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Monday, January 28, 2013

Architecture Utopia Today: Farming the City of Brotherly Love

Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 7:35 AM

In an effort to bring the city closer to its goals for healthy communities and sustainable city planning Philadelphia rolled out a new Zoning Code in 2012 after a four-year process of updates and revisions to the outdated 50 year-old code on the books. The new code now recognizes urban agriculture as a legitimate land use designation. After tackling a few hiccups along the way, namely Bill 120917, that restricted gardening and farming in certain districts, the new code promises to protect and promote urban farming in its various forms whether they are animal husbandry, community gardening or market farming. The code also makes leaps in protecting communities adjacent to farms and making cultivators and farmers responsible for any disturbances to the neighborhood.

Around 40,000 lots are doing nothing in Philadelphia, 30,000 of these lots are privately owned, and 353 lots are being used as urban farms and community gardens. The hope is that the new code will dramatically increase the number of farms and gardens in the city. What's nearly impossible to get around is this fact: Substantial social and urban change almost never happens without muscular state or government intervention.

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How does one calculate a tax assessment in these cases? It seems to me this is a costly way to farm unless there is a tax break involved.

Posted by Pope Peabrain on January 28, 2013 at 8:31 AM

Good question @1 - I know where I live, a rural "designated farm" have substantially less property tax to pay. But that's Ontario, Canada so who knows what a city can do? It's probably something similar though.

Posted by Karla Canadian on January 28, 2013 at 9:24 AM

Land in downtown Philly is ridiculously cheap. If the land is cheap, the taxes would be low.

Posted by Canadian Nurse on January 28, 2013 at 9:30 AM

A lot of these are abandoned properties and no one has paid taxes on them for years. The law makes it a bit easier to transform these properties into community gardens. Most of these lots are in North Philadelphia which is an absolute slum. Those lots with houses on them are generally occupied by squatters. The city has tried/ is trying to either rescue the neighborhood or keep the decay from spreading. It isn't like you are going to find a bunch of empty lots in nice areas like Society Hill or even in places like South Philadelphia or the Northeast part of the city.

Posted by Schweighsr on January 28, 2013 at 1:47 PM

Thanks for spreading the good news about our win on Council Bill 120917! I will note that there’s a funny game of blog telephone happening with the statistics. The approximate number of total gardens in Philadelphia is at least 350 on about 1200 individual parcels (not 353 lots, as reported here). I am probably the only person who cares, but I’m also the person who supplied the numbers that were correctly reported in the original Next American City story (and recalculated the parcel numbers since then . . .). The zoning code is one step towards supporting the long term sustainability of gardens. We hope that another component will be the creation of a Philadelphia land bank, particularly one that prioritizes and facilitates community-driven projects alongside other types of development. Thing is -- while these types of governmental interventions will make a difference, they require significant community advocacy to come to fruition and to ensure their success and accountability -- case in point Bill 120917.

Posted by Amy Laura on February 1, 2013 at 8:01 AM