On Food Landscapes
Conversation with Shannon Davis
Could you introduce yourself and what challenges are you addressing in your work?
I am a senior lecturer in landscape planning in the School of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University. I became interested in the area of food security and food sovereignty around six or seven years ago, linked to a course I was developing for the University titled ‘Food Landscapes’.
We were interested in designing a course which was multidisciplinary and engaging with students from across different faculties. Originally it was an intensive five-week summer school. Each week looked at different scales—beginning with the global scale and the food system, and the large-scale environmental impact of agriculture. The following week we moved down to a national scale, looking at traditional food practices of indigenous Māori. This led into colonisation, and looking at the industrialisation of the food-production system in New Zealand over the past 180 years. The third week, we looked at the regional scale and specifically the impact on food production on creating regional identity. We were looking at how regions created a sense of themselves around the food that they were producing. The fourth week we moved into the city scale. We visited urban agriculture projects, urban farms, urban orchards and different community gardens. In the final week we looked at the site scale. For me, developing this course opened up a new world as I had not previously been aware how strong the relationship was (or should be) between food and the built environment professions, such as landscape architecture and urban design.
In developing the course I understood that we have been designing modern cities without considering where food was coming from. During the 2000s there was a lot of literature around food as a basic essential for life along with shelter, water, and clean air, and there was a clear realisation that food was being consistently left off the urban agenda. It has also been consistently left out of urban design theory. I began to ask why we are not integrating food production and access as a part of how we design cities. Then comes the question of how do we do this?
New Zealand is a unique case study, it is an agricultural based nation, we export most of our food globally. Much of the imagery from New Zealand is based on spectacular natural landscapes, and food production. But 87% of New Zealanders actually live in urbanised areas. We’re spatially disconnected from where our food is coming from. Our main experience is going to the supermarket, and in many cases, purchasing food from overseas. Currently I am teaching courses in landscape planning and studio design. I am also a research theme leader for one of Lincoln University’s research centres where we are focused on the design of future productive landscapes.
‘‘Developing this course opened up a new world as I had not previously been aware how strong the relationship was (or should be) between food and the built environment professions’’
Working in an urban setting, how do you work with local communities?
If I take one of my research projects as an example, one of the biggest issues facing New Zealand at the moment from an urban design perspective is the loss of highly productive land to urban expansion. We have a land use capability classification system here for soil fertility and versatility. Colonial cities in New Zealand were located on some of our most highly productive land. This was a key determinant around locating cities where they had access to suitable land for food production. New Zealand has about 15% of our soils classified as Class 1, 2, and 3. These are our most highly productive soils. Only about 4% of our soils are classified as land category 1 soils. Spatially, most of our highest category soils are located at the edge of our cities and urban settlements. And like many cities around the world our cities and settlements are sprawling, and in the case of New Zealand, this sprawl is happening on our most highly productive land. Once the soils are gone and sealed through urban development, we cannot reverse this. This has led to a recent research project where we are looking at how we can integrate housing and food production as a multifunctional approach to urban design on the edge of our cities.. One significant issue for integrating land uses within the peri urban zone in New Zealand is ‘reverse sensitivity’. Reverse sensitivity refers to when an established land use, in this case food production, comes under pressure from a new land use, like urban development. In other words, where new residents who live in these areas of peri urban housing, don’t like the existing agricultural systems operating near-by.
For this particular project therefore we surveyed a peri urban community located within the commuter-belt of Christchurch city, to understand what residents liked and didn’t like about having food production close to where they were living. We also surveyed food producers operating their businesses within the same area to understand the same. From this point we worked through a design-thinking process which looked at different land use scenarios around how future urban design and future land use planning could occur based on their feedback, to mitigate potential reverse sensitivity issues, therefore allowing integrated and multi-functional land use to occur more successfully.
‘‘Our research allows us to speak to the policy and planning areas as well as on the ground communities who are facing the issues.’’
How do you bridge your teaching and research with projects outside of academic settings?
The research area I am in is relevant to many parties in New Zealand and therefore I try to disseminate the research findings through different modes, from academic journals right through to popular media.
With regards to bridging my research into practice, from a landscape planning perspective, we have two national policy statements in New Zealand which directly affect the issues outlined above regarding peri urban land use. The first is ‘The National Policy Statement from Urban Development’, gazetted in 2020, which requires Councils (territorial authorities) to remove restrictive barriers to urban growth as a response to the housing crisis we have here, to make housing more affordable and to ensure enough housing. But this is where our most highly productive soils are most often located. In 2022, another national policy statement came in which set out to protect these areas of highly productive land. So, this is where the dilemma sits. One national policy statement is saying that we need to extend our cities up and out. Whilst the other policy is saying, you can’t extend urban areas onto high-class soils. In some cases we looked at, the urban settlements are completely encased by these high class soils. Our research allows us to speak to the policy and planning areas as well as on the ground communities who are facing the issues. If we look more broadly at the research coming from the Centre of Research Excellence, there is a focus on food security and food sovereignty. We are trying to address the loss of highly productive land as an issue of food security, both now and for future generations.
