

A corn-based entryway at a house on Chillum Road in Prince George's County, Maryland.

The Atlantic Cities has a piece, "How Urban Farming Is Making San Francisco's Housing Crisis Worse," which makes the point that providing tax incentives in San Francisco for vacant lots to be urban farms/gardens, when San Francisco has a housing crisis is bad policy (a/k/a "insane").

Interestingly, I had the same kind of argument apparently 4 years ago ("Gardeners near Capitol Hill prepare to repel a Marine Corps invasion," Washington Post), with an ex-commenter, about this same issue in the context of Greater Capitol Hill and the expansion of the Marine Barracks.  Said expansion will end up taking out an urban garden.

I said that the choice was easy, build.

... making the point that urban gardens are a land utilization strategy for weak real estate submarkets when there are no or limited viable alternatives for absorbing/using the land.  Ironically, an Atlantic Magazine blog ("Community garden, or gardening community") argued in favor of not building on the garden, using it as a community building element.  (I see the point, but in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, most people have alternatives, they just can't garden on a large scale.)

A household on the 100 block of 4th Street SE plants basil and tomatoes in the treeboxes adjacent to their house.

Ideally, urban gardens aren't aren't an end game, but an interim strategy--just like the sad end when artists get displaced after improving the "quality" and perception of a neighborhood so that it is repriced and becomes "valorized".

He challenged me to come up with reasons.  I didn't get into it.  It's all about "highest and best use."

I wasn't that great at economics in college--graphic reason and math skills (not good at calculus) did me in.  But urban real estate issues make very clear how economics works.

The reason for DC's skyrocketing housing prices?   Greater demand and minimal supply.  So prices go up.

Limited supply of new affordable housing?  New construction costs more than previously built properties (most of the time).

Because of the height limit, land supply and build out capacity is limited.  This constrains the economic viability of constructing lower cost housing at a profit.  So people build to the most profitable, expensive segments.

When housing demand is high, residential lots should be used for housing.  If not, it's one more contributor to higher rents or property purchase prices.

Earth Day and cities

For 10+ years I've joked that my efforts on a variety of urban issues are a form of "built environmental justice."

The environmental justice movement more generally is about linking social justice and equity considerations to the placement/links between environmental hazards-problems and race and economic segregation.  For example, chemical plants and noxious uses like trash transfer stations tend to be located in poorer communities where residents tend to be less organized.

2.  Today is a good reminder to read David Owen's Green Metropolis, which makes the argument that because of its high transit use, low automobile-gasoline use, comparative low per capita generation of trash and efficient use of energy, New York City is one of the "greenest" places on the planet.

3.  This year's Park Pride Parks and Greenspace conference in Atlanta focused on cities and low impact development-water infrastructure.  The conference was earlier in the month and many of the presentations are online.

4.  I've been thinking about solid waste because DC is in the midst of doing a solid waste plan and there is a public meeting next week (April 30th) although there is a distinct lack of information on the website.

Years ago I wrote about Johannesburg and how they branded and organized their waste collection function as "Pikitup."  See the 2005 blog entry, "Every Litter Bit Hurts."

Why couldn't DC do something similar and take a very active role in waste reduction as part of the planning function of Public Works?

For example, I was very much impressed with how DC Water's new program for compost generation will reduce "solid waste" generated for compost by 60% leading to a reduction in truck trips, plus how the process will generate 1/3 of the plant's elextricity.  Pretty impressive  ("DC Water adopts Norway's Cambi system for making power," Washington Post).

Then I saw an article about a cement plant using tires for fuel via a process that reduces waste and pollution simultaneously ("Old tires to roll on as fuel for Tijeras cement plant," Albuquerque Journal).  A few times/week I ride past the concrete plant in Fort Totten and I am always thinking how they could systematically reduce truck trips if they would receive their raw materials by train.  It could be a great way to get rid of old tires too.

5.  We can't forget disaster planning and climate change given the earthquakes, tornadoes and other storms that regular cause havoc in cities around the world.

6.  Nor urban agriculture, but I wrote about an element of that a few days ago.    Next week, Environmental Action is sponsoring an online "Food Revolution Summit."

