The article is from A&B issue 11|23
Food security is one of the biggest challenges we face in the coming years. Right next to climate change adaptation, demographic challenges and access to cheap and clean energy. These topics are electrifying public debate - at both the local and state government levels. In turn, the crises that follow require us to change our thinking and open up to non-obvious alliances.
An example of such action is the cooperation of the Civic Coalition with Agrounia, which introduced into national policy the demand to launch a program to build modern markets in every city. This is an example of a revolution in thinking about the future of cities, and proof that we are finally beginning to think about resilience not just at the level of ideas, but the very tangible concrete of responsible spatial management. Creating modern marketplaces is a topic not only from the level of national policies, but especially from the level of local governments - it is an urban and architectural challenge. Our chaotically built-up cities have fewer and fewer publicly accessible spaces, so it will take flexibility of mind and design imagination to bring it to life. First, however, we need to realize the importance of restarting the flows between cities and the countryside, and this is not just about the migration of people, but the flow of products. We badly need this cooperation now.
Social life does not happen in a vacuum. The traumas of the past weigh both on the perception of the state, its institutions, and on the reception of civil society organizations. Only by creating spaces for cooperation will we be able to face the challenges of today.
Poles do not trust each other, and for good reason. More than once what we have developed has been taken over by large multinationals and corporate interest groups. We face, as a community of free and equal male and female citizens, the need to rebuild trust in the common. And we need to do this in a critical space for rebuilding the commons, because we need each other. Our cities are such a space.
Joanna Erbel-Sociologist, expert on housing and building urban resilience. Member of the Board of Directors of PLZ Cooperative. Director of Protopia at CoopTech Hub, Poland's first cooperative technology center, which aims to create a community of trust by digitally rebooting cooperatives and building a local cooperative ecosystem. Member of the Council of the Rental Market Foundation. Co-author of CTH reports - "Cooperative urban farm as a tool for development of urban food zone and agroecology" and "Cooperative Equal Circles" (2023), "Urban Resilience Package" (2022), "Cooperative Transformation" and "Cooperative Recovery Plan" (2021). She is the author of the books "Beyond Ownership. Toward a Successful Housing Policy" (2020) and "Leaning into the Future. How to change the world for the better" (2022). Associate of the A/Types Foundation, which works on behalf of neurodiversity.
Photo: Grzegorz Krzyżewski
urban food zone - appreciate the village neighborhood
Appreciating the village neighborhood and the desire to renew the network of markets is a step toward building food security. After all, in times of danger we are united not only by common goals, but also - if not primarily - by common territory. Our potential allies are not only those with whom we share views, but also those living close by. Looking from the perspective of cities, this includes both our immediate neighborhood and the area, which in the language of the industry is called the "feeder zone." Only by seeing both of these areas will we be able to properly take care of urban sustainability. The urban feeder zone is the agricultural area that surrounds a city and produces food for its needs. It includes areas that specialize in the production of different types of food, and its formation is derived from a number of factors, including distance from urban markets. In the 20th century, zoning was as important as thinking about the direction of urban spatial development. The city and the countryside were one ecosystem. An example of such strategic planning was the concept of the Dairy Ring of Warsaw (assuming optimal distribution of cow farming and dairy processing plants around the capital) and the thriving Mysiadlo State Agricultural Farm in the south of the city, producing vegetables and flowers under glass for the metropolis. In contrast, areas south and southwest of Warsaw specialized in fruit growing. As we show in our CoopTech Hub report, "The Cooperative Urban Farm," "the food zone is and has been a space of dynamic grassroots change. A great example of this is the massive emergence in the 1980s of the so-called 'badlands,' or private entrepreneurs engaged in greenhouse farming, whose products patched holes in the city's supply." It was the immediate vicinity of the city that guaranteed its food supply. And the space in which this urban-rural alliance manifested itself was the city's markets.
bazaars the centers of fifteen-minute cities
What if we re-considered access to food as the main axis of city planning? And that's where they started our thinking about what an ideal neighborhood looks like? Put them at the center of designing fifteen-minute cities? After all, as architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska explains to us, "Bazaars are the most democratic space and are not necessarily just for consumption. They have a huge turnout, are popular, egalitarian and inclusive, open to all." And it was urban markets that they treated as Local Activity Centers? And they created multifunctional spaces, providing multiple pretexts for people to come together? When I think of such a place, I see a bustling street or market. Next to the vegetable stalls is a place to pick up purchases ordered online. Local farmers and women farmers sell their produce through a cooperative app - so they know who needs what amount of produce. It also helps inform the local community about the harvest and encourages them to buy seasonal fruits and vegetables. Right next door is a meeting room, a cafe with offerings for seniors and parents with children, and perhaps a library (including a tool library). This is the new multi-functional heart of the city and there is always traffic there. So picking up vegetables, fruits and preserves is one of the many activities that draw us to this place. It's more convenient than going to the market, because you can exchange gossip, meet friends and see other neighbors and neighbors. Passing by and having fleeting conversations is the first step to building trust. After all, we trust more those we know by sight. This is true for people who live next door, as well as male and female vendors. And if we trust each other, there is a greater chance of doing something together.
Cooperative market halls - let's invest in food security
There are fewer and fewer markets, while corporate big-box stores want to take over the title of "local bazaars." This has a deadly effect on Polish agriculture, as the corporations' goal is not to care about farm development, but to systematically make farmers dependent on the business policies of global corporations. At the same time, urban marketplaces are a gluttonous morsel for housing developers, who successively seek to develop attractive plots of land in city centers. All this is because there is still a lack of widespread awareness that caring for such spaces is crucial so that our food security depends not on global corporations, but on the people in our immediate vicinity. We have lost sight of marketplaces as centers of community life, nor do we have a sense that as residents we ourselves can be investors and investors deciding on key urban investments for us.
Our savings rarely work for the development of our immediate neighborhood. We either keep them in bank accounts or in other forms of bonds detached from our daily lives. What if we could put our money into urban projects that would guarantee our security? On my list of priorities would undoubtedly be a cooperative market hall or a multipurpose bazaar that would be a center of community life. One in which people from the neighborhood, small entrepreneurs, local cooperatives, farmers and farmers in the immediate area, NGOs would have a stake. Why is it global corporations, and not ourselves, that determine our food security? Isn't it better to look for solutions in which we, together with farmers and food producers, share the margin without external middlemen? Such cooperation will also allow us to understand each other better and go through the crises we are bound to encounter together. So it's time to start designing cities to appreciate that we don't live in a vacuum, and that agricultural development in our immediate area is the basis of food security.
Joanna ERBEL
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