1. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
1
Urban Agriculture and Terroir
Abstract
This paper explores several urban agricultural projects within New York City’s five boroughs.
Focusing the literary research on urban gardens and local food businesses that situate their range of
benefits through the lens of terroir. The current definitions of the term terroir, and the varying
applications of this term in literature are explored. Understanding the synonymity between the terms
can promote the exploration of terroir’s adaptability and the defining conditions paired with these
definitions. How can the keywords overlay into a community’s system of production, processing, and
consumption of an authentic lifestyle? Can agriculture projects run the risk of misappropriating a
regional culture when displacing the definition of terroir? The culture of a community, the sense of
place, and the local products can situate current projects within the working definitions of terroir.
Limiting the research of literature to projects specific to NYC, will allow for a controlled boundary
when comparing the different typologies of urban projects. Analyzing the parallels, can inform how
principles of terroir can influence the designs of urban projects. Have architects used terroir as a
precedent study for informing their strategies when designing NYC’s urban agricultural projects? Are
there current boundaries within NYC where the conditions of terroir applies, and how could overlaying
terroir onto Urban Agriculture inform new typologies and strategies for our urban landscape? This
paper applies to architects, urban planners, and designers that can use the terroir of a place as a
contextual strategy when positioning and formalizing the different Urban Agriculture typologies.

2. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
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Keywords
Urban Agriculture, Terroir, Culture, Urban Garden, New York City
Boolean Operators
terroir AND (definition OR meaning)
(“urban agriculture” OR “community garden*” OR “urban farm” OR “urban garden*”) AND (culture
OR identity OR “local knowledge” OR heritage OR tradition OR taste)
(“urban agriculture” OR “community garden*” OR “urban farm” OR “urban garden*”) AND “New
York City”
Introduction
New York City’s population density within marked food desserts promotes the innovations of
food security in the Urban landscape. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
declares more than three quarters of nations’ total population live in the Urban Landscape (Conard,
2014)⁠ . The five boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island are welcoming
many forms of food security strategies to their neighborhoods. These strategies and projects formalize
the recent term Urban Agriculture. Projects, within the boundaries of New York City, are developing
into several unique typologies. Within these typologies, each individual project begins with a mission
statement. These project goals inform the Urban Agriculture project’s typology. Currently the goal of
preserving and protecting communities’ local cultures and authenticity is not a driving factor when
incentivizing these typologies, as Conard writes in his paper, “Historically as well as today, community
development, food security and economic security are three of the most common reasons for

3. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
3
participation in urban agriculture” (Conard, 2014)⁠ . One can also develop a strategy for increasing
nutrition, education, job opportunities, and social justice. I am interested in the projects that position
themselves within the lens of the literary food term terroir. Deriving from “terre” meaning land or
planet Earth, the French term has great difficulty being translated into English and other languages
because of its cultural and geographical context. Spain translates terroir’s definition into “productos de
la tierra” meaning “products of the soil”. In Italy the term is translated to “Nostra” meaning “ours” or
“our products” (Techoueres, 2005)⁠ The conditions that define the term can be applied universally,
but a direct translation would not serve the crucial principles of terroir with the poetics it demands.
Terroir is currently the driving tool when legitimizing and protecting a regional product. These
local products, using terroir, have developed geographical indications (GI) as labels of origin to the
specific region of production. The French culture mainly applies the labeling of GI’s to their wines and
spirits, but the application broadens to cheeses, meats, and other local food products (Barham, 2003)⁠ .
Applying a GI to one’s food product would immediately assume a level of quality and authenticity
produced by a specific region or community. Because of terroir’s construction, it is not a trademark-
able term, and the terroir of a product “belongs” to the region of production. If a cheese monger in
Brooklyn, NY produced Compté cheese under the same label as fromage du Compté, the authentic
practices of producing such a product with great geographical interconnections could be
misappropriated and used as a marketing technique in displaced regions. When discussing les produits
de terroir, the French include farm products, regional products, and products of a specific GI. (Barham,
2003)⁠ .

4. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
4
Terroir protects a local culture through local food, and one sees many GI’s throughout Europe;
however, developing new definition of terroir can be seen in categories of climate, geography, and
culture, but developing a new terroir almost contradicts its entire philosophy. How can one develop a
new space that inherently provides the depth and history required to apply such a traditional,
transgenerational definition. Developing a new territory, place, or region would lack credible materials
to engage the practice of terroir (Techoueres, 2005)⁠ . This could propose that each space that
currently exists, given it has culture and a place, has a terroir or a package of knowledge and practices
specific to the producers of that area. Simply because a region’s products are not labeled as GI’s does
not remove the possibility for a region to have a unique culture expressed through food. The scale the
term terroir applies to is unclear ranging from country, region, territory, and/or place. How small can
this place be in an urban scale? Did my grandmother, without realizing, overlay on her residential lot
her own terroir for the production of “Her Gumbo”? The gumbo uses local crawdads, under the
production of a local resident, who has lived in the territory for her entire life. When does a food
product evolve from a “family secret recipe” to an authentic place-based product, or are the defining
conditions synonymous, but simply out of scale to one another?
When digesting the term “terroir”, one can separate the word into five transnational categories:
Taste of Place, Taste Experiences, Production of Locality, Quality of Flavor, and the Culture of Taste
(Trubek, 2008)⁠ . Many of the successful and highly publicized projects in New York City already
relate to the interconnected term of terroir. After exploring the different synonyms and applications of
the term, I have selected urban gardens, urban farms, farmers markets, restaurants, food hubs, and non-
for-profit organizations within the five boroughs that have been designed, developed, or operating

5. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
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within the past ten years that leverage their project through one or several of terroir’s five
subcategories. By overlaying this literary food term terroir over urban agriculture projects within New
York City, one can further develop the personality and stances these projects support. My methods of
research will include journal articles online and in-print, webpages, blog reviews, and a book to analyze
the term “terroir” and “urban agriculture” projects.
Methods
The literary research begins by exploring the term terroir and its applied definitions. Asking how are
the scholars defining the term and how are they situating its meaning within their papers? I am using
the Food Studies filter New School Libraries database to conduct my research on terroir using key
terms such as terroir AND (definition OR meaning). What types of projects do scholars currently apply
the term terroir to? I selected a working definition of terroir that I can use as a leverage point when
focusing my research on urban agriculture projects. With this definition I have compiled defining
principles and elements of terroir that can parallel key terms in my research of urban agriculture
projects in New York City. Identifying these “relevant substitutes” will allow for a denser yield in
publications involving both “urban agriculture” AND “terroir”. By including key terms such as
(culture OR identity OR “local knowledge” OR heritage OR tradition OR culture OR taste), I explore
publications tied to this paper’s focus on terroir. I have used New School Libraries Web of Science to
collect research on (“urban agriculture” OR “community garden*” OR “urban farm” OR “urban
garden*”) AND (culture OR identity OR “local knowledge” OR heritage OR tradition OR culture OR
taste). To localize my research, I am including several urban agriculture projects specific to New York
City. I wish to examine these NYC based projects through the working definition of terroir by

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Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
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supplementing my findings with blogs, projects websites, and project reviews online and in print. I am
using Google Scholar for scientific and non-scientific literature regarding my selected NYC sites using
key terms (“urban agriculture” OR “community garden*” OR “urban farm” OR “urban garden*”) AND
“New York City”. With these results, I overlay my selected definition of “terroir”, its principles, and
strategize its potential integration into urban agriculture projects. I need to exclude definitions of
terroir that do not support or do not integrate into the mission of the NYC based projects. I will include
sources only written in English within the past twenty years.
Results
Taste of Place
Transnational categories that are described in Amy Trubek’s book allow for the application for the
word terroir to successfully apply itself to several projects that exist or have been proposed in New
York City. Beginning with the most direct application, Taste of Place, This section will introduce the
projects currently promoting cultural awareness and preservation through urban agriculture. The food
produced within these sites are authentically grow and prepared by immigrants arriving with dense
cultural knowledge and traditions when producing a food product. In the neighborhood of Chelsea,
Fritz Haeg designed and implemented a garden project titled Edible Estates Garden # 8 that has context
directly tied to the native cultures of Manhatta, the Lenape Tribe. Using the three “sister crops” corn,
green beans, and squash, the garden takes on the personality of an indigenous biodiverse plot of land.
The site in plan is even organized so a traditional harvesting method could be honored. The berry
bushes and shrubs are planted around a harvesting circle that is a central patch for collecting produce
(Haeg, 2009)⁠ .

7. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
7
Hot Bread Kitchen is a bakery located in Spanish Harlem with workers immigrating from “Morocco to
Mexico” participate in baking cultural breads traditionally made in their native countries. Guttman
writes in the interview, “that baking bread is a common link among women. ‘So many people have an
aunt, a mother, grandmother, some woman in their life with a special bread recipe’ (Guttman, 2014)⁠ .
This bakery producing a range of authentic breads under one non for profit facility, aims at promoting
the traditions of other cultures even displaced in another environment.
Members in the South Bronx community developed and operate an urban farmer cooperative that
ranges its goals from empowering the economics of their neighborhood, to raising public health and
nutritional awareness, to promoting and positioning their project with Black and Latina heritage. By
labeling their project with specific cultural practices, the women of La Finca Del Sur can reflect the
culture of the South Bronx community (La Finca Del Sur, 2010)⁠ .
Taste Experiences
This section will discuss the unique Taste Experiences one can find in New York City. The
Williamsburg Smörgåsbord is a highly populated foodie fair that takes place every Saturday in
Williamsburg along the East River. The usually bare lots are transformed and densified with some of
the most unique food creations trending in New York City. The Ramen Burger, where people wait in
line as long as two city blocks, was the craze when I visited one weekend. I was overwhelmed with all
of the options from Elotés as big as your head, to fresh pressed ice cream cookie sandwiches, to
Venetian sandwiches of tuna and egg. I was surprised by a booth serving Takoyaki that I initially
believed to be a teriyaki chicken taco until I saw a squid head. Takoyaki is actually a Japanese snack

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Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
8
made of battered octopus and tempura scraps that are formed into balls and cooked in a special pan.
One could spend hours, as my group and I did, exploring different cultural fusions and people watching
on a large plaza of grass overlooking the river.
The Latin cuisine of Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, prepared and served
by an immigrant population, traditionally fed ballpark athletes and spectators in Redhook. Even the
way in which we taste our food informs our cultural behaviors. As students propose an architectural
project titled Food Fence. For more than thirty years, a micro-climate of authentic Latin American
cuisines, prepared and vended to the community, blends alongside the culture of Baseball in Brooklyn.
As stated in the project proposal the food symbolizes an experience of a communit’s culture and, “this
is where the inherent value of street vending lies, especially in a city so immensely influenced by
immigrants like New York, where food and goods for all tastes and cultural backgrounds are available
(Cintos & Pinto, 2010)⁠ .
Production of Locality
This section discovers projects that commit to the local, community oriented way. Understanding that
certain labelings exist in New York City like MADE in NYC, and PRIDE of NY that suggest a socially
produced boundary, rather than physical space. Rooftop Reds is a recent winery and one of the only
rooftop wineries, that operates on top of the Brooklyn Navy Yard that is producing wines made for sale
under a titel in the New York Times as a (718) wine. In an interview with the producers, the question of
how can one create a terroir in Brooklyn’s environment that, is better known for its crowded streets,
subways and skyscrapers? (Pearse, 2015). But it is believed that these urban conditions provide a

9. Burke Adams
Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
9
romantic association with the territory and the terroir of Brooklyn is no longer steered towards the
actual flavors of the wine, but rather the community’s personality.
Quality of Flavor
This section highlights the urban agriculture projects that integrate technologies to produce high quality
produce with greater depths of flavor. Visiting Eden Works one discovers a rooftop aquaponic facility
right of the L train in the East Williamsburg/Bushwick territory. Their produce is soaked in recycled
water from a closed loop system harnessing the fixation properties of fish and plant symbiosis. They
state they produce a higher quality taste than other hydroponic facilities because of the relationship
between the fish and the plants’ roots (Eisenpress, 2016)⁠ .
Bell Book and Candle, a restaurant in the West Village, introduces an innovation of an aeroponic
farming tower. The chefs use the produce and herbs grown directly on the roof using a water vapor of
nutrients specifically balanced for the plants’ needs (Future Growing LLC, 2013)⁠ .
Culture of Taste
This section shows how a community uses an urban agriculture project to inform and educate viewers
through an online platform. Munchies is VICE Media’s cooking channel that supplies its episodes with
fresh local ingredients grown right on their roof designed and operated by Brooklyn Grange. The space
is a mix of meadow and garden bed, including exotic herbs and ingredients like wormwood and
shiitake mushrooms used specifically for chefs in the area. Gordon Ramsey visited the site and tasted a
tomato grown on the rooftop and crediting the taste development to the culture of Brooklyn (Hollyman,
2016).

