Can ‘food spots’ help to retrofit the current suburbs in the United States?

There is a crescent concern about the environment influence in human health. The problem today is the sprawled development of the American suburbs, therefore the overuse of individual transportation. This is direct affecting the human health and wellbeing, due the lack of physical activities. The long distances to commute between residential and commercial areas, forced people to use individual car. So it is imperative an intervention in the current sources of the problem: land pattern and transportation.

Government agencies, city planners, architects and health professionals are working together toward solutions that minimize the problem. By implementing policies and programs to incentive urban farming, change urban zoning code, and stimulating the implementation of grocery stores within food desert areas. In order to improve human health and well-being, through increasing social capital and active transportation, it is necessary to get people to walk around.

But what makes a place walkable? Steve Mouzon says: “you are not living in a truly sustainable place until you can walk to the grocery” - suggesting the creation of a marketplace in the neighborhood. However, in order to have people interested to walk it is very important to have a destination and an invited path. In ‘Walk Appeal’ Steve Mounzon observes that walking 2 miles in a dense area is different then walking the same distance in a suburb, in this last one the pedestrian gets bored before 1/10 mile.

I believe on ‘food spots’ (community garden) to help create such attractive environment to walk around. Besides the existent solutions to urbanize the suburbs, such as green belts and nodes around rail stations, the implementation of food spots can stimulate the daily active mobility. There are various advantages in this type of farming: a) the sustainability within the community through reducing environmental impacts and the gaining of food security; b) human health through the access to healthier food and the engagement of people in the gardening activities; c) local economic development through the sale of the produced food, specially helping to keep income within the community; d) availability of potentially land in the suburbs.

Increasing the agriculture activities within the suburbs can help not only to increase the presence of people on the streets walking and/or biking, but to turn the streets safer. In a long term, it can also help create ‘urbanity’ and change the character of the existent suburbs.