This App Helps Urban Farmers Get Their Crops Growing

Across the country, urban farms are cropping up and making a difference in communities where food deserts have persisted. The idea is simple, but execution can be tricky.

Which is why a new app is aiming to help expedite the process by identifying potential areas to set up anything from growing vegetables to farming bee hives. Urb.ag is a mobile app developed by Fathom Information Design and was first developed for Boston after the city passed legislation allowing commercial urban farming in December 2013.

While Article 89, the new zoning policy, was heralded as a way to open up the city for commercial farming, Fathom designer Terrence Fradet recognized that understanding the policy was going to be difficult for most people who might want to start a farm. With support from the city, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and funding from the Knight Foundation’s Knight Prototype Fund, Fathom launched the app over the summer.

Urb.ag, which derives from urban agriculture, maps out the process of how to obtain zoning permits, submit necessary applications and explains the dense, municipal codes that are required to launch such a business. A user simply enters the Boston address into the app to begin the process, which then prompts a series of questions about whether you want to farm on the ground or roof, use hydroponics or conventional planting, etc. After customizing an ideal farm, the app clues you into the next steps on which government body to obtain permits from and where to apply.

“The way that zoning legislation works, you have different divisions, and within that there are subdistricts, and within that there are parcels,” a data lead on the project Alex Geller tells Fast Company. “You really quickly fall into a rabbit hole.”

Urb.ag, on the other hand, hones in on the location of where someone might want to start a farm and then applies the exact codes and what is required of the new law. For food deserts and other communities facing health problems, simplifying the process for urban farming could be a solution they’re seeking.

“You hear a lot of talk about food deserts and you hear a lot of talk about the obesity epidemic, and it all falls back on the idea that healthy food is less accessible for certain sectors of the population,” Geller tells Boston magazine. “I think what’s so cool about urban agriculture is in a city, where you have a coalescence of different populations, that seems like a point where it’s most especially important to make healthy food and local food accessible at a reasonable price.”

While the app is only available in Boston, it has potential to shape urban farming elsewhere and help government create better connections with citizens looking to transform urban agriculture.

MORE: No Soil? Or Sun? This Urban Farm is Raising Fresh Food in a Whole New Way

Have an Idea About What Your City Needs? This Organization Wants to Hear It

An estimated 80 percent of citizens in the United States live in urban areas, prompting civic planners to get creative as more Americans return to the city.
That creativity is no longer confined to municipal governments as more cities embrace technology, entrepreneurship and social innovation. A great idea can be hatched anywhere, which is why the Knight Foundation is offering to foster any number of them through its Cities Challenge.
Armed with $15 million to spend over the next three years, the Knight Foundation announced an open call to fund grants for ideas that make cities function better in one of its 26 communities, where the Knight brothers own newspapers. The invitation is extended to anyone — including local governments, nonprofit groups, students, startups and teachers.

“One of our real objectives here is to surface new people who have good ideas and ought to get a hearing,” says Carol Coletta, vice president of community and national initiatives for the foundation.

The preliminary process involves only two questions: What’s your idea? And what do you hope to learn from the work? The foundation has not decided how many grants it will award the first year, but expects to invest $5 million in one or more of the 26 cities this year.

While the idea may seem simple vague, Coletta tells Governing that by opening up the process, the foundation is aiming to attract new talent and new individuals outside the nonprofit circle.

“We’re really trying to make it very open so we’ll surface some new people, people we don’t know. That’s why we’ve made the bar to enter so low,” she says.

“Because we’re a mobile society, there’s a sense that cities today are offering what the most mobile Americans want in a lifestyle. Cities are the greenest way to live and they can also offer a more efficient and productive lifestyle,” she says. “For a lot of reasons, people are focused on cities today and that’s a very good thing.”

The application process began Oct. 1 and runs through Nov. 14.

MORE: America’s Three Largest Cities Band Together to Promote U.S. Citizenship

Soon You Can ‘Check Out’ the Internet Along with Your Library Book

New York and Chicago public library systems are getting a digital upgrade. Armed with nearly $1 million in grant funding, the two once-considered antiquated institutions are ramping up services by loaning out Internet to locals much like a library book.
The Knight Foundation awarded both the New York Public Library (NYPL) and the Chicago Public Library as a part of the annual News Challenge, which invites innovators to create solutions that enhances free expression on the Internet. The Chicago Public Library (CPL) received $400,000 for its “Internet to Go” pilot and the New York Public Library received $500,000 for the “Check Out the Internet” project. The two were among 19 winners this year that received a total of $3.4 million in grants.
New York’s well-worn library serves about 40 million walk-in visitors each year, according to New York Public Library President Tony Marx, and an estimated 27 percent of households are without access to Internet. To help patrons who rely on the physical library for access to computers, library officials decided to tap into a digital resource to extend services beyond business hours.
“People are sitting on our stoop to get leaked broadband,” Marx said. “And that’s when a light went off for us that said ‘No, we’ve got to do better than this.’”
NYPL will let patrons “check out” WiFi hotspots for up to one year at a time and is partnering with local initiatives to distribute the equipment including tech training classes, English as a Second Language (ESL) courses and other educational programs.
Last month NYPL launched a smaller scale pilot, dispersing 100 devices in four library branches, and officials are already amassing data on how patrons are interacting with the device and where and when they’re using it. The data will enrich the launch of the larger project in September, when NYPL plans to roll out loans to 10,000 homes across the city. While the larger launch comes with a $1 million price tag, Marx said NYPL is already discussing an additional $1.5 million with a potential investor to complete the project.
The information will also be useful for the State Library systems of Kansas and Maine, which NYPL is working with to determine how to implement a similar model in more rural areas.
But the library is not the only government institution hoping to help others plug in. Last month the New York’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) announced a plan to replace 7,300 pay phones with updated equipment including free WiFi hotspots as well as phone use. The city will award a bid to carry out the project by the year’s end, according to Government Technology.
In Chicago, library officials are targeting six neighborhoods with low Internet adoption rates (50 percent or less). CPL is also renting out laptops and tablets along with mobile hotspots, all of which can be on loan for up to three weeks at a time. Patrons can also use the library’s digital and information literacy services, which will be made available with the equipment.
The library has long been considered a community pillar, connecting and empowering people with knowledge. Rather than falling into the shadows of the digital revolution, more cities should take note of how these two major library systems are not only embracing the technology, but finding solutions to bridge the digital divide.
MORE: The Innovative Service Bringing the Digital Revolution to Libraries