And the Edible Communities group, which publishes local food magazines in 80 different parts of the US (off and on Edible DC publishes, and will relaunch this summer, but the closest one that is actively publishing is Edible Blue Ridge) has their annual institute May 10th and 11th in New York City.  The program lineup looks pretty amazing.

DC Zoning Code Rewrite written testimony deadline: Friday April 25th, 3 pm (Chickens edition), now September 15th

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Updated and republished due to an extension of the public comment period to September
======

WAMU-FM reported yesterday ("After Six Years, D.C. To Get Six More Months To Debate Zoning Code Rewrite ") that the Zoning Commission has extended the public comment period to September 15th.

GGW thinks this is a bad idea ("DC's 40-year out of date zoning code will get at least 6 months more stale").

I think that the ZRR process has been so flawed from the get go that (1) the delay doesn't surprise me and (2) it is an indicator and recognition of the flawed process (see the past blog entry "DC and the zoning rewrite and the approach not taken").

Will it result in a better code and more support for necessary changes?

Doubtful, because most of the angst has to do with more suburban parts of the city expressing vehement outrage against changes that are more specifically urban and less focused on automobility (see the past blog entries "DC as a suburban agenda dominated city" and "Understanding why Upper Northwest DC residents don't buy into the sustainability mobility paradigm").

But that means I get to polish and craft the various testimonies that I plan to submit.

The DC Office of Zoning hasn't updated its website to reflect the new circumstances.

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Previous entry
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Update on the Zoning Rewrite Process:  DC Zoning Commission

While I testified earlier on Accessory Dwelling Units, I do intend to submit written testimonies about (1) pop ups; (2) the need for special big box review provisions and problems with large tract review procedures; (3) general organization of the code; and (4) legalization of chickens--because a Greater Takoma resident was "busted" for having a coop and I offered to help.

The volume of the submissions means they'll be quick and dirty rather than hyper-detailed.

With regard to urban agriculture and poultry, I argue that cities have taken two directions, what I call loose or tight regulations.  Tight regulations legalize the raising of poultry in residential districts but have requirements for lot sizes and distance from lot lines that are not sized for cities, making raising poultry illegal in reality.  For example, Norfolk, Virginia requires a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet, which is just under a quarter-acre.  A typical rowhouse lot is less than one-tenth that size.

Loose regulations are focused on allowing the practice by making regulations fit the form of urban neighborhoods.  They don't specify minimum lot sizes, and focus coop placement requirements on the distance from dwelling units (on the property and adjacent properties), not the lot line.  Places like Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York City, Portland, Salt Lake City and County, and Seattle have what I call loose regulations.

DC's earliest proposals are definitely a form of tight regulation--lots would have to be about 110 feet wide--making poultry raising in residential districts illegal for the most part.

Interestingly, DC's touted Sustainability Plan doesn't bring up residential poultry raising at all.

Note that one writer in the LA Times likes eggs, but not chickens, and she writes about the organization of "chicken cooperatives" there ("When the chickens came home to roost"), which are on a much larger scale than what I call "Block Supported Agriculture."

Right: chickens in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.

It turns out that the State of Virginia held its first Urban Agriculture Summit earlier in the week, in Lynchburg.  See "First Va. Urban Agriculture Summit kicks off in Lynchburg" from the Lynchburg News-Advance.

... interestingly, with regard to DC, you can do urban aquaculture but you can't raise chickens.

Testing changes to zoning with demonstration projects

This coop in Ballard is tucked in the corner of the lot, against the back alley. 

One of the big problems with zoning is that it is an all or nothing phenomenon.  Usually there are a number of authorized uses, which triggers no significant review, unauthorized uses (such as chickens in DC), or uses that may be allowed depending on hearings or other changes.

While traveling this past week, I read a bunch of newspapers from the Pacific Northwest and there were a bunch of articles about how changes to zoning codes concerning matter of right use (such as a automobile dealership in a residential area) allowing discordant uses (commercial in solidly residential areas) in close proximity created problems.

