The University of Arkansas Community Design Center won two awards for its project, “Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario,” a program that seeks to build food sustainability by promoting local agriculture.
The project won a 2015 Great Places Award in the Planning Category from the Environmental Design Research Association and a 2015 Green Good Design Award from The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.
The team from the Community Design Center speculated what Fayetteville could be like if the city’s growth included enough local urban food to create self-sufficiency. The city’s population of 75,000 is expected to double in the next 20 years and the region has one of the state’s highest child hunger rates.
“‘Food City’ asks what kind of infrastructure would a city have to develop if it cultivated a local food system?” Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center, said in a news release. “The scenario led to the invention of planning tools for reclaiming a missing middle scale of urban agriculture between that of the individual garden and the industrial farm … Food can simultaneously build greater prosperity, social capital and a true sense of place.”
This project included the Fay Jones School of Architecture, the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, the Center for Agricultural and Rural Sustainability, the School of Law and its master of laws program in agricultural and food law, the Department of Food Science, and the city of Fayetteville.
Alumni of the Fay Jones School were among the designers for another recipient of a 2015 Green Good Design Award for the project Eco Modern Flats. This project revamped four apartment buildings that were constructed from 1968-72 near the University of Arkansas campus and downtown Fayetteville. The result was modern, urban, green multifamily rental units that saved money through energy and water-saving updates.
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