Cultivating the sustainable city: urban agriculture policies and gardening projects in Minneapolis, Minnesota

In the past 20 years, municipal governments across the United States have increasingly tried to incorporate environmental efforts into city business and policies. Urban sustainability has become the key concept around which such activities are organized. Official sustainability plans are most often implemented through indicators and metrics. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, urban gardening, in a variety of forms, has been the focus of ongoing citizen- and NGO-led environmental efforts, as well as municipal measures of sustainability. Here, debates around the recent adoption of a city urban agriculture policy, as well as a program to encourage the installation of raingardens in neighborhoods across the city, reveal some of the rich variations in gardening practices and spaces. These far exceed the relatively narrow official focus on sustainability indicators. Better understanding how urban sustainability initiatives might work with, but also move beyond, indicators may provide directions toward wider visions of sustainable urban life.