A guy in my greater neighborhood had some chickens--DC hasn't legalized urban poultry even though many of the nation's largest cities have--and someone reported it (comparable probably to how someone stole the flowers I planted on the alley side of our property) and he has to get rid of them.

He's suggesting that they allow him to keep the chickens until the code is changed. 

While there is zero chance of that happening (see this 3+ year old story on the topic "D.C. residents fight to raise poultry in the city" from the Post, as well as Max Weber's writings on bureaucracy, James Scott Seeing Like A State, and John Friedmann's Planning in the Public Domain), it does raise a good point, that it is worth testing certain kinds of zoing changes on a limited basis, to get people to see how it will work, to make tweaks to proposals, etc.

We don't have that kind of iterative process in zoning.

But we need some type of demonstration process for at least five categories:

- urban poultry
- accessory dwelling units (it's actually legal now in some parts of the city, but it isn't really used much)
- apartments in houses
- "corner" stores (it was legal at one time so there are examples here and there across the city, especially in Capitol Hill)
- conversion of large houses to "rooming houses" (this is illegal now but could be allowed in certain situations).

This backyard has a small garden and is also used by the dog.  The family has four chickens.  In Seattle, the legal limit is 8 chickens for lots less than 10,000 s.f.

Otherwise, people think everything will be going to hell with the changes.  Ideally, if they saw such in action, knowledge might trump fear.

We were traveling this past week (a wedding) and saw some urban chickens in two different neighborhoods in Seattle, in Ballard, a neighborhood with escalating housing prices, and in a middle income area, Madison Valley.

The chickens have been at both those households for 10 years or more.  They, their neighborhoods, and the City of Seattle have survived.

-  Seattle planning tip memo: Urban Agriculture
- "An update on Block Supported (Poultry) Agriculture," a previous entry based on some experiences with chickens in Salt Lake City

Note also that Seattle had a demonstration project on accessory dwelling units in Southeast Seattle, which is captured in this document, A Guide to Building a Backyard Cottage in Southeast Seattle.

An update on Block Supported (Poultry) Agriculture

Last November, I wrote about what I called "Block Supported Agriculture," using an example from Salt Lake City, where some friends have a backyard chicken coop with 6 chickens, and they share the responsibilities and eggs with two other families on the block.

Right: some of the chickens that spurred the entry.  (Brown chickens lay brown eggs.  White chickens lay white eggs.)

I thought that their example was very interesting in how it makes something that might seem overwhelming--having to take responsibility for feeding and watering chickens every day might mean that you don't do it--into something that's do-able.

Since then, two other households on the block have gone their own way into chicken farming, although one household has an extensive background in farming and they would have done it anyway--they have 8 chickens I think.  Another household, doing it on their own, has 2 chickens.

In any case, "Block Supported Poultry Agriculture" needs a bit of an update given the almost one year of experience they have in doing it.  First, the big thing is the recognition that the household where the coop is physically located does more.  They pay for the electricity and provide the water, although the cost is minimal.  They could have the others chip in but it doesn't seem worth the bother.  Second, over time the coop requires maintenance, like chipping off hardened "stuff."  They could probably schedule communal work times to get help to do it, but right now, the household where the coop is physically located is taking on that responsibility.  Third, at least one household not participating was stealing eggs.  They figured out who it was, but rather than press the issue, they put a lock on the coop.

Could the egg stealer have provided a teachable moment, should/could he be brought into the BSA, by adding some chickens?  How do you talk to someone about that?

Metrics framework to measure the benefits of urban agriculture

I think this graphic is really cool. It's a framework that lists the various benefits from urban agriculture.

(Although some people aren't going to care whether or not people get physical exercise growing food locally, they are going to be motivated by price.  E.g., it's really hard for me to pay $2.50 or more per pound for apples or $5 for two pounds of potatoes grown locally, when I know I can buy them for significantly less at certain supermarkets.)

The Metrics Framwork was created by the Design Trust for Public Space (list of projects) in association with their work with the Five Borough Farm in New York City.

According to this blog entry, Five Borough Farm is beginning to gather data for measurements of the various elements of the framework.