In one class last year we focused our design studio on a local community which had been significantly affected by the Canterbury and Kaikoura Earthquakes between 2010 and 2016. As a result of the earthquakes, there are now significant tracts of land in this region that were ‘red-zoned’, which means the housing was removed and the land use had to change because the soil structure and the geomorphology of the land couldn’t support that kind of infrastructure. One of the areas our research focused on was the township of Kaiapoi, which is a satellite commuter-town outside of Christchurch city. The Council has designated an area of red-zoned land, which is located along the Kaiapoi river as a heritage and Mahinga Kai park. Mahinga Kai literally translates as “working the food”. This is a traditional Māori process around gathering food and resources, processing them, and the values,traditions and rituals that are associated with this. In our class, the students came in and worked with the local council and specialists from the local Rūnanga (or tribal council). Over the course of the semester, our students developed a master plan for the park, and also a design centred around an education centre which was to be developed as part of the new park. At the end of the studio our students were able to participate in discussions with the community and council around the feasibility of their design ideas. There is a possibility that through this exchange with the local councils and community that we might see some of the ideas come through in the future design decisions of the area.
Can you discuss the theory of 'design' in landscape architectural theory—in particular, why is it critical to engage ecosystem services away from analysis, and towards design thinking?
There are many design theories that sit around the research that I do, for instance, agricultural urbanism, agrarian urbanism, landscape ecology and others. The research approach I often utilise is the design thinking method which allows and supports meaningful engagement with communities and stakeholders to occur—to explore impactful solutions on the ground. Quite a few of my projects over the past few years have adopted this design thinking methodology because it is about quick prototyping and developing possible solutions for complex issues such as the spatial relationship between food systems, housing and rapid urbanisation. It is a great way to get communities to engage with the research because they can imagine something happening on the ground.
It is the same with the topic of peri urban ecosystem services. Space for these services are critical for making cities viable, such as land for flood mitigation, climate regulation, and management of freshwater quality—all of those services that are being produced and supplied from the peri-urban zone to cities. When we work with communities that aren’t familiar with the theories associated with the work, the design thinking methodology allows you to provide a framework for information for that group that you are working with. The design thinking method is a really powerful tool that designers can use to engage with communities and come out with tangible ideas and solutions.
‘‘The design thinking method is a really powerful tool that designers can use to engage with communities and come out with tangible ideas and solutions.’’
How do students address housing in relation to agriculture? What role does interdisciplinarity play in urban agriculture?
This is something that we’re looking at with PhD students in the Research Centre. We are having discussions around the role of the architect versus the landscape architect and the different ways in which we’ve been trained. As a landscape architect you start at the regional scale—1:50,000 or 1:100,000—and you look at all of the broad-scale landscape systems impacting a site before you even enter into the masterplan scale or detailed design scale. This sets the project up in a completely different way. For example, our students look at how you can best ‘fit’ a building into the landscape, protecting and enhancing its systems as top priority, rather than the other way around. They start with the landscape and then any development must compliment it and work within its systems.
How do students address housing in relation to agriculture? What role does interdisciplinarity play in urban agriculture?
This is something that we’re looking at with PhD students in the Research Centre. We are having discussions around the role of the architect versus the landscape architect and the different ways in which we’ve been trained. As a landscape architect you start at the regional scale—1:50,000 or 1:100,000—and you look at all of the broad-scale landscape systems impacting a site before you even enter into the masterplan scale or detailed design scale. This sets the project up in a completely different way. For example, our students look at how you can best ‘fit’ a building into the landscape, protecting and enhancing its systems as top priority, rather than the other way around. They start with the landscape and then any development must compliment it and work within its systems.
Why is it important to concurrently address agriculture and urbanisation and what are key issues in urban agriculture discourse? Can you give examples?
The two biggest issues of the Anthropocene are urbanisation and food production. We have rapidly growing global populations who need to be housed and fed. Both these requirements have enormous impacts on the environment. How do we reconcile the need to produce food sustainably and in an environmentally positive way, and how do we house people alongside this. There is a dichotomy of land use that we always go back to—zoning and western ways of land use planning i.e., this is an urban zone, and over here, this is a rural zone. This has led me and our Research Centre to explore the peri-urban zone – a zone which is a bit of a ‘no man’s’ land, the void on the edge of the city between urban and rural. We’ve looked at this continuum between the rural and the urban and how urban agriculture plays out along this continuum. This issue is intimately intertwined with zoning and land use planning, as well as people’s perception of food production in both negative and positive ways. Up until 100 years ago, agriculture was a central component of urban infrastructure. The two issues, agriculture and urbanisation cannot be separated. This is the essential focus of all my research.
