The NY Times recently published an article about developers on the Hawaiian island of Kauai who are subdividing parcels that will contain both new homes and new farms. The idea is to preserve some rural heritage, but also to build “green”.
60 years ago, Los Angeles was a city producing locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. In that slim time frame, it was possible to travel on the Pasadena Freeway and pick oranges in Pasadena.
All across the Southland, there are enormous plots of land covered in asphalt: schools, defunct shopping centers, empty factories. Why can’t some of these be rezoned to allow small farms and low rise housing?
We hear a lot of talk about sustainable development and global warming–but who talks about the idiocy of importing oranges from Chile to West Covina? Wouldn’t it be healthful to live in a city where children grew up seeing how their food was grown?
The historic photo (from USC Digital Archive) shows Western and Washington Blvd in 1918 when the area had both industry and agriculture. Think of what this section of the city looks like today.
Think of how we might build green again…..
Here in Van Nuys 
One of the professors in my department at USC, the terrifyingly brilliant Martin Krieger, walked by a dairy farm on his way to the subway in Canarsie, Brooklyn as a teenager in the ’50s. We need more of that these days.
I would trade two or three of the city’s HPOZs for parks that include a large community garden component. Windsor Square? Screw that, K-Town needs fresh produce.
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I agree, we need to use these pieces of land for urban ag./urban farms. We have some, we just need more. I am actually working on a book documenting farm history in the South Bay, but want to cover more of LA, including the Valley (where I lived for 6 years)!
LA Farm Girl (here on blogspot.com)
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As a long-time area resident, I miss the remnants of rural life I used to see here and there. I would love to bring them back.
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How about the city buying up small pieces of land in the interior of neighborhoods and building community gardens? A systematic survey is in order, although it may have been done already.
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