The resources page at Five Borough Farm provides documents defining the indicator measurements as well as an annotated metrics bibliography.  The resource page lists other interesting urban agriculture and sustainability studies relevant to NYC, plus reports from Boston and New York City.

A book, Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture in New York City, has been produced by the project, also by the Design Trust for Public Space, surveying the state of urban agriculture in New York City

(It reminds me a bit of the book Edible City, published as part of the UTOpia book series on Toronto issues, by Coach House Books.)

They have also made the book available as a free pdf download.

Takoma Park composting and the glacial process of social and structural change

Today's Post has an article about Takoma Park, Maryland (a small city of with about 17,000 residents, although the city includes not just Old Town which most people are familiar with, but a more sprawling part further out) immediately abutting Northwest DC and their pilot food waste composting program involving 300 households.  See "Coming to a curb near you: Compost collection."

Seattle has been collecting food waste since 2005 as part of the city's composting and waste collection program which began in 1989.  Although the city still encourages backyard composting. 

At this point, we should be less focused on heralding "new" "experiments" with composting food waste and be more focused on why we aren't adopting best or better practices.

Although note that Montgomery County, where Takoma Park is located, has an extensive yard waste diversion program and massively promotes backyard composting.  The Leafgro® organic compost product available locally is produced in part from Montgomery County's leaf collection program.

See the past blog entries "Urban Composting" and "Urban Composting Redux."

2.  The next direction in this kind of practice should be the provision of chipper/shredder services.  (We can only burn in the fireplace so many twigs, branches, and firewood.)

3.  And managing the urban forest also for revenue, although this is happening more in DC in terms of milling wood from fallen trees.

Urban composting redux

I have a constant internal battle about being critical versus being positive about various governmental acts because if I am 5-10 years ahead of the curve on various issues, should I be critical 5 to 10 years after I write something that it finally percolates up to something that the city deals with?

Yesterday's Post has a piece, "Composting efforts gain traction across the United States," about the rise of composting at three levels, by residents individually and through for profit operations like Compost Cab, by businesses such as Safeway Supermarkets, and by the local government, which has allocated $600,000 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to test composting at four urban gardens in DC.

Because the indexing function of Blogger isn't that great, I can't find very easily the earliest instance that I mentioned the importance of composting as a waste management and reduction tool as well the environmental benefits.  I remember coming up with an idea (a bit harebrained) on how to set up block by block collection bins a couple years before that.  But frankly, the idea wasn't that much different from what Montreal started doing in 2010.

I don't think that Montreal's composting program using community garden and park locations cost $600,000 to try to figure out.

I do know that I mentioned the plan by the City of Austin, Texas to achieve zero waste by 2040, in a blog entry in 2007.  I've written about the efforts of the Lower East Side Ecology Center in Manhattan, about how Seattle has done composting since 1989, but only added food waste to the collection system in 2005, and I am pretty sure I've written about Toronto's early failures in composting all types of food waste (they didn't have the right system in place to break down meats and fats), run photos on Montreal's urban gardening compost program, in the context of needing a comprehensive waste reduction plan for the city, etc.

I am not sure how long my household has been composting (since we have a large back yard it's easy for us to do).  Probably since the fall of 2008, using a design made from wood pallets, that we got from the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection composting website.

Left: our main compost setup along with bags of leaves in reserve, captured from our lot (and from the neighbors--we lost a tree last year, so we produce fewer leaves).  You cover your inside compost with leaves/grass clippings to build the right environment for breakdown into soil.

I am not a fanatic about turning it.  If you are a fanatic, you can generate usable "soil" within a few weeks.  For us, it takes 12 to 18 months--e.g., stuff we put into a supplementary Montgomery County provided plastic bin (you can get them at the Ag Fair) in 2011 we let sit all of 2012 and I tested it about a month ago and it is now super-prime compost, full of worms (a great sign), etc.

It is incredible what a difference composting makes in terms of trash reduction. Typically we produce about 5 gallons of "trash" each week (which we throw out every couple weeks or so), and a full blue bin's worth of recycling (lots of newspapers and magazines), plus whatever we throw into the compost bin (including leaves and sometimes grass clippings that I filch from neighbors to get the right mix).

