At the Intersection of Cities and Farming
2020 / Senior Capstone
Design Goals
Our team focused on the education, branding, and mapping of local New York City urban farming initiatives as a campaign for environmental activism within the city and it’s surrounding food systems meant to evoke positive social impacts within marginalized communities. There are many existing resources and institutions within the city who inspire us to follow their lead in making steps towards this cause.
We wanted to create a way where all of the information the everyday person needs to get involved is readily available, in whichever way they may choose.
The campaign result was a website leading New Yorkers to local urban farmers and retailers where their produce was made available. We created a series of campaigns which would effectively guide interested audiences to the site to become more involved in their own communities.
The Sci4NY representatives we worked with on this campaign advocated alongside our team for the urban food movement, though difficult an issue to grapple, keeping the solutions localized can make it an easier effort to tackle.
It came to my attention that the necessity of urban farming should be considered as a means of localizing food production, especially in New York City, which at this time of doing this research had felt the worst consequences of the pandemic in feeding their unemployed communities over the course of 2020 over any other city in the nation.
Though there are many food desert and swamp communities across the country, being a student in NYC from Upstate NY made finding a solution to the worsening food systems throughout the state closer to home. This project allowed me to truly indulge myself into exploring every and all facets of the research process that I could.
Because of my growing emotional connection to the objective, the more research I did the more intertwined in the mission of finding a potential solution I was.
Not only did this project teach me so much about the beauty and complexity of research, it taught me more about our food systems than I’d even imagined. Having finalized this project, I hope to continue to become more involved in the activism necessary to change our food systems to refocus on communities in which it was meant to serve.
Team:
Trigonie Kaykas
Hans Christie
