Boston mayor Thomas Menino, chair of the US Council of Mayors’ Food Policy Taskforce, has instituted an urban agriculture zoning pilot program in the Dorchester neighborhood.
The program works like this: zoning codes include complex maps of land use districts, each district intended for specified uses. All city lots are assigned an underlying district, which describes the main category into which the lot falls: residential, commercial, industrial, etc. Overlay districts provide additional zoning information in addition to its basic underlying use and can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including economic development and environmental protection.
For example: let’s say you own a single family house in a wetlands district. Your underlying district is probably residential (if your structure is in conformance with the zoning law), and the overlay wetlands district might mean that you’re required to maintain certain vegetation on your property to prevent erosion into the nearby wetland.
In this case, the urban agriculture overlay district that Boston created provides a residential landowner with more land uses instead of restricting the use of her land like the wetlands district. The district specifically allows vegetable growing, bee keeping and some small-scale animal husbandry.
The lots selected for the urban agriculture overlay district include lots that will be farmed by ReVision Urban Farm and City Growers, both of which are nonprofit organizations dedicated to urban agriculture in Boston.
We look forward to seeing how these pilot projects turn out in Boston. It would be great to have urban agriculture overlay districts throughout cities like Baltimore to facilitate healthier, more beautiful neighborhoods.