Right: We also have a large loose compost pile for brush and branches.  I still haven't figured out the best option for a chipper/shredder--we don't want to get one that requires gasoline, but the electric ones apparently have some issues too.

There are two of us and the compost pot we have in the kitchen has one gallon capacity.  Including coffee grounds/water (and yes, some spoiled food), we produce between 1-2 gallons of inside compost (plus leaves etc. from the outside) per week.  I don't think I'd want to pay $8/week for someone to "haul it away."

I would aver that studying the composting programs of other jurisdictions including Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, Austin, Portland, and Montgomery County Maryland would be an excellent use of some of that $600,000 and far more useful.

As the Post article stated:

Portland, Ore., by contrast, opted in October 2011 to change its garbage collection program so haulers now take away green waste — including food scraps — once a week, but pick up other trash only once every two weeks. In a single year, the city cut its residential trash load by 40 percent.

A 40% reduction in the residential waste stream is incredible.

On the other hand DC isn't incentivized to reduce the waste stream all that much because as I have pointed out before, currently DC makes a lot of money "selling" its trash ("D.C.'s trash is now Fairfax facility's treasured commodity," Post) to Fairfax County, where it is used as feedstock for a waste-to-energy plant--because with the recession, Fairfax County isn't generating enough trash on its own to feed it.  (All the more reason, along with failures of such plants in places like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to not consider creating such a plant in DC, even though the city has allocated money for such a study also.)

Block supported agriculture: poultry

Seeing this book at Takoma Park's Now & Then gift shop yesterday reminded me that I had been meaning to write about backyard chickens based on a recent experience in Salt Lake City.

There are many initiatives around the country to legalize chickens in cities.

But many cities have pretty onerous requirements, with requirements something like the placement of a chicken coop 100 feet away from each lot line, making it almost impossible to site a chicken coop on urban sized lots (our lot is pretty big, 50 feet wide and 150 feet long, but our house is probably 25 feet on each side from our neighbors).  See these somewhat old articles from the Post, about DC area regulations, "Hot Chicks - D.C. Area Laws on Raising Chickens" and "D.C. residents fight to raise poultry in the city."

From the second article:

... the regulation requires a coop to be set back so far from neighbors that you would have to have a least an acre of land, which effectively denies chickens to city dwellers. Another provision also prohibits coops within 50 feet of a home, another deal-breaker in a rowhouse neighborhood. 

Ernst then found an ally in her D.C. Council member from Ward 6, Tommy Wells. He has introduced legislation that would allow residents to get a permit to keep chickens if they have the written consent of at least 80 percent of the neighboring property owners. 

Basically, your lot needs to be about one acre in size, which excludes more than 95% of all DC properties.  Even with the proposed change, I don't agree with a 80% requirement for agreement by property owners.  You only need a couple people to disagree and then you're forbidden.

In September, on vacation, we stayed with friends in Salt Lake City.  They live in a neighborhood with a similar spatial pattern to ours, so legally, if they were in DC they wouldn't be able to have chickens.  They did, with their chicken coop at the far rear edge of the lot line.   Distance between houses is probably about the same.

The chickens were not noisy at all, pretty quiet actually.  Although this depends on the breed, and whether or not you have roosters--roosters make noise.

And what I thought was interesting about their set up is that they "share" the chickens with two other neighbors in what I am calling "block supported agriculture" as opposed to "community supported agriculture."

(Sharing backyards is a kind of variant of BSA.  See "The Shared Backyard: Homeowners Exchange a Bit of Privacy for More Garden and Socializing" from the Wall Street Journal.  We're probably not quite to that extent, but with one of our neighbors, we're likely to install a gate opening between our yards.)

They have 5-6 chickens and would produce far more eggs than one household ought to consume.  But when you share them across 3 households, and sharing includes feeding and other duties--so if one of the families is away for a few days, the chickens are still being taken care of, it works out well, and cuts down on the insect population too.

