Feeding Citizenship: strategies for accessing and transforming spaces

Since 2003, Alternatives’ Feeding Citizenship program has been developing new ways to interact with urban man-made environments and the food cycle, towards a greener city and healthier communities. It does this by encouraging public participation in the creation of new green collective and edible spaces. The program has contributed to identifying opportunities in vacant land by expanding the scope of adequate growing space and it has facilitated transformation by actively bolstering public participation in the creation and investment of these spaces. This paper describes the context and issues surrounding community land access in Montreal. It tells the story of the development of Feeding Citizenship and recounts the program\u27s main challenges, as well as the successful strategies that emerged to overcome them