Urban Garden F.I.G.

LA 199

Department of Landscape Architecture, Fall 2009

Harper Keeler, Instructor  (hkeeler@uoregon.edu)

Camille Green, FIG Advisor (cgreen3@uoregon.edu)

Library Resource Project

The Urban Garden library resource project will be in the form of a precedent study.  Urban Planners and Landscape designers often study precedents as a tool to make informed decisions regarding the creation of public spaces and projects.  There is no need to “Reinvent the Wheel” if successful projects and programs have already tackled many of the issues that are inherent in designing new endeavors.

The intention of this assignment is to create a collection of existing examples of Urban Agriculture that can then be studied and scrutinized.  This is a very open ended assignment in that students are encouraged to be creative in their definition of what they feel to be examples of Urban Agriculture. There is any number of examples of agricultural based endeavors that can be considered for this assignment. Examples such as conventional community gardens, small home based boutique food production, large-scale commercial urban farming, volunteer hunger relief garden projects, school gardens and the Victory Garden at the White House are all examples of this growing trend.

Students are required to identify and describe a minimum of TWO specific Urban Agriculture projects/programs and provide a one page written synopsis of each. Each overview should be typed and spell checked and it is strongly recommended that students proofread each other’s work.

When describing each precedent, students should consider, but not be limited to the following issues. 

• What type of agricultural activity is taking place?  Is it Organic?

• What is the history of the project?

• What is the physical scale of the program/project. 

• Is this a public or private endeavor?

• Is this a for-profit program?  Is it primarily educational?

• How many people are involved with the program?  Who does the work?

• What makes this program unique?

• What is your own PERSONAL view of the success of the project/program? Let us know how you feel.

These questions should serve as a suggested list.  Feel free to add anything that you feel will help us to better understand the program/projects that you have chosen to research.

In an attempt to avoid redundancies, we suggest that students consider researching projects that are located near their hometowns.  Students should feel free to document projects/programs that they been involved in and we welcome any personal reflection they might share regarding this involvement.