And there is no question that the eggs taste a lot better than the typical eggs sold in the supermarket.

DC State Fair (and Barracks Row Fall Festival), Saturday Sept. 22nd

DC being almost fully urbanized doesn't have much in the way of agriculture extension programs, despite there being such a program at the University of the District of Columbia, which is also recognized as an urban land grant university.

One of the great community building events of old is the county fair, complemented by State fairs as well.  In this region, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Arlington County, and others all have annual county fairs.

Typically, the fairs show off agriculture and other "home" arts such as photography. 

Fortunately, while the MoCo Ag Fair is located in Gaithersburg, it's reachable by transit--subway to Shady Grove and a RideOn bus up Route 355.  You can see farm animals, award winning fruits and vegetables, displays, entertainment, and check out booths from for profit vendors and nonprofit organizations and government agencies--for example the Montgomery County recycling unit is always out in force and willing to give you stuff to assist your home composting efforts, etc.

For example this year I picked up an anti-plastic bag tax bag at the booth of the Montgomery County Republicans.  Note that the world didn't come to an end for Montgomery County residents who began to either pay for shopping bags or brought their own.

Left: county government booths at the Arlington County Fair, 2006.

Arlington, an "urban" county, uses the opportunity to showcase the various government agencies in a single row of the multiple-row exposition hall.  When I went a few years ago, one of the people manning the County Manager booth was actually the County Manager (then it was Ron Carlee) and we had a good conversation about various issues and I learned a lot.


DC's own State Fair

DC lacks an equivalent event--although we have some good street festivals, more about that later-- and so a group of citizens created a nonprofit group to put on the DC State Fair.

This year it will be at Barracks Row Festival, which is on 8th Street SE on Capitol Hill (accessible from the Eastern Market Metro Station), from 11am to 5pm.

Right: corn being grown in the front yard of a house on New Hampshire Avenue NW in the Petworth neighborhood.

Because it is at the end of the growing season, we won't be able to check out much in the way of crop winners, although preserved foods will be a big component of the event.

Corn in the city

Given the frame construction, you might think this house is in the suburbs.  It's actually down the street--a block or two--from the Petworth Metro Station, on New Hampshire Avenue NW.

It's a good utilization of "marginal' land, a small front yard, and a kind of public art.

It's more than knee-high before the Fourth of July too.

Community gardens 2.0: Beacon Food Forest, Seattle

From "Introducing the Edible Forest" from the Lempert Report:

Once considered novel, community gardens are now an everyday part of the urban food landscape. Mini city farms are flourishing too, popping up everywhere – on the rooftops of business, in backyards, in school fields and in parks. Now, some locavores are taking the concept a step further, planting edible forests in public spaces for all to enjoy.

The Beacon Food Forest is currently being developed in Seattle adjacent to the west side of Jefferson Park. The goal? To grow enough nutritious food for everyone in need, to inspire other urban communities to build food forests, and to empower the community with knowledge by having a shared local food source.
There are many layers to a food forest. The top story is a fruit or nut tree that is surrounded by a shrub layer. The next layer is a perennial layer. The bottom layer is the microsphere below the soil. Each plant and layer has multiple functions to support nutrient uptake, fix soil nutrients and nitrogen levels, accumulate biomass and mulch, attract native pollinators and even attract humans to help maintain the garden. The results are higher yields, healthier soil, better plant diversity and a garden that is more resilient to pests. 


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I've written in the past suggesting that trees in planting strips and miscellaneous bits of land be planted as fruit and nut trees.  A number of communities have urban orchard projects.


In our backyard, which might not be big enough, we lost one of our big trees.  We're debating on what to put in its place.  (We have blackberries nearby, but haven't been successful so far with blueberries and raspberries.)  After seeing a huge pecan tree in a yard on the Eastern Shore, I've been thinking about planting one.  I don't know if we could also fit in a fruit tree.


-- "Pecan trees in public squares in Texas"
-- Edible Landscaping webpage, National Gardening Association
-- Philadelphia Orchard Project
-- Backyard Orchardist book
-- Backyard Berry Book