Tuesday, September 08. 2009
The European Environment Agency is considering Europe-wide building regulations that would encourage developers to include “vertical allotments” in their designs.
The agency, which advises the European Commission on measures to reduce climate change, is proposing that every city should have a showcase building with “living walls” of edible plants.
In an interview with The Times, Jacqueline McGlade, the agency’s director, said: “Managing our urban spaces as extensions of agriculture will reduce the demand to turn forests into farmland. Food crops must be brought closer to the table.
“The idea of living walls and vertical allotments is very old, going back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It’s amazing we haven’t done more of this before but now there is a new urgency to change our habits because of climate change.”
She added: “This will require the easing of planning restrictions. We need to have showcase buildings in every city to give a completely different vision of agriculture.”
She said that vertical allotments, which could also be created on balconies or walls of existing buildings, would draw on general enthusiasm for growing food at home.
About 100,000 people are on council waiting lists for allotments, which have been disappearing rapidly as land is reallocated for housing.
From: The Times. July 10, 2009
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Via Metabolicity
Personal comment:
And a bit further in Metabolicity, it looks like the idea is making it's way through European Union environment agencies.
Excerpts from the NY Times full article here:
"A vertical farm would behave like a functional ecosystem, in which waste was recycled and the water used in hydroponics and aeroponics was recaptured by dehumidification and used over and over again. The technologies needed to create a vertical farm are currently being used in controlled-environment agriculture facilities but have not been integrated into a seamless source of food production in urban high-rise buildings.
Irrigation now claims some 70 percent of the fresh water that we use. After applying this water to crops, the excess agricultural runoff, contaminated with silt, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, is unfit for reuse. The developed world must find new agricultural approaches before the world’s hungriest come knocking on its door for a glass of clean water and a plate of disease-free rice and beans.
Imagine a farm right in the middle of a major city. Food production would take advantage of hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. Both methods are soil-free. Hydroponics allows us to grow plants in a water-and-nutrient solution, while aeroponics grows them in a nutrient-laden mist. These methods use far less water than conventional cultivation techniques, in some cases as much as 90 percent less.
Such buildings, by the way, are not the only structures that could house vertical farms. Farms of various dimensions and crop yields could be built into a variety of urban settings — from schools, restaurants and hospitals to the upper floors of apartment complexes.
Vertical farming could finally put an end to agricultural runoff, a major source of water pollution. Crops would never again be destroyed by floods or droughts. New employment opportunities for vertical farm managers and workers would abound, and abandoned city properties would become productive once again.
Vertical farms would also make cities more pleasant places to live. The structures themselves would be things of beauty and grace. In order to allow plants to capture passive sunlight, walls and ceilings would be completely transparent. So from a distance, it would look as if there were gardens suspended in space."
A Farm on Every Floor
By DICKSON D. DESPOMMIER
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Via Metabolicity
Personal comment:
Urban and vertical farming again. But here I'm rather interested in the two words of hydroponics and aeroponics. Would like to use this concept for architectural and livable environments.
Wednesday, July 22. 2009
by Lisa Stiffler
Ripples, and sometimes waves, of the economic tsunami continue to roil through cities across the United States. One product of the downturn is stalled real estate projects. Many shelved projects have left vacant lots, derelict buildings, or parking lots where housing or office space was planned. The need to put these spaces back into use has motivated some great thinking about how to integrate open space and farming into the urban landscape. Interestingly, this is not a new problem. Philadelphia has been working on projects to convert “brown space” to “green space” for years. Philadelphia’s voids were created by migration from the cities to outlying urban areas, not a specific downturn. In 2005 they held an international design competition called Urban Voids. The point is, Philly has paved the way—er, broken new ground—for other cities to follow. And the best ideas about what to do with vacant property have to do with food.
You can review some of the design contest entries here. For the most part these ideas are at the edge of feasibility, but that’s the point of design competitions: to push the limits of what conventional wisdom says is possible.
One of the successful entries to the Urban Voids competition was Front Studio’s cleverly named Farmadelphia concept. Farmadelphia was another competition created to generate ideas for urban agriculture in empty urban spaces.
Here is an aerial view.
Some more detailed images. Here is a pasture for urban cows.
We wouldn’t want to leave out the chickens.
What is a farm with out some goats?
Farmadelphia knits together a couple of ideas we’ve discussed about urban farming and food insecurity. Specifically Farmadelphia challenges us to consider the end of the dichotomy between rural and urban. This idea of connecting farming with urban life is not new to the Northwest. And new doors are opening as urban properties remain undeveloped.
Seattle’s Greg Smith has allowed a great food truck to park right around the corner from the Sightline offices on property that is no longer going to be developed. Portland has been doing this for years. Seattle, Portland and Vancouver allow chickens and thanks to City Councilmember Richard Conlin Seattle allows goats.
Seattle has a municipal farm, the Marra Farm, that is not only in an urban area but in part of the city that’s downright industrial, South Park. The Marra Farm is a working farm that is right near the day-lighted Hamm Creek. The Marra Farm was one of the many farms operated by Italian immigrants in the Duwamish River Valley that supplied produce to the Pike Place Market in the early years of the last century. Today it provides for a city food security program called Solid Ground. Portland and Vancouver have similar programs. Vancouver has also entertained a skyscraper farm called Inhabitat.
