In partnership with Channel 4, Landshare is a service that allows people who are either a landowner, grower or helper to post a listing on the website, offering their services or needs. The concept of land sharing and making use of unused spaces, especially in built up cities such as London really brings back the ‘blitz spirit’ that started to emerge during the war. Self sufficiency and food production is a sensitive issue these days due to the problems with landfills, supermarkets, food prices and even nutrition values. There’s great demand for allotments and garden spaces in London (10 years in some cases), so there is obviously huge demand and tiny supply. Landshare and other websites such as yours2share are trying to solve this problem.

The idea seems so fundamental, land, food and cooperation, and yet maybe the English attitude to gardens and land ownership is very different in other cultures? Portland, Oregon in America for example, is a place where land use is currently a big issue, with 20,000+ acres of land currently vacant and farmland is restricted due to controversial regulations. Land sharing could make use of unusual spaces more effectively in cities like Portland, especially when regulations are currently in place, everything from back gardens to local parks.

http://landshare.channel4.com/