Vertical Agriculture (Modest Proposals)

While the flights of fancy that drive many of the concepts of vertical farming are quite breathtaking, there's a subset of these projects that, while not quite ready for the pages of design magazines, have much more applicability for building-integrated agriculture in new construction and retrofits. A simple and much discussed example that has been around for years is the rooftop greenhouses on Eli Zabar's Vinegar Factory in Manhattan (dare I say one place where vertical solutions may be appropriate due to density).




:: images via The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Picking up on this trend is are a range of greenhouses for growing veggies in soil as well as expanded concepts including hydroponics aquaculture. A post in City Farmer mentions the work of Cityscape Farms, which offers solutions for urban farming using integrated food as waste from these combined systems.


:: image via City Farmer

Another project that is tying the ground-based agriculture with rooftop solutions comes from the Badger School for Urban Agriculture and Community in Madison, Wisconsin, with the Center for Resilient Cities and Milwaukee-based Will Allen's Growing Power as leaders of the effort.


:: image via City Farmer

While I'm always a bit dubious of 'first of' claims - this South Bronx affordable housing complex aimed a combating food insecurity with rooftop farms and greenhouses (from Brightfarm Systems): "...will be able to supply enough produce to meet the annual fresh vegetable needs of up to 450 people. Like many inner city, low income communities, the South Bronx suffers from food deserts, where residents lack access to fresh vegetables at affordable prices."




:: images via City Farmer

Still more modest interventions include creating space atop - which tend towards the augmentation of rooftop gardens by implementation of cold-frames or vertical elements. These range from the modest fire-escape planters and balcony growing to rooftop structures to provide additional growing season (at a much smaller cost than greenhouses). An example from the Bastille Restaurant in shows this hybrid.


:: image via City Farmer

The concept of mobility is always an issue - so another small-scale garden greenhouse starts to attach to vehicles - such as this mobile greenhouse spotted in Brooklyn. A bit silly and obviously not a solution, but a visible example to create awareness of food production in urban areas - and more accessible than rooftops and distant farms.


:: image via Urban Greenery

One of the most enlightened proposals I've seen is the modular system from Casa HuertaTreehugger: featuring a series of vertical greening components for maximizing food production in high density slums. Via "A group of architects from Argentina have come up with a project called Orchard House, which proposes the implementation of vertical gardens in shanty towns to provide local people with food and improve the visuals of these villages."




:: images via Treehugger

The social component of this is just as important as the scale. As Despommier mentions in this Discovery News video - the optimum size to feed 50,000 people with a vertical farm is 30 stories of a 5 acre lot. While potentially viable, how transferrable is this to common use and how many people will be employed in these endeavors? Also, will this be another elitist addition to cities for the haves - while paying lip service to less fortunate people and areas much more significant food insecurity. Would we be better served with a more decentralized and multi-pronged (even if still vertical) approach using walls and other elements woven within the fabric of our urban areas.

The scale is a big issue - and is at the heart of any agricultural endeavor. Our evolution from home gardens and shared community gardens to feed ourselves to more large-scale methods of agribusiness increased our ability to produce food manifold. It also made our agriculture more polluting, significantly increased transportation costs, and depleted the workforce for farm-based areas through the use of mechanization. This is what we subsidize on an annual basis - not the most productive form of food production.

This begs the question - are we interested in feeding ourselves (or the world) or are we also creating jobs and skills for folks to feed themselves and doing so in a way that is equitable and socially responsible? While nay-sayers may disregard the role of urban farming as impractical to feed urban areas, I say the role is of vital importance. As more people move to cities it will become more and more important to offer productive green jobs to city-dwellers. Agriculture used to be a major employment driver that slowly gave way to industry, manufacturing, commercial, service and white-collar economies - an economic heritage in which we are all suffering and 'waiting' for things to get better. If we could find ways to increase the skills and direct the energy of 10% plus unemployment on feeding ourselves - we would have better food and a more robust and healthy economy and workforce.


