not to be picky,... but you might try looking into what many are naming Landscape Urbanism


Check out,.
1. Dave Gissen's Subnatures
2. Design Ecologies
3. Lansdsape Urbaism Reader
4. The latest Harvard Design Magazine
5. Recent Stan Allen writing


I don't know if thre is a Landscape Urbanism thread started yet , but some certainly should.

vertical farming &
urban ag
are the terms to search for.

urban ecology by kyong park (or just urban ecology in general)

toast i actually just started reading that book in the last month or two. given layout etc it is hard to sit down and read a whole chapter or the whole book in one go.
However, it is a very interesting read, apparently some connection at least theoretically to all the Shrinking Cities work going on in 90s.

Although, it appears to this readers eyes that they perhaps use ecology(ies) in a broader sense a la political ecologies etc
than strictly farming, and other more literal greening methodologies.

would PF1 be a good example of current(or at least recent) agricultural urbanism?


http://www.moma.org/poprally/images/_26_pf1harvest.jpg


Do you think the new urbanists are trying to corner the market with it?

http://www.newurbannews.com/13.4/jun08newest.html

nam - yeah - I agree about the weird layout and the focus on "shrinking cities."

there are only a few projects in there that explicitly relate to "urban agriculture" but, IMO, understanding "urban farming" (and related tactics) in a broader political/social context can help one get beyond the typical amalgamation of idealized crops usually proposed in most vertical/urban farming projects (i.e. only focusing on the how and making space for it, not the why).

on the individual project side: in order for any urban farm to be viable what it produces needs to relate to its immediate context and community (advantages of putting it in a particular neighborhood/site, local problems it is solving) - otherwise there is really no advantage of simply putting a farm in the city because it's "green." (farms these days aren't exactly "green" either - you can have sustainable farming or environmentally detrimental farming- the vast majority of farming practices falls somewhere between these two - some worse than others - I'd pick up a book like "omnivore's dilemma" to get a better understanding).

if you're talking about altering existing food distribution systems (extensive urban agriculture related to regional systems), then it becomes an urban planning strategy along with a collection of architectural tactics. i.e. urban agriculture.

azcue - both of those seem to be about providing space for community gardening, not large-scale "agriculture." I'd look more at things like what is currently being proposed in Detroit by hantz farms.

and - if you are interested in food and the city:

http://www.foodprintproject.com/

http://www.ediblegeography.com/

Good links Toasterover.

on the vertical farming stuff, I like cool renderings as much as the next 3ds max junkie, but, seriously, is there really a place on earth where the cost and distance of availability land and cost and capacity of (horizontal) logistical systems are both simultaneously so extreme that there would really be a business case for a 30 story vertical farm?

Anyone know of any emerging programs / grad schools that are doing research on this subject as well?

I wonder if there is at least 1 school out there that has a concentration in agricultural urbanism even if it is through the dept. of agriculture. I'm assuming that if this program were to exist it would be under a Landscape dept.

Erik Ellingsen at IIT was working closely with Dickson Despommier (Columbia School of Public ealth) on vertical farms, but he's off working with Olafur Eliasson for a bit.

I'm sure somebody at the GSD can claim this topic too. There are a few folks there looking at shrinking cities (and the potential for ag)

I'd place some money on UC Davis and Penn State (both have exceptional horticulturally focused programs). Penn State is one of the leading green roof research sites.

Guelph is the place to be for green walls (and indoor plants)

I'm trying to get funding to model the energy/water benefits of trees/greenroofs for neighborhoods - not exactly urban ag, but studying the benefits of growing stuff.

With the big money pouring into detroit to turn it into a farm, I'm sure the schools in MI are getting excited about urban ag.

So lots of folks have an interest in urban ag, all you need to do is look at the faculty of schools that interests you and you'll find somebody.

azcue - it's not "agricultural urbanism" - it's "urban agriculture."

urbanist - biomedical research.

barry - there are a couple people in the landscape department at the GSD who are working on this - no one that I know of in the architecture department, though...

in case you missed this:

http://ecologicalurbanism.gsd.harvard.edu/

they have podcasts of the conference. check out "productive urban environments."

Anyone read "In Defense of Food"?

not yet - I've read the omnivore's dilemma...

check out the recent issue of harvard design mag:

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/current/index.html

there's a decent PDF article online about urban agriculture.

Ditto on the biomedical research. Some plants grown for medicine, perfumes and other specialty uses are often so expensive that verticle farming would be the lesser issue of cost. Some things require there to be absolutely no contimination.

There are a variety of other cases where plants maybe grown commercially and still be profitable in one of those schemes-- saffron, vanilla, macadamia and green cardamom.

Other issues are also that several kinds of plants are facing extinction or hybridization.

-- Macadamia trees are picking up genes through cross pollination that makes the nuts highly poisonous. They suspect that there will be no major sources of edible macadamia nuts within two or three decades outside of some islands.

-- Vanilla is plantations are extensive labor operations usually lead to devastating impacts on the environment around it. "Shade grown" or less invasive vanilla farming practices are expensive and dangerous since vanilla has to be checked frequently as the "product" last less than three days.

-- Bananas (specifically sweet yellow Cavendish variety) are facing extinction. Unless some bananas are isolated, there will be no sources of edible yellow bananas within the next ten years.

As of this moment (although not in a vertical farming scheme), they are growing strawberries, tomatoes, several kinds of other berries and a few spices profitably in the UK and in Scandinavia year round in greenhouses. Apparently the slightly higher costs of greenhouse tomatoes in February evens out when you look at the tricky storage and transportation costs of sourcing tomatoes from questionably safe food sources internationally.

That's another issue altogether that we should be addressing-- people in St. Petersberg, Russia should not be expecting to eat fresh mangoes in December.

Thanks Toast... too bad I have to order that damn magazines. Anything to help feed that Harvard GSD ego.