Transit-oriented development (TOD) plays a significant role within contemporary planning policies for 'smart growth' and sustainable development, particularly in Europe and North America. As a well-rehearsed practice, this planning model is due for critical assessment and improvement in terms of its ability to incorporate dynamic and heterogeneous socio-spatial processes as matters of concern. Analyses of the conditions for 'making TOD work' in the scholarly and professional literatures tend to focus on the 'node' and 'place' qualities. While elaborations on node analysis (primarily based on accessibility measurements) abound within empirical research, discussions of place-specific assets are limited in scope and often spatially bounded by the circle defined by a 10-minute walk. This essay examines the use of this generic 'circle' model, and how it normatively frames how place is understood in TOD studies. We argue that the circle enhances a Euclidean understanding of the site, which favours a static and homogeneous spatial analysis of accessibility and density rather than (other) place qualities relating to dynamic sociospatial processes. Finally, we argue that relational geography can facilitate an analysis of place qualities beyond the circle--one in which both the continuities and shifting settings of the wider context are meaningfully taken into consideration.
Under ideal circumstances, sustainability, food security, nutrition, public health and environmental quality would be interlinked, for they are vital for the wellbeing of cities. Yet, over the course of the 20th century, cheap fossil-fuel energy, the forces of globalisation, and broader socio-cultural patterns have delocalised food production. Cities are now where the majority of humanity lives, and if they are to be sustainable, it is important to bring productive planting back into urban and peri-urban areas through citizen participation. In addition to reaping the benefits of local food production and engagement with the everyday natural processes that sustain life, productive growing in cities will help reduce their global 'ecological footprint' -made especially large by importing food from faraway places. In the summer of 2007, with the help of volunteers, the authors of this paper created a containerized garden, or the Edible Campus project, on the grounds of McGill University in which sustainability, food security, and environmental quality were linked through innovative urban design to produce food in a challenging urban setting.
The Edible Campus project was begun in spring 2007 in Montréal. An action-research project launched by volunteers and researchers from two leading local NGOs and university-based researchers (Alternatives, [online]; Santropol Roulant, [online]; McGill University's Minimum Cost Housing Group, [online]), it sought creative solutions to turn underutilised urban spaces into productive places. It involved citizens in the creation of green community spaces by incorporating productive growing in containers on a prominent but concrete-covered part of McGill University's downtown campus. Not only is it an investigation into making cities more food-secure by increasing urban food production, it is also a live demonstration of how ‘edible landscapes’ can be woven into urban spaces without diminishing their utility or functionality.
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