:: image via Treehugger

This is why I like the proposal from Argentina so much - as it's simple, modest, and imminently scalable (but also innovative) to any area of any size. More from Treehugger: "The idea is to build some of these houses inside shanty towns in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the help of organizations and private companies, and then teach the system to local people for them to be able to put together structures on their own. By doing that, the project seeks to generate cooperative work that creates jobs and production in shanty towns."

Vertical Agriculture + Solar Access

It's been a bit since I've posted on Vertical Agriculture - but an architecture studio I'm helping with at Portland State has a number of students pursuing food production as part of their buildings relating to urban ecology - and has me again thinking of the practicality of these building-based growth modules. While intrigued by the concept, I want to see a more holistic concept of food production through cities - and also better information on these concepts and how they work.


:: Design by Greg Chung Whan Park - image via Yanko Design

It is no surprise have been somewhat critical of the implementation of these solutions - as they tend to be more style over substance - and many are not thinking about the practicalities of growing food in buildings. Mostly, they are impractical because we still have a lot of vacant and underused land, rooftops, and walls that make more sense to grow food before investing in these expensive installations. Case in point is this Fortune rendering from Detroit of a virtual amusement park of agriculture... in a city that has literally square miles of contiguous terrestrial land ready for cultivation.


:: Detroit Visions - image via Treehugger

All the practicality aside - as a thought exercise the implementation of vertical farming is a fascinating architectural problem - as just the ability to maximize solar access is key to providing the most growing surface area with access to quality light. This is typically accomplished with a series of terraced landings stepped back as the height grows, often augmented by glass enclosure to create a greenhouse like interior rooms on multiple levels.


:: Growing Power, Milwaukee - image via City Farmer

A lot of the solutions lack a simple understanding of solar access - something that at least should have been drummed into architects related to daylighting practices for passive solar design. While allowing access and bouncing diffuse light within building for people is one thing - the integration of quality solar access. How does the following building work in terms of maximizing productivity? As mentioned about 30% of the building space is taken with productivity through a combination of thin terraces and living walls - enough to feed 200 people for a year. Is it worth the investment?


:: Urban Farmway - image via City Farmer

Again back to solar access - it is a fundamental tenet of vertical farming to do extensive solar access studies - starting with the. Back to the proposal by Greg Chung Whan Park , a couple of simple diagrams show seasonal and daily movement of sun.



:: images via Yanko Design

One idea is the spiral, which takes advantage of the circular nature of solar access through a spherical form with spiraling layers of greenery. Overall An image here of the installation, along with a video showing off some of the key elements inside - which gives it a feeling of more machine than garden.



:: Plantagon Greenhouse - image via City Farmer



A more sectional view gives an indication of the amount of solar gain. Again, I think weighted towards the visual and less about the overall efficiency - as the single-purpose building is a lot of expense for what amounts to very little productive space.


:: image via Plantagon Blog

The machinic aspect of many of these proposals is evident in the design - sort of a form follows form approach that makes for striking (if somewhat ridiculous) architectural solutions, and names to boot. For a full survey of many of these check out the Vertical Farm Project website. Most notable in the wild solutions is Dragonfly by Vincent Callebaut is one of those examples, for instance derived from a thin form to maximize surface area - but somewhat dubious thinking as to the viability of the project. In this case, I'd say that the fact that the land area is spread thinly over a surface would mean that it would be difficult from a 'farming' standpoint to maintain this on a daily basis. Is it done by robots, as some concepts look at? Does it work? Can you build it? More important, what's the cost of produce grown in these, and does the energy required to build and maintain these structures outweigh the cost of more traditional agriculture?


