Joe Howe and Ian White

In: UA Magazine 4 - Integration of UPA in urban planning

This paper presents the findings from a UK Government Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded survey examining the role played by planning in regulating urban agriculture on allotments, community gardens and city farms in metropolitan areas of the UK. Planners' attitudes to, and knowledge of, urban food production are explored; the geography of, and the agencies involved in, urban food production is detailed and an examination of the regulation of urban food production is undertaken. Despite encouraging signs of an increasing engagement with urban agriculture, planning's apparent low level of involvement remains perplexing given the significance of food to the metropolitan system.