The Community's got a brand new bag

Authors note: pardon me for the explicit show of affection for James Brown and the play on "Pappa's got a new bag." It was damn tasteless.

Let’s get together and get some land, raise our food like the man,
people people, we gotta get over before we go under.
--James Brown, President Funky

The 2008 Missoula Urban Fringe Development Area Project (UFDA) predicts a two percent growth rate in the Missoula County that grew from 35,493 people in 1950 to a little under 96,000 at the time of the last census. The project also anticipates 15,000 new homes to pepper this valley over the next twenty years. These statistics form a paradigm, reflecting the notion that “Growth is inevitable and growth is good,” as Anthony Flint writes in This Land. Flint humbly suggests that “it can be better planned, designed, and distributed” (Flint 2006:85). If growth is, as Flint writes, inherently good, we must realize what makes communities great places to live so that when we grow, these principles remain active residents. Housing and food demands put stress on each choice we make about land-use. Where the city places thousands of newcomers will dictate what values neighborhoods hold and what the Missoula region will look like on a larger scale. The impacts of more people are not inevitable, however. Whether two percent is a sustainable rate of growth or whether it is not, communities must employ simple strategies that will continue to make Missoula a great place to live while simultaneously alleviating the impacts of more citizens on the land.

The principles of smart growth have struck a chord with me. Down the line, these principles provide the basis for a healthy community, from improved land-use practices to more thoughtful planning of transport. Smart growth planning and public work for public good provides any community a sense of interdependence and self-worth, two optimistic qualities already visible on many Missoula avenues.

The property rights movement has gained traction in several recent court cases (it’s actually been around a long time, particularly in the West. Many say property rights, not liberty, are the basis of the US.) and threatens most commonsense planning of development because it has been embedded in our cultural thought and draws from a diverse pool of citizens. Flint characterizes the movement: “…through the 1980s a loose coalition of free-market libertarians, conservatives, activists in the “wise use” campaign to fight environmental regulations, Western politicians, and lobbyists for developers and landowners. The movement had two prongs: political and legal” (Flint 2006:137). The thing that ties these people together is a pervading appeal to pathos in each of their arguments—city planning of smart growth comes in direct conflict with a right to do what it is I want to do with my land.

Intentionally for the smart growth movement, methods for strengthening a community’s resilience in the face of food and development challenges do not inherently oppose the rights of property owners. Smart growth accomplishes much more than obstructing harmful growth. The simple selling point planners need to employ is that property rights make communities great places to live no more than other abiotic factors like large households or lawns; smart growth actually adds something tangible to the community. In addition to having essential places for the community to gather in order to celebrate or work through tough issues together, the principles of smart growth:
1) Create a range of housing opportunities and choices.
2) Create walkable neighborhoods.
3) Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration.
4) Foster distinctive, attractive places with a strong sense of place.
5) Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective.
6) Mix land uses.
7) Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas.
8) Provide a variety of transportation choices.
9) Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities.
10) Take advantage of compact building design. (Flint 2006:87)
We need leadership and support for smart growth principles as well as new ways of meeting food demands within neighborhoods.

Provide people with infrastructure that vibrates these principles and the choice to do public work (the choice to gather, to take the bus, to share with neighbors), and they will take advantage of these resources some of the time. For example, a 2004 poll by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America showed increasing awareness of the benefits of smart growth. People are on the fence about smart growth, but there is evidence that they are seeing difficult trade offs to our current path. “Having a large house on more than an acre of land was important to 57 percent, but, when asked to choose between a large-lot subdivision and a community with a shorter commute and amenities such as shops and restaurants within walking distance, six in ten chose the latter” (Flint 2006:193).

The most intriguing statistic the study found was that among potential homebuyers in the next three years, “87 percent said a shorter commute was their top priority.” This shows that people are passionately opposed to stacking up in a long line of cars each day. But it also sheds light on new redevelopment projects springing up around the country (even in Texas, especially in Texas) that are directed at young urban professionals (or “empty nesters”), the demographic that Missoula must provide the most services to in the future.

UFDA presents evidence that the market is changing in the United States and especially in this valley. Forty-eight percent of people living in households in this country had children in 1960. By 2000 that number declined to 33 percent and that is expected to fall to 28 percent by 2025. The number of singles has inflated to 28 percent of the population, up 15 percent from 1960. Basically this means the rapid creation of single-family homes (that have become so roundly popular over the past few decades) will no longer make sense in 20 years, nor will their enormous, happy, utopian lawns. Dense, hip lofts that have access to culture will continue to make inroads on traditional homes because these single professionals and active retirees do not want to drive in sedans by themselves in search of culture. These are people who want “access to transit and culture and entertainment” at their fingertips (Flint 2006:194).