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Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
10
Discussion
The effectiveness of overlaying the term terroir depends on which definition is more
appropriate for one’s urban agriculture project. To strategize one’s project by applying a Geographic
indicator would suggest the project’s range of benefits includes the climactic and historic conditions a
place requires to achieve a GI (Barham, 2003)⁠ . The definition used in this paper to strategize an
urban agriculture project in NYC relate more towards the unique cultures produced in places as specific
as neighborhoods – especially in dense urban environments, where boundaries of the city’s
neighborhoods create the combined personality of a city’s culture. These territories of NYC have been
impacted greatly by immigrant communities like the Italians, Irish, and Jewish. All of the cultures they
shared in New York City were tied together with a “sense of their immigrant origins” (Keogan,
2002)⁠ . With high densities of culturally authentic neighborhoods one would expect specific tastes to
be produced in these places. What is still missing when urban agriculture projects in large cities
develop, is the application of the communities specific and unique culture. Of course projects have
reflected the community’s personality, but few certainly position themselves with the generational
knowledge that has been shared within a project to produce the authentic of place. Different from
“local” and different from “product” but when combined, these words create “local products” which all
have underlying potential to share a genuine terroir.
Projects currently in NYC can be susceptible to inequities in the social system as Kristen
Reynolds states, “race and class-based disparities that exist in broader social systems are being
replicated in New York’s urban agriculture system, despite the existence of a diversity of practitioners
and increasing public interest in both urban agriculture and social justice” (Reynolds, 2015)⁠ . How

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Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
11
does this quote position Urban Agriculture projects in New York City. Vulnerable to inequalities of
race and social classes, could projects in NYC gain resilience if culture was also defending them? One
sees the application of culture when speaking towards the appropriate food produced in certain projects
and several studies have documented the increasing benefits to, “fresh, affordable, and culturally
appropriate foods” within communities of low-income (Reynolds, 2015)⁠ . Having asked, what could
culturally appropriate food produce be? My friend responded that certain areas with specifics to their
diet cannot produce and eat their authentic diets without the appropriate ingredients. Imagine coming
from a diet of rice, beans, and vegetables and only having access to white bread, beef, and sugar. One’s
identity is tied to the food one consumes routinely, how it is prepared, and by who, using what
practices?
One could imagine the gap between urban agriculture projects and communities specific
cultures only increasing as urban landscapes densify with high rent spaces of living. Edenworks
planned to expand onto another rooftop in Bushwick, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, however the rents
continued to rise, which lead the company to expand within a warehouse space, using artificial lighting,
and having a goal of production and high yield. This phenomenon in the housing market can threaten
the resiliency of urban agriculture projects that require several years to typically produce revenue. Even
so, projects are emerging, “which in contrast to the traditional environmental movement’s focus on
preserving pristine landscapes, integrates community and ecological values” (Krasny & Tidball,
2009)⁠ . This does not remove a culture, but integrates individuals’ traditional knowledge to their
communities, and I believe creates a new displaced terroir.

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Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
12
This place away from place shares the cultural practices and authentic knowledge of growing
plants, harvesting, and preparing food into non-replicable products anywhere else, but it does not
demand the place to have hundreds of years of micro-climates, soils, and compounds in the water to
produce something special. Their is still a sense of the land, and projects advocate to strategize using
terroir to combine the market, the individual, community welfare, and the relationship between the
community and its tastes of place. By understanding the community’s network, projects are encourgaed
to evolve from subsitnence markets into global artisan communities that produce rich community-
specific products (Elaydi & Mclaughlin, 2012)⁠ . Connecting the plants and urban gardens to cultures
maybe, “contributing to social-ecological system resilience in cities (Krasny & Tidball, 2009)⁠ .
Conclusions
The urban agriculture projects existing in New York City already operate under the benefits of local
cultures and places of authentic and unique tastes. The knowledge and usage of the word terroir
however is not being applied to many project’s range of goals which could empower these operations.
New York City’s cultures exist in every neighborhood and each space is producing a local flavor and
local products. If the only condition for terroir to be applied effectively is a “local product”, then urban
agriculture products are producing some of the most authentic produce in these communities across
New York’s five boroughs. Designers and operators of these projects can better inform their planning
by integrating the term terroir into their mission. Strategizing one’s urban garden, or farm, or
restaurant, or food hub, into a cultural and authentic experience, the production and mission of these
spaces can maintain a heritage special to their community and adds another layer of legitimacy to the
developing definition of urban agriculture.

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Designing Foodscapes
Spring 2016
13
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