:: image via Spiegel Online

All of these questions permeate my thinking as I see proposal after proposal. Even some of the proposals with diagrammatic study leave questions, like the Eco-Laboratory sections by Weber Thompson. The ability of orientation - in this case the entire facade for production, gives maximum potential solar gain. The shading mechanism seem to reduce the effectiveness, by limiting solar access at steep sun angles during summer, when the production potential is greatest. Perhaps a way to limit the amount of solar gain, it seems as if this would reduce overall productivity - or at least shift the building to more winter based, season extending work. While laudable to extend the season, shouldn't the configuration work on a 365 day basis?


:: image via Vertical Farm Project

The other variety is those cylindrical towers that give the idea of maximum access. In the case of the Living Skycraper by Blake Kuresek - the tower is wrapped in spiraling layers (similar to the Plantagon greenhouse). On one facade - let's say 1/2 of the cylinder, the solar gain will be great - it's unclear what's happening on the sides and back that is getting north light and less intense east and west light (I'm assuming Northern Hemisphere). The other aspect not mentioned specifically is what is grown in these various spaces - as the levels of light and amount of exposure - along with intensity and heat - will determine a continuum of what is more appropriate in different parts of the building.


:: image via Vertical Farm Project

This is but a cursory view of some ideas, but a good chance to take stock of the myriad solutions and evaluate them on their building-specific merits. Often information isn't available to have a true discussion, but when looking at these ideas (or designing them) a few trends emerge:

1. How does the building configuration work with maximizing solar access, and how is this explained?
2. Are there beneficial synergies utilized with growing food in building such as capture of waste heat, rainwater collection and storage, or tapping into waste water sources for irrigation?
3. Is there specificity in form tied to the types of vegetables grown, and how does this fit the overall food needs of the location the project is planned? Is it generic or specific based on high-value foods or ones that benefit from the added cost of production?
4. Is the building agricultural only or woven into another use?
5. What is percentage of renderings to diagrams in the solution? (An informal indication of rigor)
6. How is maintenance addressed in location, access, and size of growing plots?
   

Look forward to some additional posts on this, as I've got a lot of source material I'm sifting through, and will be able to tease out many more ideas based on the explosion of solutions in the past couple of years.

The Park: Dallas

Following up on the post about freeway capping, a reader alerted me to The Park, a Dallas, Texas based project aimed at reclaiming spaces atop the existing freeway corridor: "Five acres of shared, public green space will deck over the existing Woodall Rodgers Freeway, bringing new traditions, shared experiences and FUN to the center of Dallas."

:: image via The Park

The project was designed by the Office of James Burnett, and a number of pastoral images reinforce the idea of a central gathering space for the City of Dallas: "The Park will serve as a central gathering space for Dallas and its visitors to enjoy in the heart of the city. The 5.2-acre deck park will create an urban green space over the existing Woodall Rodgers Freeway between Pearl and St. Paul streets in downtown Dallas. Plans include a performance pavilion, restaurant, walking trails, a dog park, a children’s discovery garden and playground, water features, an area for games and much more."




:: image via The Park

The sketch imagery is somewhat abstract, not necessarily giving specifics of the design but a more generic version of active spaces (see kites!)


:: image via The Park

While the plans show off some of the descriptive plans and contexts, one of the most odd images, which to me seems straight out of a scene from 1986 version of of Burden's 'Entourage' series is the cafe seating, which is just kind of strange. One wonders what story this is telling?


:: image via The Park

There's also a virtual fly-through of the space, which shows a bit more the experience of the place... while more graphically more sterile, are actually a much better description of the spatial design qualities of the space. Either way you parse the graphics, another viable example of freeway capping to discuss. Check it out.

Rooftop Habitats - Dusty Gedge

Urban ecologist Dusty Gedge came to Portland recently for a series of lectures discussing biodiversity for ecoroofs - a topic in need of exploration in our region. His inspiring work in London is an example of the impact that policy and design changes on habitat in urban areas.