Putting farms on more and more vacant lots makes sense on several levels: transportation costs would be cut for hauling produce, green spaces help reduce runoff into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans; healthy food would be more available in more neighborhoods. And just as important urban farming reminds us food doesn’t come from the grocery store but from the land, animals and water.
So perhaps, one day, our region might realize a version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, a city of tall buildings surrounded by open space and farms. Something about this concept is very appealing.
It’s the ultimate: density paired with open space and proximity to healthy food. But…maybe it’s the flying machines that would really seal the deal.
This article originally appeared on sightline.org
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Via WorldChanging
Personal comment:
Dans la continuité de la réflexion sur l'"urban farming", avec ici un lien historique intéressant vers Frank Lloyd Wright (Broadacre City).
Friday, June 12. 2009
Green project will harvest solar and wind energy along with providing food and shelter in a self sufficient building proposal for the “The 2030 Challenge”.
Harvest green project-02, designed by Romses Architects as an entry to Vancouver “The 2030 Challenge”, hopes to solve energy and food problem in future increased densification. The idea suggested here is to overlay a new green energy and food web across the numerous residential neighborhoods and laneways within the city. Every laneway will be converted into energy harvesting area through proposed energy micro laneway live-work homes.
Via Ecofriend:
Romses Architects
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Via Metabolicity
Personal comment:
Posté pour information, c'est une tendance qui est sur le point de se généraliser. Une idée, un meme (le développement durable) qui a mis du temps à faire son chemin et qui va dessiner en partie notre avenir.
Ceci dit, le projet présenté ici en donne une version assez prévisible, séduisante sous certains aspects (urban farming & gardening) mais qui ne questionne pas les fondamentaux: continuera-t-on à habiter de façon "industrielle" (organisation de l'espace, fonctions des pièces) dans une époque réellement "post-industrielle": globale, rhizomatique, hybridée (métissée de plein de façons), questionnée économiquement et énergétiquement.
Monday, May 04. 2009
Green Futures
May 1, 2009 1:56 PM
By Peter Madden
By 2020, two-thirds of the world will live in cities, often sprawling megalopolises. Growing populations will put further pressure on land already degraded by over-farming and desertification. If things take a turn for the worse, how will we feed these cities?
There is a strong possibility that – two and a half centuries after the start of the industrial revolution – we will all become farmers again.
Every one of us will own a ‘farm in a box’, which will sit on our balcony, roof or next to a window. Advances in aeroponics – growing in a mist of nutrients, rather like in a rainforest – will give us emissions-neutral food at the heart of our cities.
These boxes would be supplemented by neighborhood vertical farms housed in the redundant high-rise office blocks we no longer commute to, and the multi-story carparks we no longer need. They will employ closed-loop systems, generating their own energy and harvesting and recycling rainwater. Front gardens, flat roofs and patches of wasteland will also become mini-market gardens, helping to green, cool and feed the city.
The seeds of this are already being sown. Urbanites want to grow their own – some 100,000 people are now on waiting lists for allotments in the UK, while in France, urban vineyards are fast taking root. The technology is also developing apace. Here in the UK the police recently announced that they are raiding at least three indoor cannabis farms a day, while in the US, NASA is experimenting with aeroponics for space travel. Imagine a few food riots and rocketing food prices in the decade to come, and a new ‘dig for victory’ approach to feeding ourselves starts to seem very likely.
Will this urban farming be a positive trend for sustainability? Many will find the idea of a high-tech world of computer-controlled indoor mini-farms scary. Yet, such urban agriculture could bring climate benefits, put people back in touch with growing food, and provide part of the answer to feeding the world.
This piece originally appeared in Green Futures. Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future and is one of the leading magazines on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too.
Photo credit: nysunworks.org
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Via WorldChanging
Personal comment:
Dans la veine du nouveau "trend" de l'"urban farming"!
Thursday, April 09. 2009
The Greater London Authority has published a report on London’s food related greenhouse gas emissions. It finds that food consumption in the capital accounts for 19 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year - a very significant figure. 44% of these emissions are attributable to the agricultural stage.
Suggested ways to reduce this:
Less meat and dairy, and more food from plants. According to latest figures from the United Nations, animal farming globally causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the cars, lorries and planes in the world put together, and the impact is increasing.
More local, seasonal and field-grown fruit and vegetables.
Food, such as organic, grown without artificial chemicals - particularly artificial fertiliser, the main source of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.
Further Information:
The GLA report can be downloaded here
Information about the links between food and climate change can be found on the Sustain website here:
For background information and regular updates on food and climate change research and scientific findings, join the Food Climate Research Network mailing list via:
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Via MetaboliCity
Personal comment:
Rachel Wingfield's new project: MetaboliCity (probably a research project).about urban farming, etc.
Here some interesting facts regarding CO2 emissions related to London's food consumption (grey energy maybe missing here)
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