by Deanna Rogers
My audacious vision is re-prioritizing the space in our city. Why is 30% of Vancouver’s space dedicated to concrete for cars? Personally I feel this does not represent a third of Vancouver’s culture so why do we give them such a large priority? If we had several major roads dedicated to garden use verses car traffic then we could feed our people not our cities carbon footprint. When will we make food a priority? Many of residents in Vancouver are below the poverty line, and we need the infrastructure to support them.
It is essential for our society to embrace diets that do not require meat. The environmental costs of creating nutritional value at the high end of the food chain, in the form of meat, are prohibitive. The recent effort to permit urban chicken farming illustrates the complications of animal husbandry in dense human population zones. Urban farms will thrive on political will ONLY when there has been vast acceptance of vegetarian or minimal dairy and meat diets. This to me is the single greatest area needing public education and awareness, if the environment is to be preserved. And the health benefits are so great as well.