2015->2018
Urban Food Strategies provides strategic advice on integrating food and agriculture into the Rangeview lands project. Initially, Urban Food Strategies led a team to develop three agricultural urbanist scenarios for a two-hundred-acre site, located outside of Calgary Alberta. The historic family farm has a long tradition of technical innovation, hard work, and community ties. In line with this tradition, the landowner/developer wishes to integrate agriculture into the neighbourhood design, currently underway. Urban Food Strategies provided a design brief as well as an Agricultural Urbanism scenarios report that summarized the many dimensions and scales of integrating food systems into neighbourhoods including:
- Space requirements
- Level of overall planning, design and program complexity
- Level of legal complexity
- Level of cost/investment
- Level of infrastructure needs
- Organizational capacity requirements
- Level of brand value and market positioning.
- Types of tenants
- Degree of contribution to health and wellness
- Type of food experience
- Type of guidelines
The scenarios also considered how each part of the food system was expressed at different scales. These documents were used to further the design and test the feasibility around some of the big ideas that were recommended. Urban Food Strategies also participated in a full day design and program event where the project team worked with many stakeholder groups to test and fine-tune the project concept for submission to the City of Calgary. The project is still in development.
