City Farm

Cityfarm is an international program started by a Scandinavian landscape architect who noticed that children and youth in growing urban environments were growing further and further away from where and how their food was grown, produced and harvested. By taking an unused plot of land largely undeveloped and used more as a dumping ground than as a useful public space, he created a site within the heart of a city that offered children and youth an opportunity to experience agriculture, incorporating adventure play, child and leadership development and rich experiential educational activities.  Today, there are dozens of Cityfarm sites throughout the world, particularly in heavily populated urban Western environments, where millions of children, youth and adults attend every year.

Sustainable Food Edmonton (formerly Personal Community Support Association), brought Cityfarm to Edmonton in 2005.  For 3 great seasons, a thriving Cityfarm on the northeast corner of the city brought together children, youth and adults, to engage in adventure play in an urban agricultural environment.  It was a "free" space where everyone was invited to share, learn, develop, and understand.

Running a community project that offers free access is an expensive business. Cityfarm relied almost exclusively on outside funders since we maintained that cost should never be a barrier to anyone participating, However, we could not ensure sustained funding and with great regret, we had to close our gates in Fall 2008.

Since then, we have been working on finding new sponsor partners, donors and alliances. We continue to work with the City of Edmonton to try to develop long term sustained funding for the project as well.  We invite you to support the initiative through donations, fundraisers, and advocacy for the program with the city and the province.

Please check back to the Cityfarm pages on a regular basis for updates.  Hopefully, we will have a new site operational in the summer of 2014!