Forget Golf Courses: Subdivisions Draw Residents With Farms

Luke Runyon, reporting for NPR:

Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.

It’s called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.

”These projects are becoming more and more mainstream,” says Ed McMahon, a fellow with the Urban Land Institute. He estimates that more than 200 developments with an agricultural twist already exist nationwide.

This appears to be an interesting trend. Will existing subdivisions be redeveloped with the inclusion of small farms? Given their density, subdivisions are still dependent on cheap energy for transportation -- a clear Achilles' heel.