"When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.
But now, there's a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.
It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.
"These projects are becoming more and more mainstream," says , a fellow with the Urban Land Institute. He estimates that more than 200 developments with an agricultural twist already exist nationwide.
"Golf courses cost millions to build and maintain, and we're kind of overbuilt on golf courses already," he says. "If you put in a farm where we can grow things and make money from the farm, it becomes an even better deal."
The White Street Landfill property includes 500 acres of never before used property that could be used for anything. The City of Greensboro's plan is to extend East Cone Blvd through the property and sell it off to developers for conventional housing projects and shopping centers just as has always been done in Greensboro-- just as was done right up until the housing bubble burst and the economy tanked in 2007 plunging us into the Great Recession we are still living in today.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with continuing to do what got us in trouble in the first place?
Community Supported Agriculture could be managed as a neighborhood co-op and a local supplier to markets like Deep Roots Co-op and the soon to be built Renaissance Community Coop to be located less than 1/2 mile from White Street.
A CSA community could incorporate many of the other ideas from my series, Economic Development At The White Street Landfill while feeding thousands of people and helping to employ hundreds of Greensboro residents.
And if you'd like to know more about what a CSA looks like, here's the link to the one they talked about in the NPR article I quoted: Greensboro's developers should be chomping at the bit to ride the Bucking Horse. Too bad none of them are that smart.
Please continue reading Economic Development At The White Street Landfill: Part 11
