Rocket Science – An edible rooftop garden in Portland

Photo by Kym Pokorny from her blog “Dig in with Kym”.

 

“If you look around and see all the flat roofs, you can start to imagine a food-sustainable city,” says Marc Boucher-Colbert, one of the partners who contracts with Rocket restaurant to design and maintain the garden. “We’ve taken away all this space, but we can reclaim it.”

 

Click here to read the article at City Farmer News

 

 

Urban agriculture meets the Jetsons: Some wacky and some plausible ideas for the future of feeding cities

Here are some designs for crazy urban agriculture from the past, present, and future

We always laugh at ideas from the past-

 

This page from the 1982 book, Our Future Needs (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley,  describes a world in which we eat factory waste that has been processed into food by genetically modified bacteria.  Click here to read the actual article. Taken from Paleo-future.

This image appears in the 1984 book The Future World of Agriculture and illustrates futuristic farming techniques near a sea city. (Taken from TreeHugger)

Robots tend crops that grow on floating platforms around a sea city of the future. Water from the ocean would evaporate, rise to the base of the platforms (leaving the salt behind), and feed the crops.

In the 1982 book Our Future Needs (World of Tomorrow), robots grow and harvest oranges in a desert.  No humans are needed!  Click here to read the article. (From Paleo-Future)

Today vertical farming seems like a possibility.

           Advantages of Vertical Farming

	Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)
	No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
	All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
	VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
	VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
	VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
	VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of evapotranspiration
	VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals
	VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
	VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
	VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
	VF creates new employment opportunities
	We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on earth
	VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
	VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.
	VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water and land for agriculture

A design from Work AC for a vacant lot on Canal Street in New York City

“We thought we’d bring the farm back to the city and stretch it vertically,” says Work AC co-principal Dan Wood. “We are interested in urban farming and the notion of trying to make our cities more sustainable by cutting the miles [food travels],” adds his co-principal (and wife) Amale Andraos. Underneath is what appears to be a farmers market, selling what grows above. Artists would be commissioned to design the columns that hold it up and define the space under: “We show a Brancusi, but it could be anyone,” says Wood. ::New York Magazine

A “Center for Urban Agriculture” in Seattle designed by Mithun Architects.

This masterpiece won the “Best in Show”  at the Cascadia Region Green Building Council‘s Living Building Challenge.  Designed for a .72-acre site, that includes fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm.” (Click here to read a great article about this farm idea at Jetson Green)

According to CEO Washington, The building also would run completely independent of city water, providing its own drinking water partly by collecting rain via the structure’s 31,000-square-foot rooftop rainwater collection area. The water would be treated and recycled on site. And photovoltaic cells would produce nearly 100 percent of the building’s electricity. (From TreeHugger)

 This is Gordon Graff’s Sky Farm proposed for downtown Toronto’s theatre district. It’s got 58 floors, 2.7 million square feet of floor area and 8 million square feet of growing area. It can produce as much as a thousand acre farm, feeding 35 thousand people per year and providing tomatoes to throw at the latest dud at the Princess of Wales Theatre to the east, and olives for the Club District to the north. Thankfully it overwhelms the horrid jello-mold Holiday Inn to the west. (From TreeHugger)

One of my personal favorites…

 

 

Daekwon Park, seen in the 2008 Evolo skyscraper competition, is a way to reunite the isolated city blocks and insert a multi-layer network of public space, green space and nodes for the city.

Daekwon Park clips on to the exterior of existing buildings a series of prefabricated modules serving different functions would be stacked on top of each other, adding a layer of green space for gardening, wind turbines or social uses to make new green façades and infrastructures.

 There are modules for vertical gardens and connections to other buildings through a network of skywalks;

Wind turbine units and program units that could serve many public functions.

The concept of adding a layer of complexity and usefulness to the under-insulated glass dinosaurs that are sprouting up everywhere may save them and their owners from the inevitable hike up 24 flights of stairs with their meagre rations. via ::Prunedand ::Archinect

There are lots of awsome skyscraper designs at Evolo

 

Last but certainly not least, is the Vertical Farm project

Several of the designs we have looked at  come from the Vertical Farm project, which promotes local fresh and healthy foods in gravity defiying ways.  This project was started by a professor at Columbia, Dr Dickson Despommier.  His theory, that ‘skyscraper farms’ could provide plentiful food organically, without herbicides, pesticides or fertilisers, has attracted venture capitalists and scientists from around the world, intent on making the theory into reality within 15 years.

Designed by Chris Jacobs for the Vertical Farm Project.  Check out this great article in the New York Magazine for lots of pictures, interviews, and breakdowns of the design.

Links to cool things on the Vertical Farm website

The Vertical Farm Essay by Dickson Despommier

Vertical Farm designs

Materializing the Idea: Innovative Solutions for the Vertical Farm A study conducted by: Leslie-Anne Fitzpatrick Rory Mauro Kathleen Roosevelt Athina Vassilakis

 

FoodShare: sweet urban agriculture in Toronto

“Carrots!” says this young intern from FoodShare, a Toronto non profit urban agriculture program

IDRC Photo by Laura Berman

FoodShare is an organization that take a broad look at the entire food system – how food is produced, distributed and consumed.

How people get their food is also important. Food distribution systems that involve communities and help to create neighborhood leaders have a great potential to enhance individual and community empowerment, by leading people to feel that they have some control over this very basic part of their lives. Again, because of its material, cultural and social importance, food is special in its power to mobilize people to action. All our programs are based on this community building principle.

FoodShare tries to take a multifaceted, innovative and long-term approach to hunger and food issues. This means that we’re involved in diverse actions: grassroots program delivery, advocacy for social assistance reform, job creation and training, nutrition education, farmland preservation and campaigns for comprehensive food labelling are just a few examples of the areas we work in.

FoodShare was started in 1985 by the Mayor of Toronto and many citizens concerned about the growing hunger issues of the city. Since then, they have been actively involved in tons of projects all over the city, it is part of the school system, the farmers markets, and food banks of the city as well as host a hunger hotline, cooking classes, gardens and garden education, and healthy food choices classes. 

The Field to Table Urban Agriculture Project, founded by Annex Organics, has been home to a sprouting business, a rooftop greenhouse and garden, living machines, and a composting system. It now also includes honey bee hives and, off site, the Sunshine Garden, a 6000 sq ft market garden. Click here for a flier about the Sunshine Garden.

They also have a program called Good Food Boxes started in 1994, which runs similarly to a large buying club. The project distributes boxes of fresh (and often local) food throughout the city for either $12 or $32 depending of the version they choose.

Professional evaluation of The Good Food Box shows that participating in the program helps people access a more nutritious diet. It is now thought that up to 70% of deaths result from diseases that have a diet-related dimension, and there is mounting evidence that eating enough fruit and vegetables is key to preventing disease. Not only is it a matter of justice that everyone should have access to the food they need to keep them healthy- it also makes sense because of the enormous costs to the health care system that result from treating these diseases.

The Good Food Box makes top-quality, fresh food available in a way that does not stigmatize people, fosters community development and promotes healthy eating.

 

The Salad Bar program is a Farm to School program aimed at getting fresh vegetables to school children in Toronto.  Modeled after salad bar programs from the US, this program aims to get kids excited about fresh, local food.  Click here to see what kids said about the Salad Bar at their school.