:: image via Dusty Gedge

Via KGW: "Wednesday, Dusty Gedge, president of the European Federation of Green-roof Associations, took a tour of some of Portland’s green roof-tops. Gedge says Portland is internationally known for its traditional eco-roofs which help reduce annual storm runoff by about 70 percent. But he says, with a few modifications, the green roofs also provide a home to wildlife like insects and birds."


:: image via Green Roof Consultancy

The modifications he mentioned include developing from a flat monoculture of succulants to increase diversity of substrate, integrate topography, and provide more species diversity. I'd posit that many area rooftops already offer great habitat for insects and birds, and also improve the overall habitat for fish species by providing better water quality. That isn't to say that we shouldn't continue to expand the role of ecoroofs in habitat, as it is vital to moving forward with our knowledge of the potential for these installations in urban areas.


:: image via Green Roof Consultancy

This will require research on how to adapt these for a range of local species of concern, and how to maintain the level of performance with stormwater management and other benefits simultaneously. The other big issue will be education on the benefits balanced with the aesthetic implications of these roofs - as many factors are intertwined in the drivers for implementation of ecoroofs.

Check out some of the coverage from KGW for a tour of area rooftop projects.

Urban Crossings - Los Angeles

Picking up on the threads of the Vegitecture post on 'Crossings', a post on The Dirt made mention of the plans to cap a number of freeways throughout Southern California. "According to The Architect’s Newspaper, there are four separate projects being considered across L.A.: one in Hollywood, one in downtown LA, and two in Santa Monica. “Hollywood Central Park would be built atop the 101 Freeway on a proposed 44-acre site between Santa Monica Boulevard and Bronson Avenue. Park 101 would be built atop the ‘Big Trench’ over the 101 Freeway downtown. Santa Monica is hoping to cap portions of the 10 Freeway between Ocean Avenue and 4th Street, and between 14th and 17th streets, creating five- and seven-acre parks.”


:: image via Architect's Newspaper

One project in this mix with some real traction is the Hollywood Freeway Central Park - which in 2008 developed a initial feasibility study with AECOM as the consultant. The report goes through a mix of analysis and exploration, along with a public involvement process. The idea of knitting the fabric of two severed neighborhoods with elevated park space drives the significant cost for capping projects - aiming to fix some of the damage done in the initial freeway routing.


:: image via AECOM

A range of graphics include some typical analysis - as I'm always interested in seeing the old chestnuts like figure-ground analysis in urban design studies. I'm a fan of the figure ground as a tool, and this case in point reinforces the power of this tool to 'detach' from a system and make key connections.

:: image via AECOM

In this case, most of these retain some of the key crossings... but take advantage of the ability to reorient circulation to create interesting spaces and maximize connectivity.


:: image via AECOM

A range of precedent studies included notable capping projects like Millennium Park (Chicago), Big Dig Park (Boston), Olympic Sculpture Park (Seattle), and others showing examples of spanning roadways to connect disparate portions of the urban fabric.


:: image via AECOM

Another graphic that seems to be in vogue (drawing from some of the scalar diagrams of the book Large Parks) - giving a sense of size and proportion to other established large urban park spaces.


:: image via AECOM

The final concept creates somewhat of a linear park corridor, which is really a series of medium sized park periodically bisected with crossroads. The programs run the gamut from passive spaces to sports fields, sculpture gardens to plazas offering a range of uses - connected by pathways and crossings. There seems to be a range of possible options to use this new space that have been explored in many project proposals - from agriculture to mixed use infill - meaning a park is merely one option.

:: image via AECOM

The simple photo-montage graphics show some dramatic before and after shots of the reclaimed space atop what was essentially a dead zone below.



