Urban Agriculture as Embedded in the Social and Solidarity Economy Basel: Developing Sustainable Communities.

Urban Agriculture Basel (UAB) is conceived as a democratic one person one vote non profit association that facilitates projects and networks them. Most projects are run by a small group of individuals sharing common interests around a particular project focus.

Several projets focus on distribution and consumption. They organize small markets to distribute urban agriculture produced food. Others organize group lunches or dinners around urban agriculture produced food. Another project organizes an explicit market space to purchase urban agricultue produced food with the BNB – the Social Economy Basel alternative currency.

The use of BNBs as an alternative currency also contributes to linking UAB up with other actors in the Social Economy Basel. The BNB, though, is not the only such link. Individual and collective actors from within the Social Economy’s branch concerned with long term unemployment and poverty also take part in UAB to provide for part of their summer and winter food supply, for spending leisure time, for social integration, and for learning more about health and nutrition. Additionally, some individual actors in the Social Economy find part time employment in UAB and inverse. Thus, integration of UAB into the larger Social Economy Basel occurs both via the use of alterative money, and the participation and cooperation across organizational boundaries on the part of organizational and individual actors.