Vision

I'm Rick Williams, the developer of Lick Run Farm and Community Market. I've been involved with
city planning efforts since 2000. First, I worked on the city's comprehensive plan as the chair of the
Transportation and Infrastructure team and the Streetscapes roundtable. From 2002 to the end of 2012, I
served on the city Planning Commission. In this role I worked hard to see that elements of the
comprehensive plan that have few champions in official circles were put into practice.
Two of these elements are streets fit for people and village centers as organizing features for all of
Roanoke's neighborhoods. The idea that cities should be collections of functional villages enjoyed
broad support on the steering committee that oversaw the development of the comprehensive plan. But
mostly I believe this idea was understood in the context of dressing up existing centers in relatively
stable and affluent neighborhoods and enhancing venues that would support boutique retail, coffee
shops, upscale restaurants, and the like. Roanoke's efforts in this vein have been very successful, as the
Grandin Village and South Roanoke projects show. And those efforts have been all to the good.
But Roanoke has had little success creating centers in the struggling neighborhoods that most need them.
Part of the reason is that such neighborhoods do not have the capacity to respond to the kind of top down
efforts that have worked well in existing centers in prosperous neighborhoods. One of my primary goals
in this project is to use urban agriculture as a means of building this capacity and changing the way that
we organize and inhabit neighborhoods in order to make them vital places that will meet the needs of the
people who live there.
I see natural or biological farming as an indispensable economic base activity. The natural inputs are
mostly free and the addition of labor produces salable products that nourish us as individuals and as
members of the community. Natural farming is also empowering on an individual and small collective
scale. It creates real economic value in places that have limited access to financial capital. And it is
environmentally beneficial in urban neighborhoods that have often been subject to ecological abuse in
the form of polluting industries and inhumane suburban-focused road projects.
Natural systems of urban farming coupled with community markets create natural gathering places. And
that can invite and encourage the development of other economically beneficial activities as well as
contribute to strengthening the social and civic relationships that are important in socializing children
and supporting families.
As I work on the property that will one day be an urban farm and community market many people have
stopped to ask what I'm doing. They are always enthusiastic about a neighborhood market for
vegetables and often ask about job opportunities. The economic model of a neighborhood business
circulating money within the community is very different from the model of corporate driven economic
extraction that is often identified with economic growth. Circulation of money within a community and
the multiplier effect of such circulation is a critical element in building a local economy.
As a framework for nurturing this kind of local economic activity, I intend to establish a non-profit
community development corporation to shelter the community development activities from taxes. This
will allow me to seek grants to underwrite development and operating costs of both the market and other
village center initiatives.
Permaculture is the glue that holds these elements together. Permaculture is a kind of systems design
philosophy that seeks to make as many useful connections as possible among elements of a system. The

goal is to create healthy, dynamic systems that maximize system outputs while minimizing external
inputs. Permacultural principals are often applied in an agricultural setting, seeking to design farms and
gardens so as to create beneficial connections among people, plants, animals, insects and soil organisms.
And that is certainly my initial intention. But these principles can also be applied on a broader scale,
where the urban farm itself becomes one element in a larger system of families, individuals, businesses,
and civic, cultural, and social institutions (schools, parks, libraries, for instance). In this context
permaculture is a tool for designing vital, adaptable, sustainable communities.
Permaculture is neither utopian nor anti-technology. It allows us to live in ways that are grounded and
progressive, attentive to the wisdom and ways of the past while being open to the sensible and prudent
application of more recent technologies in ways that enhance the quality of life for everyone.
For all of these reasons and more, I believe biological urban farming practiced within the framework of
permacultural design principles can be a powerful catalyst for neighborhood revitalization. And that is
why I am embarking on this project.