:: images via AECOM

Obviously time and economics will tell if this is a viable strategy to implement in our cities. The experience with the costly and issue-prone Big Dig has soured some on the idea, although the spaces that are emerging atop the depressed roadway is starting to pay dividends for a new public realm. Burying is one thing - spanning and capping is another, taking advantage of the existing configuration of roadway 'canyons' to reconnect spaces. My thought is that it is not the silver bullet, (more like a really expensive band-aid) but necessary (in lieu of freeway removal altogether) to strategically reconnect areas of the urban fabric that have been severed to a degree where health and livability are forever degraded. The expense means a surgical analysis is necessary to determine where to locate these for maximum impact, as well as how to program the spaces appropriately to make use of the space. There has been much renewed talk about this, so I imagine we will see more of these in the not-so-distant-future. And I think that's a good sign.

Download the entire report here for the full story.

Reforesting Cities

A great post on Urban Omnibus investigates the potential of implementation of urban reforestation blended into existing buildings in our urban areas. From author Vanessa Keith, author of the article: "Retrofitting our urban building stock to address climate change need not be limited exclusively to increasing their energy efficiency. If “one of the primary causes of global environmental change is tropical deforestation” (Geist & Lambin, 143), then we should approach the adaptation of our buildings as an exercise in reforestation."


:: image via Urban Omnibus

While the ideas of terrestrial re-forestation have been discussed often in urban areas, the proposals attempt to incorporated this into existing building stock is a unique way of augmenting this. The post goes through a range of typologies of interventions including white roofs, greenscreens, green roofs, windbelts, and a range of blue-roof strategies (see Veg.itecture for more exploration of this).


:: image via Urban Omnibus

So, pulling it all together, starts to looks like a eco-district scale project typology, with a range of building and terrestrial opportunities exploited: "Large scale urban farming which takes place indoors and on large expanses of roof, greenscreens to let plants to climb the vertical surfaces of the city, trees which are now able to grow on the city roofscape. Roof ponds and artificial waterfalls for cooling and electrical generation. Solar and wind devices which form sculptural elements in the city, performing a function as well as having an aesthetic. Ports for plug-in electric vehicles which gather energy from photovoltaics. Solar panels incorporated into street poles, and vertical wind turbines which form a rhythm in the streetscape. Bicycle lanes, room for walking and the incorporation of still more trees."


:: image via Urban Omnibus

The concept of building retrofit has gained much attention, both as a economic necessity as building slows down, but also as shown in the article, the usable surface area of the city isn't just composed of the left-over terrestrial parcels, but a network of building faces, as cited in: " A recent New York Times article quantifies the amount of available roofspace in the city alone as 944 million square feet, 11.5% of the total building area the city holds."

Ignoring this resource will miss a significant opportunity to incorporate more area in our attempts to reforest cities, and also expand our toolkit beyond street tree canopy and dense planting in open spaces.

Elements of Urban Agriculture

I had the opportunity today to see a presentation by local urban agriculture guru Marc Boucher-Colbert (the man behind the Rocket Restaurant rooftop garden here in Portland). Instead of focusing directly on rooftops, he outlined a broad version of urban agriculture through an investigation of a range of possible strategies for our cities. This is all information investigated at length at times here on L+U and Veg.itecture, but I thought it apt to summarize the ideas from the lecture, as they provide a great overview and were a really inspiring collection of ideas woven together into a strategy.

1. Guerilla Gardening
The starting point of the discussion took a look at the thriving guerrilla gardening movement worldwide as a quick response to the bland and life-less environment we exist within in our urban areas. Both safe anarchy and also, via Wikipedia... "political gardening, a form of direct action, primarily practiced by environmentalists. It is related to land rights, land reform, and permaculture. Activists take over ("squat") an abandoned piece of land which they do not own to grow crops or plants. Guerrilla gardeners believe in re-considering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it."


:: image via Wikipedia


:: seed bombs - image via itwasme

A side-note of the discussion dealt with the production of seed bombs (or the less provocative 'seed balls') as a way of simply and efficiently distributing plant life to our streets, vacant lots, and other left-over spaces. Again via Wikipedia: "A seed bomb is a compressed clod of soil containing live vegetation that may be thrown or dropped onto a terrain to be modified. The term "seed grenade" was first used by Liz Christy in 1973 when she started the "Green Guerillas". The first seed grenades were made from condoms filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer." As a fledgling guerrilla gardener myself, it's pretty damn cool and quite liberating. Give it a try.

