The Hidden History of Food System Planning

Abstract

Urban planning practitioners and academics generally view food system planning as a recent area of study, originating little more than a decade ago. Yet, food planning has a long and multifaceted history. Though not theorized as food system planning in most of the secondary literature in planning history, it is not hard to find when we look, even at some of the most familiar, seminal plans and scholarship in planning history. In this article, we trace the broad continuities and major changes in North American food planning, focusing on physical planning, regional economic development, and community economic development from the age of colonization to the present. The planners of early American cities necessarily organized urban environments and metropolitan infrastructure around agriculture, and some helped to build an international food economy. Since the nineteenth century, professional planners and their grassroots counterparts have struggled to manage the challenges posed by the industrial food system and society, in which the place of agriculture in the city is more ambiguous and contested.