How can EcoCity get its food?

Designing an ecologically responsible EcoCity of 550,000 people begins by confining it to 8500 ha, which spares surrounding land for farming and for Nature. Because an American diet requires 126,000 ha and even a survival diet needs more cropland than can be found inside its boundaries, EcoCity will cast shadows of farming outside its limits. EcoCitizens will cast wider shadows if farmers grow food with the less intensive methods of simpler times, and they will cast narrower shadows if farmers use the more intensive methods of today. Cheap transportation scatters the shadows that, in the days of oxcarts, Von Thunen imagined would fall in concentric zones of farming and forestry. Industrial ecology, pleasing landscapes, coworkers along its sidewalks, and finally warm fellowships at its tables justify the bother of planning EcoCity.