L.A. Offers a Tax Break for Urban Farming—But No One's Taking It

Charlottesville's Food Equity Initiative (a comprehensive municipal policy embedding food equity recommendations into city planning, zoning, and departmental agreements) largely failed to produce systemic change. Without municipal infrastructure (such as dedicated staff, binding policy authority, or permanent funding) accompanying the initiative, the city's initial support is analyzed as responsive to a moment rather than rooted in durable institutional change.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Build America Bureau allocated $35 billion in funding for development projects near public transportation that would transform underutilized offices into much-needed housing.

In Spain, Higueruela transformed wind farm revenues into municipal investments—funding schools, transportation, senior care, and local jobs—which stabilized the town's declining population and created a sustainable economic model that now provides 40% of its annual budget. A key success factor includes allowing the community to negotiate and reject projects that don't serve local interests.

Black Soil, a nonprofit organization founded in 2017, supports Kentucky's Black farmers through direct investment, grant assistance, and market connections while bridging information gaps that prevent farmers from accessing existing government programs.

Despite soaring housing costs, the city government in Paris aims to achieve mixité sociale. That essentially means it's preventing economic segregation to ensure residents from a broad cross-section of society reside in the city and own businesses there. It’s doing so by nabbing real estate to create public housing and providing real estate subsidiaries for small businesses.

The transit authority in Cleveland, Ohio, is offering a microtransit shuttle service for employees who work in locations with limited or no public transit. Rides are free and set up on an as-needed basis via an app.

Sacramento, California, is increasing the number of affordable housing units built in the city by implementing deed restrictions that limit prices and require occupancy by low-income residents, providing free permit-ready building plans for accessory dwelling units, and prioritizing quick approvals by the city government.

To protect local farms, Tokyo’s Law on Productive Green Areas allows farmers to register their inner-city urban farms as Productive Green Areas and receive a property tax break. In return, landowners agree not to sell or develop the land. The law allowed 1,240 small farms to survive and was recently extended for another 10 years.

The successful earthquake rebuild model in Christchurch, New Zealand, was a 60-40 cost-sharing agreement between the central government and local governments designed to be centralized and collaborative with contractors doing the rebuilding. This design could be a model for future disaster reconstruction across the country.

Flood-prone cities in the United States are turning to stormwater utility projects that charge landowners based on the amount of impervious surface on their property. The money earned from the fees is used to build green infrastructure that allows rainwater to seep into the ground instead of overwhelming storm drains and sewage systems.