In Adelaide, a small urban farm links entrepreneurship with good food

With around nine city farms already on the ground or in planning around Australia, it appears city farming’s time is now.

In Adelaide, one of their number, Wagtail Urban Farm, is showing that small can certainly be bountiful…Read More

Will a new educational centre diversify or increase competition in sustainability education?

The arrival of a questionnaire about how much the proposed Sydney City Farm should charge for its workshops raises the question of competition in community education and of local government’s role in offering it…Read More

Community food growers converge on Rose Bay

IT WAS A FINE, late Autumn Sunday when Sydney community gardeners converged on Rose Bay Commuity Garden in harbourside Sydney. There, the good folk at the newish Rose Bay Community Garden were hosting the seasonal gathering of the Sydney convivium … Read More

Conversation, conviviality and a food forest in the city — a fine place for a meeting

AN URBAN FOOD FOREST was a fine venue for the  2015 national gathering of the Australian City Farms & Commuhity Gardens Network. There, in a comfortable, solar powered, cement-rendered strawbale community building, the group met to discuss initiatives for the … Read More

In the deep green

A WOMAN wanders through a forest garden in the green light cast by the tree canopy. It’s quiet in here. Shadows are deep. Small creatures in the leaf little are heard rather than seen. Unknown birds call. Bees buzz. Insects … Read More

Defending civic agriculture

This article was written for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network following criticism in February 2014 of community food gardening and farmers’ markets by a representative body of the vegetable industry.

……………………………………………….

IN MID-FEBRUARY 2014, community gardeners around … Read More

A garden on wheels, a new kind of composter and a convivial meal

AMERICAN journalist and social activist, Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) said it on his 1919 visit to the then-new Soviet Union: “I have seen the future and it works.”

Like so many, Steffens would become disillusioned with the Soviet state, but … Read More

Community gardens — coverage appreciated but quoting misses much

HIGHLIGHTING the value of community gardens is always a good thing, so the Sydney Morning Herald’s story (10 April 2014) in which Sydney restaurateur, Bill Granger, proposes that local government could do more to expand the number of gardens is … Read More

Local government version 2.0: from managerialism to platform

WHY IS THE  iPHONE a model for local government and what does C3I and Citizen 2.0 have to do with it? That’s what we’re going to explore in this story as we investigate what are preliminary ideas for a new role for local government in Australia.

Read More

My work in local government—a few thoughts

LOCAL GOVERNMENT—it’s the level of government closest to the people in Australia and it’s this situation that gives it its reputation. And that’s quite a variable reputation that spans the distance from appreciation to criticisms of excessive bureaucracy.

Read More