Farming on the Fringe: Peri-Urban Agriculture, Cultural Diversity and Sustainability in Sydney [Paperback]

This volume offers a new perspective to debates on local food and urban sustainability presenting the long silenced voices of the small-scale farmers from the productive green fringe of Sydneys sprawling urban jungle. Providing fresh food for the city and local employment, these culturally and linguistically diverse farmers contribute not only to Sydneys globalizing demographic and cultural fabric, but also play a critical role in the citys environmental sustainability. In the battle for urban space housing development threatens to turn these farmlands into sprawling suburbia. In thinking from and with the urban fringe, this book moves beyond the housing versus farming debate to present a vision for urban growth that is dynamic and alive to the needs of the 21st century city. In a unique bringing together of the twin forces shaping contemporary urbanism - environmental change and global population flows - the voices from the fringe demand to be heard in the debate on future urban food sustainability.

CHAPTER 1: SYDNEYS INVISIBLE FARMERS.- Sydneys Market Gardens: A Cultural Economy of Farming on the Fringe.- The History of CALD market gardeners in Sydney.- Re-visioning the City from the Edge: Cultural Complexity and Urban Agriculture.- Speaking from the Fringe.- Recognition: Determining the efficacy and relevance of prevailing preservation discourses.- Into the field.- Chapter Outlines.- References.- CHAPTER 2:  GROWING SYDNEY.- A Vision for a Global City.- Growth as Development.- Agriculture and Cultural Complexity.- From Colonial to Global City.- Environmental and Cultural Limits to Growth.- Sprawl: The Messiness of the West.- History of Growth in Sydneys Plans.- The 2005 Metropolitan Strategy.- Responses to the 2005 Strategy.- Green Zones.- A Plan for Growing Sydney (2015).- Conclusion.- References.- CHAPTER 3:  LOCAL FOOD, URBAN SUSTAINABILITY AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY.- Vortex cities.- The turn to local food.- PlanninlC,