Cultivating Montreal: A Brief History of Citizens and Institutions Integrating Urban Agriculture in the City

Abstract

Core Ideas: Montreal (and its diverse actors) is an interesting model and a valuable starting point for cities promoting urban agriculture. Universities integrate urban agriculture into education, and continue to play an important role in its promotion and assimilation. Grass-roots approaches to urban agriculture are actively transforming cities. Can concerted citizen action, involvement of community groups and institutions, as well as formal authorities, play important enough roles in promoting urban agriculture? The case of Montreal indicates they can. This paper investigates some of these interventions at different times and levels and explores how they made this North American city a leader in that field. Urban agriculture activities began in the early 1970s, but gained momentum after the 1973 oil crisis. The role of diverse players in transforming the city fabric ever since is discussed here by introducing and developing related projects in three parts: the first traces the history of community gardens; the second presents Montreal-based pilot projects rooted in different neighborhoods that aimed to intertwine urban agriculture, design and citizens that the authors developed and implemented; the third discusses a recent (2012) citizens’ action that used a municipal bylaw to hold a public consultation on the state of urban agriculture and towards the formation of city's Comité de travail de la collectivité montréalaise en agriculture urbaine or Permanent Committee on Urban Agriculture.