Is agriculture the next big TND trend?

A national expert on smart growth says the next big trend will be residential developments with an agricultural component. “Agriculture is the new golf,” says Andres Duany, the principal founder of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, and one of the leaders of new urbanism. Duany, who was in Baton Rouge last week for the Center for Planning Excellence’s annual Smart Growth Summit, says the trend toward agricultural urbanism is being pushed along by a desire to “circle the wagons” and adapt to global warming upsetting food supplies. Duany notes that developments are already exerting a lot of time and money to keep up ornamental landscaping, so it’s just a matter of shifting the energy toward producing food. He’s designed proposed developments in Florida and British Columbia that have heavy agricultural components, ranging from five-acre farms to rooftop gardens maintained by apartment dwellers. While residents of the communities would tend the smaller gardens, there would also be housing set aside for the agricultural laborers who would do much of the major work. Duany even sees establishing processing facilities and farmer’s markets in the neighborhoods. Some of Duany’s vision could be a part of developments in South Louisiana. Steve Oubre, the Lafayette landscape architect who has developed many of the TNDs in the area, has plans for a redevelopment of Hopkins Street in New Iberia that includes two 10-acre farms.—Timothy Boone