2. Front & Backyard Gardening
The idea of front and backyard gardens isn't a new idea (don't tell Fritz Haeg) but have become a cause celebre for re-occupation of our urban and suburban spaces. Call them Victory Gardens, or Edible Estates, or hell, call them 'this is the only place I can find good sun in my yard' - this isn't a new idea come back, but rather something that has always existed and has now re-emerged as a vibrant movement. Growing vegetables at your home is the ultimate in local food, and also engages people in exercise, meditation, and a range of other benefits - making it both a productive activity and a hobby worthy of your time.


:: image via The Blue Marble

Marc explained that while the idea of taking back the lawn is laudable, there is a grim reality to the concept of agri-buisiness, summed up in the following fact: of 'food' grown in the US, 1.5% is fruits and vegetables, while the other 98.5% consists of grain and oilseed, which any reader of Michael Pollan will know goes to meat production, biofuels, various corn products and other detached food we consume in many ways. This led to another new figure in the story - of Stan Cox, who works with one of my heroes, Wes Jackson at The Land Institute, reinventing corporate agriculture through a new model of perennial production based on the tallgrass prairie ecosystems.


:: Perennial Agriculture - image via The Land Institute

The other models beyond reoccupying the land you have is the sub-economy that include yard sharing or other means that leverage open land with the energy and desire of those to garden. By taking the land of folks that have surplus, or don't have the time to garden places like Your Backyard Farmer or Hyperlocavore offer a range of options to use land in cities for productive uses. Again this trend can also go beyond just gardening to include other trends such as backyard chickens, pygmy goats (great for blackberries) or other trends suitable for urban locales.


:: Backyard Chickens - image via Flicker (zbar)

3. Community Gardens
Another vital aspect of both food production and urban life is the community garden, where the interactions between people are just as important as the growing of vegetables. The idea of a range of programs, including those run by the city (such as in Portland), cooperatives, and other models. While a large part of the eventual urban agriculture puzzle, many communities are currently dealing with huge demand and a lack of funding to provide more supply. While the need to fund these programs will continue, there is also a need to look beyond the plots to a larger picture of gardening in cities.


:: image via The Daily Green

The overall conceptual framework of community gardening can be found at the resource-rich site for the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) which provides information on starting and maintaining community gardens throughout the country. As Marc pointed out, much of the training and education for the ACGA is focuses on engaging community resources and partnerships - taking the tack that is you build community, this is lead to a thriving garden - and you can figure out the training of food production and other added services later.


:: food preservation - image via Eat. Drink. Better

Finally, the idea of subsistence and market farms, or a combination of the two, offers a range of opportunities to offer gardening, community, and the ability to make money through the use of these sites in cities - offering for green job creation. Also, included in the idea of community gardening and education is the value-added ideas of food preservation, chickens raising, small animals, beekeeping, and other more agriculturally related ideas to round out the potential for urban ag.

4. School Gardens
While encompassing a range of institutional gardens such as hospitals, prisons, and other urban uses, school gardens provide a unique opportunity to provide food and education, as well as utilizing large amounts of available land. Modeled after the ground-breaking Edible Schoolyards" program in Berkeley started by chef Alice Waters "...to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape that is wholly integrated into the school’s curriculum, culture, and food program." which has been copied around the country in many locations.


:: image via Edible Schoolyard

A local project that provides a bridge for schools and food in Portland has been taken on by the fantastic local non-profit Ecotrust called the Farm to School program, which: "...enable schools to feature healthy, locally sourced products in their cafeterias, incorporate nutrition-based curriculum in all academic disciplines, and provide students with experiential agriculture and food-based learning opportunities, from farm visits to gardening, cooking, composting, and recycling." These connections between food and school continue to offer many possibilities in cities throughout the world.

