Livable cities and daily life: Local level Urban agriculture in Orizânia, São Paulo and Montreal

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the more informal part of the broad arena of partnerships. Concern is with micro-level connectivities and the early stages of partnerships in different settings of urban agriculture. The chapter looks at possibilities and challenges in three urban settings. The first is a small Brazilian rural-urban municipality Orizânia (pop. 7700) which is taking part in the Federal government’s program to incorporate family smallholdings into local school meal supply chains. The second is the municipality of São Paulo (pop. 12 million) where urban agriculture is still at an early stage, but where a variety of different relationships have already appeared. The third is Montreal (pop. 1.7 million), where urban agriculture, traditionally an activity linked to socialization, leisure and alternative life styles, has become more activist and environmentally focused, leading to changes in municipal food policies and new forms of sub-municipal services. The findings suggest that in urban agriculture there are hundreds and thousands of everyday micro transformations that can produce different forms of partnership as they go along. Rather than through major strategic interventions, these have a strong influence on making a city livable.