News 13 of 153

Urban Agriculture Project Wins Canadian Urban Design Award

Photos: Minimum Cost Housing Group

2008-08

An innovative urban agriculture project led by McGill University’s Minimum Cost Housing Group — an IDRC partner — has been honoured with a National Urban Design Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and Canadian municipalities.

Making the Edible Campus was selected for its efforts to improve the livability of Montreal, Canada through an urban garden that involves community members, uses environmentally-responsible practices, and benefits marginalized people.

The project was inspired in part by IDRC and McGill’s joint Making the Edible Landscape international research initiative, which looks to integrate urban agriculture into urban development and design in Rosario, Argentina; Kampala, Uganda; and Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Making the Edible Campus is the result of a partnership between McGill University’s School of Architecture and two local non-governmental organizations: Alternatives, dedicated to the greening of cities through community participation, and Santropol Roulant, which focuses its efforts on food security.

Volunteers, students, and staff members have converted a concrete urban corner of McGill’s downtown campus into a 1 000-square foot container garden where they grow herbs, vegetables, fruit, and even edible flowers.

The food produced in the garden is transported by bicycle and by foot to Santropol Roulant’s kitchens where workers prepare it into meals that are then delivered to community members with reduced mobility.

The award’s jury lauded the project’s innovative landscape concept, its simplicity, its use of underused spaces, its social foundations, and community involvement.

“[The project team has created] a sustainable prototype that could potentially be expanded to other university campuses and across the city,” commented the jury.

The Urban Design Awards program was created by RAIC, in cooperation with the Canadian Institute of Planners, and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, to promote the important role urban design and architecture play in the quality of life in Canadian cities.

Top of Page

News 13 of 153