5. Rooftop Gardens
Covered in detail on the web, the idea of rooftop gardens is definitely a love of Boucher-Colbert, who installed the project on the Rocket (now the Noble Rot) which has become a model project that gets a lot of comments for the kiddie-pool planters, (an inspiration from Joe Ebenezer from Chicago - read about him here) as a low-cost planter alternative and using it as a test for production techniques which are used in the restaurant one floor below.


:: Boucher-Colbert atop the Noble Rot - image via City Farmer

Obviously there are some limitations to rooftops, and difficulties with gardening due to wind, temperatures and other issues. As we provide incentives for more eco- and green roofs atop buildings, growing vegetables will become a continually growing trend as urban land costs make terrestrial farming a less financially viable proposition.

6. Vacant Lands
The use of vacant lands for farming is definitely a hot topic in areas like Detroit, but even in a number of locations like Oakland, which recently identified 1200 sites available for farming - or Montreal, which has implemented permanent agricultural zones that are protected from development - consisting of almost 4% of the Cities total land.

The focus in Portland is on the much discussed and somewhat disappointing implementation of the Diggable City project in 2004-05 which looked at city-owned lands as possible opportunities for establishing: "... an inventory of vacant, publicly-owned land in the Portland area, and to start a conversation about how that land might be used to support urban agricultural activities." The large number of sites have over time been whittled down to a few - and little has been done on any of this pilot projects - even though hundreds of brownfields, vacant lands, and other opportunities still exist.


:: Portland Vacant Land - image via Diggable City

7. Green Building
The integration of agriculture in green building is definitely making strides, as certain points for LEED ND, and potentially other systems can be achieved through the addition of garden plots of agricultural land. This allows for more multi-functional landscaping that includes productivity and use, which was difficult at times to reconcile with green buildings due to added water use and lack of totally native and adapted plantings. Our next task is to develop more year-round, lower maintenance permaculture-based planting that meet aesthetic and functional goals long-term.

Another aspect which spans this category and the next is the concept of Building Integrated Sustainable Agriculture (BISA), which begins to work with walls, rooftops, and other spaces to integrate food production in buildings. This also begins to expand beyond this to using waste heat and water from buildings to heat greenhouses and extend growing seasons to increase productivity. Examples abound, including Mithun's concept urban agriculture project (using the Living Building principles) as well as older examples like Eli Zabar's rooftop garden in Manhattan, to name a few.


:: Mithun's Vertical Farm - image via Treehugger


:: Zabars Vinegar Factory - image via Vison for our Cities

The concept also begins to looks at other agriculture products like chickens, bees, aqua- and hydroponics to maximize space and maintenance as well as blend systems together into closed-loop systems that treat waste as food for other phases of the system.

8. Vertical Farming
Picking up on the threads popularized by Dickson Despommier et.al, the idea of the BISA mentioned in green building is now blown up into the full-fledged phenomenon of vertical farming, which is exciting but needs some serious thought as to the viability of how this actually works and what the economic and social implications are. Boucher-Colbert was interested but skeptical, as there seem much more obvious low-hanging fruit (pardon the pun) to look at first - but as density and food security become more important, all the options must be on the table.


:: Vertical Farming - image via Vertical Farm

In closing, the eight concepts here span a wide range of possible agricultural interventions in our urban environment for getting to the root of food in our cities. It goes beyond production to include community, interaction, and a range of benefits such as habitat, beauty, and cooling - making the mix as important as the individual ideas. Peak Oil will warrant a close look at cities and a re-thinking of what we eat, where it comes from, and how much transportation is used to get it from farm to fork. So, as we transform from city-dwellers that keep nature and farming outside of the city to those that integrating food production into our spaces and daily lives - these tools provide a valuable arsenal for making the 21st century city a vibrant, healthy, and productive environment for all.