Environmental Studies Commons^™

The Farm In The City In The Recent Past: Thoughts On A More Inclusive Urban Historiography, Ruth Glasser

Urban and Community Studies Faculty Writing

The scholarly and journalistic literature usually treats urban agriculture as a new phenomenon, but it is a neglected dimension of urban history. Some U.S. cities, at least in the Northeast, had food-raising and processing practices not just in colonial times but right up until the relatively recent past. Three areas of history are explored that have mostly omitted discussion of city food production but nonetheless provide important frameworks to explore such production: urban development, agricultural, and immigrant history. Woven throughout this piece is evidence from a study of Waterbury, Connecticut. Local food production did not die when the Industrial Revolution …