'Agriculture is the new golf'

The latest career advice, I hear, isn't "plastics." It's "agriburbia."

A developer-land planner-type pulled me aside this week to talk about his newest project: A development, in the general vicinity of Kannapolis-Salisbury, that they're dubbing "agriburbia." It's a residential development but instead of common open space and big lawns, they'll have a civic farm, land leased to a farmer. There will be do-it-yourself options for backyard gardeners. They'll market it, he said, to people affiliated with the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis – the health-and-wellness related research operation.

The term "agriburbia," he said, was coined by a guy in Colorado. Sure enough, here's the Web site. "Agriburbia" is even trademarked. But it's such a great word it may have a life of its own, like "locavore." Its slogan: "Growing Sustainable Communities by the Bushel!" Its goal: "the re-integration of food production directly within the living environment ... by focusing on agriculture as the centerpiece of both new and existing communities."

This dovetails with a talk in Charlotte last fall by New Urbanism godfather Andres Duany, about what he termed "agricultural urbanism." It was Duany who quipped "agriculture is the new golf." By that, he meant an activity and marketing point for developments.

"Only 17 percent of people living in golf course communities play golf more than once a year," Duany said. "Why not grow food? By the way, food is very good-looking." (I wonder if Duany, an urbane Miamian, has ever seen fading tomato plants at the end of a hot, aphid-ridden summer, or squash plants wilting from vine borer assaults. But I digress.)

Duany suggested the $40 billion that Americans spend on lawn care might be better diverted to food production. And this may be the biggest eyebrow-raiser, coming from a devoted urbanist devoted it to agriculture: "The large lot (as in large-lot suburbia) can be justified primarily as the making of food." When Duany is trying to justify large-lot suburbia, you know the world is changing.

Being Andres Duany, he even came up with a "transect" (translation: context-appropriate designs) for agriculture in a range of conditions from rural (your basic farms, with farming village clusters) to center city (container gardens on terraces and rooftops). His transect has specific allowances for how many chickens are allowed – though no cluckers in the most dense urban neighborhoods. If memory serves, you can't have a rooster unless you're in one of the more rural zones in his transect. Whatever.

The local developers said they'll be going public in a few weeks. Theirs isn't "agricultural urbanism," they said, but suburbia with farms instead of big lawns. Stay tuned.