Now with global conflicts, natural disasters, and severe weather events—the link between agriculture and cities is again becoming a global priority. We are in a period of history where housing and food production must become intrinsically linked again.
‘‘The two biggest issues of the Anthropocene are urbanisation and food production.’’
How is urban agriculture discursively playing out across New Zealand (and globally)? Is soil sealing a policy issue in New Zealand, and how (if at all) is it leveraged to protect productive soils?
In New Zealand we have this phenomena called the “quarter acre dream.” When people began moving into the cities, everyone wanted a quarter of an acre—for your house where you have your front yard flower garden, and you have your backyard vegetable garden. These were really quite productive units traditionally. People in New Zealand still have this ideological dream— their own bit of land. But the reality is that we are densifying our cities, for various reasons, and people don't have access to their own patch of ground. New Zealand is therefore looking at different models of urban food production. Urban agriculture is a really great mechanism for education and making food production visible and being able to engage with urban communities. But its ability to enhance urban food security is pretty limited. This is why we have landed on the focus of looking at peri urban food production, as it is productive land right on the doorstep of cities and consumers. As mentioned earlier, the peri urban zone houses some of New Zealand’s most highly productive soils, and this zone can actually produce food at scale, as opposed to urban agriculture that is great for the associative benefits of education, visibility and social connection. The loss of these highly productive soils in the peri-urban zone to urban expansion is hugely impactful both now and for future generations. In New Zealand, the government has looked at it as a loss of potential export earnings—as in the loss of these soils would result in the loss of production and the loss of economic value associated with the export market. But our research team has looked at it from the other perspective of the loss of local food security.
As I mentioned earlier, New Zealand now has, as of 2022, policy related directly to the protection and maintenance of highly productive land within the peri-urban zone. Currently this policy however sits in conflict with other policies focused on building more homes. Only time will tell how this policy contest will play out on the ground as it is tested through the Council and Environment Court systems.
‘‘Ultimately, we take the approach that landscape architects and planners should work together right from the beginning of a project so that from the outset of a project, design thinking can be key for advancing better outcomes.’’
You have written and conducted research on the reintegration of grazing animals in urban spaces. Could you unpack the challenges you identified in this research?
My research focus in this area was driven by finding that the vast majority of the literature around urban agriculture focuses solely on plant-based agriculture. Having animals as part of the food system is an important topic. There is very little written internationally from the Global North around animal-based urban agriculture. In New Zealand we have a wonderful example of animal-based urban agriculture, in Cornwall Park, Auckland – New Zealand’s biggest city. Located in one of the most high-density suburbs, the park incorporates a working livestock farm as part of the public open space. We did a study looking at the perceptions and attitudes of neighbours that live around the park, again asking what they like or don’t like about having livestock in the park. We also asked what they would change, if anything, regarding the animals. Overwhelmingly the residents who live around the park felt extremely positive towards having the farm on their doorstep. They revealed they felt privileged to be able to have a rural outlook and to have a connection to seasonality as part of the year which is expressed so clearly through an agricultural system. They loved the animals and the connection that they had with individual animals or with different herds. This was interesting because a lot of the literature I was reading was talking about how difficult it was to integrate animals as part of an urban system due to public perception and acceptance. The study showed that having grazing animals as part of an urban agricultural approach can work, and directly benefit the community. Participants talked about the education opportunities that the farm provided for children and local schools. Going forward, I believe this case study shows that urban parks that include animals can be conducive with dense urban form and experience.
In the US planning emerged from the field of landscape architecture, yet they split away in the mid-twentieth century. What is the situation in New Zealand today, and how important do you think it is to couple the competencies of these two professions together? Yes, it's really important. We are always talking about the importance of connecting landscape architecture students with planning students, and likewise the department and academics responsible for tertiary learning in these areas.
One of the courses that I teach in the School of Landscape Architecture, is titled Landscape Planning and Assessment. In this course we have planning students come across and undertake this course alongside the landscape architecture students. The landscape architecture students seem to enjoy having a different perspective on some of the issues that they've been looking at in their core coursework. And from the planning perspective, it's really beneficial to them to have an understanding of the landscape architecture perspective, and to have some of those tools in place to be able to work with landscape architects.To know what we each do in our professions is really beneficial out in the ‘real world’.Ultimately, we take the approach that landscape architects and planners should work together right from the beginning of a project so that from the outset of a project, design thinking can be key for advancing better outcomes. I think it’s really important that students have this multidisciplinary experience right from the beginning of their tertiary education. END
About the Contributor:
Shannon Davis is a researcher that specialises in Urban Agriculture, Food Landscapes and Landscape Planning and Assessment. She is a lecturer at Lincoln University who is determined to reconnect New Zealanders with their food by bringing production back to their backyards.
COLLABORATOR: Shannon Davis
ILLUSTRATIONS: BothAnd Group
SUPPORTERS: Arts Council of Ireland through Agility Award 2023