Next generation green roof systems

In London there are already over 1200 green roof projects (covering more than 500,000 square meters) and the market is exploding. New modular systems, for both green roofs and roofs incorporating green roofs and solar panels, have hit the market. Even speciality butterfly attracting plug and play plant blankets are available! All of this without major government incentives or legislation!
Also profiled in the article are next generation green roof systems, ones designed to hold large quantities of water, intensify the phytoremediation process or utilizing bioresponsive materials.
If you read one piece about green roofs this year, this may be the one.

-Can anyone guess where Canada's largest urban farm is located? If you guessed Calgary, I tip my hat to you!

-Sacramento will host the year two of the Cultivating Change Summit from June 8-11. It's the first summit for LGBTQ+ agriculturalists and allies. Register here!

-Big things are happening in Toronto. An alley behind a public library has been bought and is being converted into a community garden and a vacant plot of land in the east(ish) end will become a temporary home to a 1500 crate mobile urban garden.

France bans supermarket food waste + 10 trees make you feel 7 years younger

So much going on in the living architecture world, it’s very exciting! After a lull during late December, early January, there is now a ton to follow…

The picture above is perhaps a sign of things to come, in Holland they are floating trees as part of an art installation. But with North America’s first climate refugees confirmed, one wonders as rich countries like the USA continue to dither on the federal level to embrace concrete climate change abatement, how many municipalities, communities and individuals effected by climate change will resort to “doing the best they can”, instituting band-aid solutions for their neck of the woods, and stop pressuring the big guys altogether. Maybe changes need to happen from the bottom up?
 
We can look at the efforts of one developer proposing adjoining his buildings with green walkways to give people a chance to stroll way up high. Or look to Madrid doing way more than this, as the global city goes all-in by encouraging living architecture and green infrastructure, in the form of green roofs and mass tree planting. Hopefully this will encourage other Spanish cities, the region and beyond.

-On nature.com there was a stunning report which illuminates how important trees really are to our lives and pockets, "10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger”. There’s much, much more in this is one you should read.

-Speaking of health, we need a lot more information on how much lead there is in the urban environment and whether it is harmful to our health or not. Case in point are numerous articles about the dangers, now there have been a couple of articles which maintain we should not be worried, there isn’t much in the soil (or wherever that researcher tested…since we don’t have nationwide data in either the US or Canada yet) and if it's present it shouldn’t be an issue as most lead is locked in the plant roots. If you're eating root vegetables, however, well, then, that's not so good...

-At the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos, Switzerland a few weeks ago, goals were set to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. France has heeded the call and is certainly ready to lead the way with their legislation which bans supermarkets from throwing away unused food…this year! Imagine that!!!

-In Istanbul, unfortunately, things may be going backwards. Some farms, including one 1,500 years old, are in danger due to encroaching development. Also in the last year a few impressive projects were announced or profiled in Egypt. Although there seemed to be a lot of promise, one author has his spin on why there won’t be a green infrastructure movement anytime soon.

-Closer to home, Auburn, New York is creating a food forest. It’s actually more of edible garden park, as it stretches along a major street. They hope to start planting this spring. 

-Lastly, I saw a man on the subway last week reading Peter Wohlleben’s “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries From a Secret World,” and am anxious to crack it open. Here’s an article about what Peter has been up to most recently, discovering that trees have social networks!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Philadelphia adds another green roof incentive

After Jet Blue's announcement a few weeks ago, they get a full NY Times story covering their urban agriculture endeavor at JFK airport. Maybe the NY Times saw my posts about airports and urban agriculture?

-A self-storage facility in St. Louis gets to green their roof while offering the space for rooftop gardening. 9,000 square feet for $10,000 per year sounds like a pretty good deal!

-Regular readers know I don't like to profile projects still in the design stage...there's no certainty they will be built. But I'll make an exception for this project in Singapore, when Singapore wants something done, it gets done. So this project, the picture above, is as good as gold.

