The Impact of Urban Farming in New York City This post is also available in: Chinese (Traditional) Imagine a rooftop garden lush with salad greens and fresh vegetables. Picture a quaint patio garden growing bay-leaf, lemon-verbena and lime-basil herbs. Urban farming is a sustainability movement that is giving new purpose to rooftops, patios and unused space. Urban farming has the potential to become a global green evolution, improving the economy, sustainability and health of our urban communities. It doesn’t matter how large or small your rooftop farm or patio garden is, urbanized agriculture positively affects metropolitan areas with stimulated economic growth and better food quality. In New York City, urban farming is changing the way communities approach food production, sustainability and socialization: The Brooklyn Grange Apiary With urban farming comes urban honey, and that’s exactly what the Brooklyn Grange Apiary Project specializes in. Riverpark Farm in Manhattan
Computing for Sustainability | Saving the earth one byte at a time | Page 2 Hopeful tourism computing? A couple of weeks a ago I interviewed Tess Brosnan, a film maker who wanted to talk about links between citizen science and hopeful tourism. This led me to read Annette Pritchard, Nigel Morgan and Irena Ateljevic’s “Hopeful tourism: A new transformative perspective” (pdf). Apple growers, Academics, Activists and an Animator of Lunatics Sustainable Lens: Resilience on Radio, condensed down to one image. There’s a word for that: Anupholesteraphobia I found myself reading a book on music performance (long story). Audaciously sustainable The Audacious Student Business Challenge has expanded this year to encourage business for good with a social enterprise category. Sustainable action points I’m working with a final year Career Practice student – Lily Parker. Celebrating Excellence in Communication within IT in NZ What’s your favourite quote? There’s lots for computing folks to take on board in this round up of recent guests on SustainableLens.org.
National Garden Bureau|Gardening Information Data Farming: Demonstrating the Benefits of Urban Agriculture [INFOGRAPHIC] Transforming underutilized land into productive urban farms was one of the many topics which were presented at the recent Kansas City Design Week. Jerome Chou, past Director of Programs at the Design Trust for Public Space, presented his unique experience with the implementation of the Five Boroughs Farm in New York City and the impact that urban agriculture can have on low-income areas of a city. Chou pointed out in his presentation that having the land available for an urban farm is only half of the battle. The constraint of influencing the community and political leaders is what forced Chou and the multi-disciplined team lead by Design Trust for Public Space to rethink how urban farms were a beneficial investment for New York City. Click to view in full. Design Trust put together a metrics framework that measured the associated activities of urban agriculture with the known benefits derived from various studies. Kyle Rogler is an architecture graduate working at BNIM Architects.
The Greening of the Self By Joanna Macy / filmsforaction.org Something important is happening in our world that you are not going to read about in the newspapers. I consider it the most fascinating and hopeful development of our time, and it is one of the reasons I am so glad to be alive today. It has to do with what is occurring to the notion of the self. The self is the metaphoric construct of identity and agency, the hypothetical piece of turf on which we construct our strategies for survival, the notion around which we focus our instincts for self-preservation, our needs for self-approval, and the boundaries of our self-interest. Widening our self-interest The conventional notion of the self with which we have been raised and to which we have been conditioned by mainstream culture is being undermined. I think of the tree-huggers hugging my trunk, blocking the chain saws with their bodies. What is striking about Michael's words is the shift in identification. This is hardly new to our species.
American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) La ville intelligente, ultime utopie avant un chaos urbain généralisé ? Temps de lecture estimé : 6 min Aussi neuf et incertain qu’il soit encore, le concept de « ville intelligente » ou « V.I. » suscite un engouement qui n’est pas sans rappeler celui de la «fée électricité» à la Belle-Epoque. L’essayiste Jérémy Rifkin appelle au développement des technologiques informatiques dont les V.I. dépendent dans l’espoir d’une « troisième révolution industrielle » [] . Mais les prototypes récemment sortis de terre laissent craindre que les solutions vantées ne soient pas à la hauteur du chaos urbain généralisé qui s’annonce et qu’elles fassent perdre un temps précieux à une indispensable transition vers la « ville durable ». Un engouement croissant, une offre encore immature et segmentée L’homme d’affaires, surtout s’il est informaticien [] , y voit une lucrative voie d’accès aux partenariats public-privé : le marché mondial des technologies utilisée pour les projets de V.I. est estimé à 116Mds $ [] entre 2010 et 2016.
EcoGeek - Brains for the Earth Gardening Dictionary One of the most interesting sections of plants tha,t has come to us from America is the Ericaceous, and many of these are familiar objects to all who take an interest in gardening. We are in debted to the infusion of the strain of American Rhododendrons for the bulk of the garden hybrids of this fine family of evergreen flowering shrubs ; and although in themselves the native forms of these plants are not very attractive, our garden would suffer materially were it not for the hardy strain that has been made available by the crossing of the American native species with the Himalayan and other species, which have produced the fine garden hybrids so well known all over this country. Seen in their native habitat the American Rhododendrons have a charm of their own, and through the Eastern States, and running south for a considerable way, they form one of the predominant undergrowths, and in Tennessee and the Carolinas when full blown are a fine sight.