Land Use Planning

Covid, Farmers Markets, and City Hall

The pandemic of 2020 has wrought incomprehensible devastation and still it has been powerfully instructive. Intertwined with many threads of public health disparities, racial injustices, and abject failures of governance, we have also more widely exposed the critical frailties of the dominant, industrial food system. My focus here is to emphasize the value of public street space and the City of Seattle’s treatment of our farmers markets during the pandemic.

Transforming the Built Environment with Food

by Kathryn Gardow

“Empowering people through education to transform the built environment for long term sustainability.” Wow!, Northwest Ecobuilding Guild’s powerful words set the tone for our presentation at the Guild’s annual “Slam and Summit,” the northwest’s... Read more...

Thoughts on Healthy Communities

by Kathryn Gardow

The inner world is in our mind. Our outer or human experience is where and how we exist, interact and observe others, gather news, spend our time, and be in the world. The mind is the harbinger of mental health. Can the environment we live in impact our mental health?... Read more...

Scandinavian Market Halls & Take-Away: it’s more than a re-translation of “take-out”

by Stephen Antupit

Our food choices and ways of eating when we travel can range from the intentional and experimental to serving the basic biological demand for calories. And as special places to both residents and visitors alike, market halls are notable features in the local food landscape. They can literally draw the physical pathways and powerful memories of an urban exploratory experience.

Tactical Urbanism: from food trucks to the world record potluck dinner?

by Stephen Antupit

Reporting on an interactive event co-hosted by ULI and King County Green Tools, I wrote this blog post at the request of Urban Land Institute (ULI) Northwest. Once published, I realized that several parts of the event (not surprisingly) illustrated to the power of... Read more...

A Feast of Agri-hood Opportunity:
from Suburban Ornamentals to Nourishing Healthy Community

by Stephen Antupit

At the invitation of University of Washington’s Green Futures Lab, I was asked to lead a mixed group of professionals and community representatives in a day-long visioning workshop. The subject of the charrette exercise was Molbak’s Garden + Home Center. Located in... Read more...

Serenbe: An Innovative Community

by Kathryn Gardow

Fulton County, Georgia is best known as the home of Atlanta, the 9th most populous U.S. metropolian area and Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the most traveled U.S. airport. North of downtown Atlanta is continuous suburbs, countless dead-ends and... Read more...

Cultivating a Thriving Agricultural Economy: Skagit Valley

by Kathryn Gardow

Bucolic fields of tulips wave in the breeze. Tilled fields are ready for spring planting. Raspberry brambles are tamed, trimmed, and prepped for summer production. Netting is checked, secured, and standing by to be stretched over blueberry acreage. Strawberries are... Read more...

Vulnerability of Agricultural: Kent Valley

by Kathryn Gardow

Foodies and agricultural preservationists reminisce the vast acres of lush agricultural soils now covered by asphalt, shopping malls, aerospace giants, and warehouses in western Washington’s Kent Valley. Historic Kent Valley For generations, the Kent Valley,... Read more...