Inspiration Case: Urban Farming

Urban Farming projects, like our inspiration case Rabot-Blaisantvest in Gent, Belgium, often represent re-development projects in form of an urban garden plot built on a neglected land; in this case a destroyed old factory.

Urban Farming initiatives often contain large urban agriculture community gardens in an abandoned neighbourhood, growing edible plants and flowers as well as a small area for livestock like poultry and rabbits.

Parameters for change: using the existing, community binding & rehabilitation of a wider area
Agriculture and gardening can both facilitate understanding for life quality and activities to increase it. Giving them the opportunity, inhabitants will take ownership for ‘their’ garden and integrate other parts of the community; be it elderly, immigrants or other people that just moved from the countryside. Not seldomly, those arrangements offer small businesses an opportunity in form of selling their self-grown on a farmers’ market, opening a café et cetera, which will in turn help to rehabilitate the wider area around the gardening plot.

To create an urban garden, one does not need very much. As shown in this inspiration case, the garden plots were put on concrete slabs that had once supported an old factory. Today these slabs protect the soil from pollution in the underlying soil layers as well as from water draining too quickly.

Our inspiring example: Rabot-Blaisantvest, Gent, Belgium 2008/2009
Rabot-Blaisantvest is one of several rehabilitation projects for the poorest areas in Gent, called “Bruggen naar Rabot’ and which opened up a former, destroyed and neglected industrial area for the local community, giving it the opportunity to create a community-owned garden plot to grow its own food.

How does the urban farming project in Gent work in detail?
In 2008-2009, a re-development of an abandoned neighbourhood, “Rabot-Blaisantvest”, was begun behind a courthouse in Gent, Belgium. On a former factory area of the telephone manufacturer Alcatel, which has been destroyed and neglected for some time, small garden plots were raised above the ground and established on concrete slabs that had once supported the factory building.
Today, these slabs protects the organic urban garden’s soil from pollution underneath. Besides edible plants and flowers, there is also a small area for livestock like poultry and rabbits built by local residents as part of an art project.

What does this mean for the local community?
Next to community binding mechanisms by meeting outside, growing one’s own vegetable and talking about it, urban farming projects are particularly interesting to take tension out of poor areas, creating an enjoyable atmosphere and upgrading neglected spaces. Furthermore, they can educate urban inhabitants in farming and gardening skills.

A download version of this inspiration case can be found here.

Information and pictures sourced from www.indianewsblog.com | wikipedia_commons_b_bd_Rabot-Blaisantvest2009 | www.gent.be | All rights reserved.