The New Localism

Joel Kotkin [Selected Quotes followed by a comment] (Washington Post 10/19/8)

"Higher energy prices may - refocus local economies in unexpected ways. For generations most Americans have been buying their food from distant corporate providers.  But with shipping costs -- and our food-safety concerns -- the trend to buying local is moving into the mainstream." "A decade ago, California had four farmers markets; today there are more than 500."

The Localist trend is driven by technology [internet ++] which has led to a rapid expaocalistnsion of 'home-based' enterprises, more than 22 million now run home-based businesses, up 16 percent from 2004, and the trends is accelerating. And 13 million are Telecommuting at least one day a week.  A recent study suggests that more than one-quarter of the US workforce will in a decade or two participate full or part-time in this new work pattern.

Today's localist revival - with the benefit of great access to the larger world that technology provides -- offers the prospect of an America that, rather than being a "Nation of Strangers", can aspire again to be 'A Nation of Neighbors' -- in places that we choose for ourselves.

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What Kotkin brings out in this article is that locally-based food systems are part-and-parcel of a larger trend in the USA and Europe of "decentralization", not to be confused with "Sprawl". Sprawl was an element in a "hub-and spoke" metropolis [center city + radial rail & highway]. In the 21st century [beginning in the 1990s] we urbanites live in a "Lattice" multiple centers connected more in a checkerboard pattern without a central focus.

Urban Agriculture is a natural [no brainier] for the emerging urbanism. We can now and in the future farm everywhere in the city. Responding to market and to the need to respond to 'global warming' with a green sustainable metropolis.  One way of expressing this is "Continuous Productive Urban Landscape"; another is "Green Metropolis", two recent publications.