Lauren Kaskey
Intro to GIS
Assignment 6: Project Plan
Urban Agriculture for Education in Boston
This mapping project will build on prior UEP projects, such as Jennifer Obadia’s analysis of Community
Garden Access in Boston as well as Denise Chin’s evaluation of Urban Agriculture opportunities in
Boston, MA. Together with the Earthos Institute, I am interested in mapping Urban Agriculture
opportunities which could be prioritized for an educational endeavor. This map will be used to help the
Grove Hall community decide how to prioritize grant application efforts. I will also be considering
rooftops which are of appropriate size for an urban farm. Although the laws and process for rooftops are
a bit more cumbersome, they represent a significant opportunity to create a “greener” city. To get the
most out of an investment, a rooftop farmer might want to prioritize spaces that have educational
programming opportunities inherent in their geography. This means that the space will be in a pedshed
of a school.
To maintain consistency in Urban Agriculture planning tools for the city of Boston, I have adopted
Denise Chin’s criteria for land that is suitable for urban agriculture.
 10,000 sqft
 Good light exposure. Operationalized by eliminating high tree density parcels and also those
surrounded by tall buildings.
 Less than 30% elevation.
Literature Review:
Chin, D. (2013). Introduction to GIS (Final Paper). 7May
Denise Chin’s project helped me to think through the parameters for an urban farm. By using the same
parameters that she used with her team, I can maintain consistency in Boston Urban Agriculture tools.
Additionally, by using the same process that Chin used to determine eligible plots of land, I can then add
another component to the map in order to map sites that could be prioritized for educational purposes.
GIS Best Practices: US Department of Agriculture. August 2006. (www.esri.com/agriculture)
This website is helping me to understand how farmers might use the visuals to inform their operations.
Although the community is the primary audience for this map, the hope is that the prioritized land with
eventually be used by farmers. If I can include useful information on the maps, it further reduces
barriers to establishment of new farms.
Brown, Katherine H. et al. Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming
from the City Center to the Urban Fringe. Urban Agriculture Committee of the Community Food Security
Coalition. February 2002.
This paper contextualizes Urban Agriculture in terms of food security and food justice. This is especially
useful for the Grove Hall Initiative, as this neighborhood is comprised of a primarily minority, lowincome population. By understanding how Urban Agriculture can create a more just food system, I can
better prioritize information that would be useful in a map for a neighborhood development project.
Although Grove Hall is where the current project is focused, other neighborhoods in Boston could also
benefit from a map with a justice orientation.
Thapa, Rajesh Bahadur and Yuji Murayama. “Land evaluation for peri-urban agriculture using analytical
hierarchical process and geographic information system techniques: A case study of Hanoi.” Land Use
Policy, Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 225-239: April 2008. Accessed from Science Direct, November 6, 2008.
This paper has helped me understand suitability criteria for urban farms to confirm Chin’s criteria.
Additionally, there is the potential to use their categorization criteria to evaluate high/medium/low
suitability levels or each piece of land.
Data layers:
Public and private vacant land 2012 database.
Source: Assessing Department, City of Boston. Retrieved from Tufts GIS repository.
Parcels_Boston_2012
Source: Assessing Department, City of Boston. Retrieved from Tufts GIS repository.
OpenSpace_Poly
Source: MassGIS; Tufts University GIS repository.1998.
Trees
Souce: City of Boston DOIT Plenimetric 2010. Retrieved from Tufts GIS repository.
Boston Digital Elevation Model
Source: Retrieved from Tufts GIS repository. 2010.
Prime Farmland
Source: MassGIS 2012.
Schools_PT
Source: MassGIS 2012. Retrieved from Tufts GIS repository.
Buildings
Source: City of Boston DOIT Plenimetric.2010. Retrieved from Tufts GIS repository.
Census block groups
Land-use (Parcels from MassGIS)
Water (StreetmapUSA)
Roads: MassGIS/Datalayers/etoroads, Class
BostonOpenSpace
Trees
Boston Digital Elevation Model
Wetlands
Impervious
Political Boundaries (MassGIS)
Schools
To create PedSheds:
Export roads in class 3-6 to their own shape file.
Network Analyst—Service Area Analysis
Facilities—Load Locations (Schools)
Service Area Properties—Create a ¼ and ½ Mile Walkable Zones layer.
 Follow specifications in Proximity Tools tutorial.
Create new shape files of both the polygons and lines.
To identify potential spaces for Urban Agriculture in Boston, I will use much of the process developed by
Denise Chin and her team for her 2013.
All Vacant Land
I am working to retrieve Denise Chin’s All Vacant Land database.
 I will then join this data set to parcels.
 Select parcels that match to All Vacant -> create layer from selection.
Vacant land greater than 10,000 square feet.
 Calculate geometry -> select by attribute: sqft >= 10000 -> Create layer.
Light Exposure
Tree density (5 trees per 10,000 square feet)
 Street trees only.
o Select by attribute street trees only -> create new layer.
 Number of trees per parcel
o Spatial join -> Join by special attribute: sum: All Vacant.
o Add field: tree_dens -> calculate field: count of trees/land_sf.
o Select out those with tree_dens >= .0005.
 Building shade
o Create 80ft buffer around All Vacant.
o From buildings layer, select by BLDG_HGT, height >= 40ft -> create layer.
o Select by location: buildings_40ft; Source layer: buildings_buffer -> create layer.
Slope
Create a slope raster from the digital elevation model (DEM) of Boston.
Determine elevation of each parcel.
 Spatial analyst -> Zonal statistics as table, select parcel layer as input, zone field = parcel ID,
raster layer is slope.
 Select by attribute from zonal statistics table. Slope <=20. Create layer from selection.
The resulting layer should then be joined to the school pedshed layer.
 Spatial join.
Poster Elements
Map of all vacant parcels that are suitable for Urban Agriculture.
Map of suitable public parcels.
Map of suitable private parcels.
Map of parcels within PedShed of a school.
 Close up of Grove Hall.