Sustainable Food Systems Design and Education at a Multi-Use Site Site Design for the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Food Innovation Center

Abstract

The Kalamazoo Valley Community College Food Innovation Center (FIC) is an institution dedicated to urban farming, sustainable agriculture, food systems education, and local food advocacy. They currently have a warehouse office, food processing center, greenhouse, and raised beds on their 5-acre campus. The FIC wishes to design the rest of that 5-acre site so that it can be an educational site that coordinates with KVCC’s food-related educational programing while also serving model for sustainable site design techniques. The FIC has enlisted the help of a team of landscape architecture master’s students at the University of Michigan to undertake this design. Utilizing precedent studies and site inventory and analysis techniques, the Design Team created a design for the FIC campus that minimizes maintenance practices that lead to greenhouse gas production, maximizes ecosystem services including habitat creation, pollinator support, and stormwater management, addresses existing environmental contamination, supports the FIC’s mission and educational programming plan, prioritizes stages of implementation in accordance with the FIC’s access to resources and capacity for expansion, and reflects the FIC’s vision for their campus.