“Being near social settings and being able to travel conveniently are the trade-offs for space” (195). I might add to this list of capabilities within an intelligently growing locality the potential to grow your own food or start an urban homestead. It is common knowledge that people work in communities to provide for their family and for themselves. And yet it is assumed that they are working a nine to five at a small-business or corporate establishment. It is not in our psyche that we can make a serious dent in food consumption by growing much of our own food from the land of supposed concrete and mechanical cranes. With the active support of local government, a community can take specific steps to stimulate a vision so essential to the future—a future that is guaranteed struggles with dwindling oil supplies and population growth.

Citizen interest in feeding neighborhoods within neighborhoods has been matched with boosts from a few Missoula institutions. Urban homesteaders and non-homesteaders came together to persuade the Missoula City Council to change the ordinance that restricted chickens within city limits, allowing up to six female chickens on an urban plot. Another important tool for food production within city limits is community garden space. The non-profit, low-income housing organization, HomeWORD, recognized and utilized this potential through its design of rooftop gardens atop the Gold Dust high-density apartments and the homes in Orchard Homes have access to a community garden.

Maintaining centralized food production grounds within city limits and protecting agricultural soils on the outskirts (where growth has tended to lie) are very valuable initiatives. But we tend to think that once an area is developed, everything is lost and that future production is void. I liken it to exploring the surfaces of other planets while much of Earth’s ocean remains undiscovered. To this natural tendency, I submit the guerrilla gardening movement, the total lawn area in the Missoula valley, and the many decentralized public gardening projects in Cuba as evidence that communities can reclaim urban food production.

Many Latin American countries have used the global market to import food for their communities while they use their agricultural soil to fuel an export market (mainly coffee). But Cuba did not model this trading pattern. With the collapse of the Soviet Union came the island’s collapse of cheap energy that had been used for fertilization, petrochemicals and transporting food. In just one city, the capitol Havana, the reaction among non-farming citizens (doctors, engineers, etc.) was to establish more than 200 small organic garden plots, which are now growing about 90 percent of the city’s fruits and vegetables (Buncombe 2006:1).

I anticipate many Missoulians might react to urban food production with a mix of interest and confusion. How could a city in Montana with a considerably smaller growing season hope to accomplish what Havana has done? Missoula used to identify well with its title, the “Garden City.” In 1950, local farms supplied 70 percent of the food citizens put into their bodies. In 2008, no more than 10 percent of food eaten in Missoula has been produced here. The source of this community’s pride can be restored creatively and with the involvement of the community for the community. Each neighborhood, for example, could establish one building for a canning and pickling station where citizens can go during the summer (and the fall gleaning season) A San Francisco entrepreneur drew the interest of San Franciscans who desired backyard veggies but had little time to make it happen. The New York Times reports that, “For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves” (Severson 2008:1).

The urban farmer must be immortalized among members of this community. They do not need to be paid more money than doctors, but they do need elevation in society. Two things must be accomplished by the local government to ensure a healthy, collaborative community that grows well in the future and restores the “Garden City” pride that was so persuasive in the 1950s.
1)The city council must incentivize the production side of the local garden economy and
2)Appropriate funding for garden works programs that provide employment to farmers who want to teach their trade within the city’s limits so that we can encourage vegetable aspirers through gardening lessons—call it an urban ag. education.

Geoff Badenoch, a former redevelopment practitioner, had this to say about such a program. “Urban ag education is the goal, and there are other ways to accomplish it. Allow for the possibility that there may be ways to do this that don’t necessarily only hire farmers. A community also thrives by sharing its information among its members. That is one way wise, experienced gardeners (the elderly, for example) can have an elevated value and esteem in a neighborhood.” Badenoch also conceived a simple way the first initiative could be accomplished—not taxing parcels of land that are being actively used by citizens for small garden plots. That is, taxing only non-agricultural land in the city.

Detractors of these initiatives may dissent from this vision because they feel cannot see everyone busily working their gardens on a Sunday afternoon. That is fine. Local government’s role in instigating local food production is not to punish people who dissent from this opportunity. For those detractors who believe this will never work, the City Council can point to the powerfully successful Cuban model and the guerrilla gardening movement.

The changing demographics in Missoula—from an aging family crowd to a young and single group—inspire me, because they reinforce the need for the types of garden communities and affordable housing projects that HomeWORD creates. The young and single citizens who are moving to this valley are people who have traditionally engaged in communities because they have time to do so and they have a stake in these neighborhoods. There are a few barriers to achieving a closed-loop food system, but with the City Council’s support, we can overcome them, grow our own carrots for our neighborhoods and make public work a serious source of pride among Missoulians again.

Flint, Anthony. 2006. This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Buncombe, Andrew. "Cuba's agricultural revolution an example to the world." 13 Aug. 2006. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 16 Nov. 2008 .

Severson, Kim. "A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss." Dining And Wine. 22 July 2008. New York Times. 16 Nov. 2008 .

Badenoch, Geoff, former Missoula Redevelopment Agency Director. Personal conversation, November 14, 2008.