Masterplanning for food in Letchworth Garden City

Earlier this month, the Annual General Meeting of the Horizon2020 project EdiCitNet happened online. The University of Brighton, represented by Katrin Bohn and André Viljoen, is one of the members of this multi-national consortium, bringing their expertise to food-centred master planning in 6 international towns and cities with a focus on Great Britain’s Letchworth Garden City.

Letchworth Garden City is the world’s first garden city, and its approach to questions around urban food systems and urban agriculture will be of significance not only for its local population but also for a national and international audience.

Unfortunately, this March, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit Letchworth especially hard due to the city’s unique land-ownership and management structure. Since then, many discussions happened within the City Team on the future of their food mapping and masterplanning work, which constitutes one of the most successful parts of the Horizon2020 project that is funding it.

Led by project manager Amélie André and Julia Sonander from Transition Town Letchworth, the City Team has jointly inventorised its urban capacities in a variety of directions: it mapped existing and potential food spaces, existing stakeholders and their networks, the potential for new food businesses and exchanges, but also the visions that members of the City Team and the local community have in relation to a sustainable food future.

André and Katrin support the City Team’s work especially where it concerns green infrastructural planning, designing for urban agriculture and coordinating potential local food-system activities.

For more information on Letchworth Garden City see the city’s own website.

For information on the Horizon2020 project EdiCitNet see here.

For information on the project The Garden City of the Future see here.

Image: As part of the project, the Letchworth City Team started to map the potential of existing and future food-growing spaces. (source: Amélie André 2020)