Rooftop and vertical gardening

There is quite of bit of ingenious and creative thinking around how to increase food production in urban areas. These efforts include modest rooftop gardens and ambitious proposals to build vertical farms in cities. An example of a modest but practical effort is the Philadelphia Rooftop Farm (PRooF), an initiative to turn Philadelphia’s hundreds of thousands of flat roofs — residential and commercial — into viable organic farmland:

http://philadelphiarooftopfarm.wordpress.com/

One of more visible proponents of vertical farms set in urban centres is Dickson Despommier. His interesting site is located at:

http://www.verticalfarm.com/

As always, it is useful to consider both the positive and negative consequences of actions. An example of the criticisms of the vertical farm concept is by George Monbiot in his article “Greens living in ivory towers now want to farm them too” as published in the Guardian of the U.K. on August 17th 2010.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/16/green-ivory-towers-farm-skyscrapers

As with all breakthrough thinking, it is often hard to know a priori what aspects of new thinking and concepts are sound or will find an audience and application, but it is important as performance improvement professionals that we constantly keep our eyes, ears, and minds open to new thinking and to, as best as we can, consider such thinking objectively.