Land Use Planning
Preface
What makes Portland different from Phoenix? Manhattan from Mexico City? London from Los Angeles? The answer
lies in the untold small and large details that shape the urban environment, that make cities conducive to
either pedestrians or to automobiles, compact or sprawling, livable or an ecological disaster. These land-use
policies shape such basic urban elements as the width of sidewalks and streets, the size and location of
parking lots, the distribution of single family houses, apartments, factories, farming, and commercial
districts, and the size of lots. Land-use regulations, of which zoning is the most well known, can have
impacts far beyond the aesthetics or ecology of a place.
For example, urban planners are gaining an awareness of the connections between
land-use and residents’ health. Activists have demonstrated, for example, how the classic suburban design
discourages people from getting out of their cars and onto their bicycles or into their sneakers. Physical
activity, however, is only one part of the health equation. Land-use regulations can also affect the way
food is produced, distributed, and consumed -- basic aspects of the food system.
The food system can have vital impacts on the health of communities, landscapes, and consumers. Yet,
food system issues have been largely ignored by urban planners, categorized as being in the private sector domain.
This new Food Security Learning Center topic on Land Use Planning will help to build the bridge between
land-use planners and food system advocates, demonstrating how some communities are explicitly encouraging
healthy eating by design.
Introducing the Issue:
Definition: Food System - The interdependent parts of the system that provides food to a community.
This includes the growing, harvesting, storing, transporting, processing, packaging, marketing, retailing,
and consuming of the product. Some or all of these steps in the food system may be within the community but
they also may be part of the global or regional system instead.
(Cornell University Discovering the Food System Glossary)
This section is designed to give both food system advocates and planners basic information on how using land-use
strategies at the city/county level can lead to improvements in the local food system. We do not tackle the entire
breadth of information on urban planning strategies as related to public health, but instead chose to provide more
detail on this specific issue. We are fortunate that the Public Health Law Program has done a great deal of work
on this issue and is offering free technical assistance to groups in California, and hopes soon to get additional
funding to work throughout the US.
This website was designed for two different audiences,
Food System Advocates and Planners. Please choose the
one that best describes who you are.
For Food System Advocates:
(adapted from the Public Health Law Program PHLP Toolkit)
City and County governments make planning decisions that determine, for better or worse, how food is produced,
processed, and distributed in our communities. These decisions are often made in an uncoordinated fashion,
without an understanding of their impacts on the food security of residents, especially those living in
lower-resource neighborhoods. Such disintegrated policymaking can contribute to the problems of
low-income communities losing supermarkets and having a disproportionately high concentration of
fast food outlets. They contribute also to towns and cities losing farmland on the urban edge.
All of these impacts in turn reduce access to healthy foods, contribute to rising rates of obesity
and diet-related disease, and diminish the quality of life for residents. If done in a coordinated
way, food systems planning can help to keep family farmers on the land, ensure that all community members
have equal access to quality food, create jobs, and support the local economy.
Until now, food systems planning has fallen outside the scope of most planning departments.
Planners have generally seen the food system as the territory of the private sector, functioning
well without the need for public policy intervention. Local food system advocates, however, recognize
the overlooked problems with the current food system, and are exploring land-use policies as a tool
for change. Just as public health officials acknowledged the built environment’s contribution to the
obesity epidemic and have promoted pedestrian and bike friendly policies, food system advocates are
beginning to engage local governments to set policy that supports community-based food systems, as a
means toward healthy, sustainable, and democratic communities.
How Can Food System Advocates Use Land-Use Strategies?
Land is central to food production and distribution. Land-use planning can be an effective tool for creating
healthier food environments. Regulations governing the use of land can protect local farms, encourage urban
agriculture, and foster sufficient and appropriate food retailing outlets. Alternatively, they can ignore food
deserts, encourage big box retail, and foster the transformation of farmland to subdivisions. 
Land-use
planning has already been used as a public health advocacy tool to successfully affect the location and
operations of alcohol sales. Land-use planning and policies occur at the regional and local levels,
within planning departments. Policymakers are authorized to select and adopt land-use options that
will best meet the needs of residents while safeguarding resources for the future.
Recently, a few cities have begun to develop land-use policies to improve their local food system.
Madison, Hartford, and Seattle are among these. Some are adding community food security objectives
to their Comprehensive Plans. Others are looking at ways of increasing access to fresh and affordable
foods in underserved areas. Still others are implementing zoning policies to protect vulnerable community
garden spaces, or limit the spread of fast food outlets. In the next section is an introduction to the two
main land-use strategies: the Comprehensive Plan and Zoning. In the “Program Profiles” section, you will
find several case studies.
For Planners:
(adapted from APA Food System Planning White Paper)
As a discipline, planning marks its distinctiveness by a strong claim to be comprehensive in scope and
attentive to the spatial interconnections among important facets of community life. Yet among the basic
necessities of life – air, food, shelter, and water – only food has not been prioritized by most planners.
Given the increasing support for creating more sustainable communities, it makes sense that food system
planning be made an important part of the work of planning departments. Comprehensive food system planning is
beginning to happen in a number of cities and counties profiled in the “Program Profiles” of this website.
What Can Planners Bring to Food System Planning?
Planners bring aptitudes and skills that are needed for building stronger local and regional food systems,
which cover the chain of activities connecting food production, processing, distribution, and access,
consumption, and waste management, as well as all the associated supporting and regulatory institutions
and activities. Planners are trained about the multiple facets of communities, including: the analysis of
the land-use and spatial dimensions of communities, externalities and hidden costs of potential policy decisions,
interdisciplinary perspectives on community systems such as the food system, and ways to link new goals like
community food systems into sustainable and healthy community goals. Therefore, planners can help create more
sustainable food systems and ameliorate negative impacts by strengthening the capacity of local and regional
food systems.
Planners can design local land-use policies conducive to improving public health through the provision of
farmers’ markets, neighborhood food retail outlets, and community gardens, that are accessible through
multiple modes of transportation. Planners are well positioned to partner with the growing number of food policy
councils around the US by providing them with important data and information about the food environment in their
community, and by incorporating land-use and other policies and regulations supportive of community based food
systems in their plans and documents.
Special thanks to the Community Food Security Coalition for authoring this topic.
Last updated 12/2006
