We met with some city planners yesterday to talk about about city policy and how it affects urban farmers and what needs to happen to change that policy. The two main things we discussed were finding policy precedents and reporting about them back to the city and holding a public forum on urban farming with a panel of UA and planning experts. The forum would be held in the fall and it looks like the city had some funding for this. The policy research piece will be a summer long process and will likely focus mostly on Vancouver, Seattle, and Victoria – contrasting the similarities and differences in the policies of these cities. Interestingly Vancouver already has some UA policies around beekeeping and chickens so we have precedents in this city already. But sales are still not officially permitted.
I have started a Twitter feed as well to provide real-time updates on things that are happening behind the scenes which will also gives me a chronology of what is going on.