Urban Planning Essay Proposal

This paper will examine the urban agriculture movement currently taking place in Detroit, Michigan and how it is having an effect on the city that the goals and motivations of historical planning initiatives strived to achieve.

This paper will aim to shed light on why urban agriculture is an important and relevant new area to be studied and taken into consideration by governments and city planners for the betterment of future cities and the plans that will shape them. I will be utilizing the components of two styles of essay writing: compare and contrast; and categorize and explain.

I will be comparing the desired outcomes and motivations that drove historical planning initiatives (of which I will explain in more detail to follow) to the actual outcomes and effects that citizen-initiated urban agriculture is having on the communities and individual citizens in Detroit. I will ‘categorize’ by assigning each body paragraph a historical movement and explain each ones’ goals, then compare these to the outcomes witnessed in Detroit.

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This comparison reveals that the goals of famous and major historical planning initiatives are being fulfilled by the means of the movement of UA in Detroit, planners should use the findings of Detroit as a tool to understand how they can replicate it in other plans to stimulate similar results. I will begin by developing the contextual reasons for the movement in Detroit and stating facts gathered through research. This will include the population and job losses that occurred due to the decline of the car industry and how the led to the state the city is now in.

I will then introduce what exactly is happening in Detroit in terms of urban agriculture (UA). This will lead  to the description of positive effects it is having on the citizens and communities. These include: health benefits, educational benefits, raising morale, job creation, self empowerment, safety, efficient use of space (Thibert, 2012).

Many of these interrelate with each other, so I will be creating broader categories into which they will fit. Each category will be discussed individually in each body paragraph, but the later paragraphs will also draw conclusions that incorporate effects from earlier paragraphs – because many of the effects are interrelated. I have not decided exactly the order in which I will introduce the ideas, but knowing my own writing method, it will come together in the writing process. Cutting and pasting will surely be necessary.

The historical planning initiatives I will be examining are as follows: City Beautiful, motivated by citizens at the individual level to create healthy neighborhoods and happy citizens; Parks and Playground, motivated by getting children off the streets and into safer areas; Garden City, one of the various goals being earning revenue by efficiently placing agricultural work ‘close to the front doors’ of the workers; Henri Saint-Simon, who wanted to improve morale to create better societies (Booth, 1871; Howard, 1902; McArthur, 1975; Peterson, 2003).

I will emphasize that the key points to be taken from my paper are not the means of how the initiatives were (intended to be) implemented, but the goals of why the initiative was created. I will conclude my paper by recapping my main arguments, and also stating the relevance of my findings. UA in Detroit is creating healthy, happier and safer communities and neighborhoods. This should be analyzed by city policy makers and urban planners to learn how this is happening and why so these positive effects can be replicated elsewhere in future plans.

Lastly, I will mention the implications of this paper by mentioning the new attitude towards food and food culture that is being developed in Detroit, and that if it could be replicated elsewhere in the United States, it could have larger scale positive effects on the crisis of obesity. I began my research by exploring the Concordia Clues dada base, the e-journals Urban History, Planning Perspectives and the database Jstor. Initially I was only looking for information on urban agriculture in Detroit.

It was difficult to find articles on this topic, so I watched the documentary 'Urban Roots'. This gave me an understanding of the effects average citizens involved in UA felt. The academic quality of this source is not as important, because the information I will be taking from this source is not objective, rather it is subjective, qualitative opinions. I then spoke to the professor, Catherine Vandermeulen about my issues finding academic sources; she advised me about an excellent paper written by a PhD student and professional Urban Planner, Joel Thibert.

His paper explained that the discipline of UA in North America is new and there is little literature on it. His paper is also based on interviews he personally conducted with citizens involved with UA and their opinions, so between the academic source and the documentary, I had found enough information for which to base my UA portion of the paper. Next I had to find the historical references. I already knew which concepts I wanted to discuss because of learning about them within the previous 2 months in the class this paper is to be submitted for.

I used the same means of internet searching as I did for the initial Detroit search. I read through multiple articles on each movement until I found ones that thoroughly discussed the motivations and goals of the movements, and had the potential to be quoted. I made sure they came of reputable sources. I knew already I would be using the actual text written by Ebenezer Howard, so I simply had to find that, which I did via Google Scholar. Around a biography on Henri Saint-Simon which is extremely in depth about his entire life, published by a reputable publisher. The specific sources chosen can be found in the reference section below. More detail on all of my sources can be found in my annotated bibliography.

References

1. Booth, J. A. (1871). Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism: A chapter in the history of socialism in France. London, England: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer.
2. Howard, E. (1902). Garden cities of to-morrow (pp. 9-29). Retrieved from openlibrary. rg/ books/OL20551099M/Garden_Cities_of_Tomorrow.
3. McArthur, B. (1975). The Chicago playground movement: A neglected feature of social justice. Social Service Review, 49(3), 376-395.
4. Peterson, J. A. (2003). The birth of city planning in the United States,1840-1917 (pp. 98-122).
5. Balitmore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from http://ohdl. handle. net. mercury. concordia. ca/2027/heb. 05838. 0001. 001. Thibert, J. (2012).
6. Making local planing work for urban agriculture in the North American context: A view from the ground. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 32(3), 349-357. 6

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