-Philadelphia already gives tax credits for green roof installation, now they are offering another incentive: density bonuses for green roofs.

-The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University has just released a "guidebook which provides science-based guidance and sample zoning code language designed to reduce the barriers to, and promote production and sales activities commonly associated with urban agriculture." Wow. Iowa!

-For those who want to expand their horizons, here's a paper on food security and urban agriculture in Vietnam.

The world's first desktop edible insect harvester

 I think this week marks an important point in the urban agriculture revolution. A group (which may or may not be based in Germany, it's hard to tell) launched a Kickstarter campaign to manufacture the first desktop edible insect harvester. As many know the idea of eating insects, in much of the West, is absolutely foreign to most people. But with people now keeping chickens in urban environments instead of depending on farms, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to up the game.

I predict that there will be a slew of imitators very soon, who strive to make desktop harvesters sleeker, easier to use, smaller, you name it. But this is the first. Tell your kids (or grandkids) about it.

-Singapore now has 72 hectares of rooftop greenery (enough to cover 100 football fields, says this article), an increase of 8 hectares in a year. There's of course room for growth. In Melbourne, Australia they currently have only 5 hectares of green roofs and rooftop gardens, but the city council is really behind the idea and have mapped out over 240 hectares, across the city, which would be suitable for greening!

-In Memphis, Tennessee, if you mow the vacant lot adjacent to your piece of property, you can now own it! Wow!

A food forest begins to sprout in Guelph

Ithaca Permaculture Park, River Valley Food Forest, Greenbelt Food Forest in Maryland and most famously, Beacon Food Forest in Seattle, Washington food forests are already on the map. Now Guelph (Ontario) is in the process of building one. I was lucky enough to be part of the kick off.
It's tentatively called Hanlon Creek Community Food Forest. Six designs were produced by breakout groups, last Thursday, and the common elements will be combined into three workable designs for further elaboration in a couple of weeks. 
This is very exciting for a town of roughly 125,000. Your town can do it too! 

-Some big news out of Ireland as a new green roof bylaw in a suburb of Dublin, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County is set to take effect in a few months. It covers new building construction starting January 1!

-Gigantic retailer Target is teaming up with MIT to explore how they can support urban agriculture.

-There's so much happening in Detroit, lots of good stuff gets underreported. A $15 million dollar, 60 acre, urban agriculture project was announced which will hopefully employ up to 125 ex-offenders and recovering addicts.

-A fantastic permaculture program is taking off in Ethiopia. 450 hectares in total may be transformed.

-Here's a handy dandy guide to growing indoor plants, what kinds of containers you can use and which plants work best in them.

São Paulo's green roof and wall incentive & agrihoods take off

If there's one thing I learned this week, all good things come from the NY Times.

While reading about São Paulo mayor, who is trying all sorts of things to reduce gridlock, I stumbled upon other initiatives he has enacted including the stipulation that companies must pay for "environmental conservation works" and can do so by installing green walls or green roofs, like the one above.

-Two weeks ago in Santa Clara a plan was selected for a 1.5 acre parcel. It includes 165 affordable senior rental units and much, much more. If you want a list of prominent agrihood/agriburbia developments across the nation, one was convenient posted last week.

That article is one of three I saw over the next 10 days detailing newish and future agrihoods.

-An interesting pairing has Back to the Roots teaming with Sodexo to supply 2,300 schools with garden tool kits, including aquaponics kits, mushroom mini-farms and their “garden-in-a-can”. There’s curriculum for the toolkits as well.

-Vancouver is now offering $10 trees to encourage home owners to build up their urban forest. Fruit trees are available too, including prunes!

-India is working on creating a green wall of their own, this one featuring palm trees to stop sea coast erosion.

In Nepal 150 households get urban agriculture training

On Monday London hosted a one-day event on green and solar roofs. I didn't see a lot on social media about the event, maybe more will come out in the next few days.

-In Nepal the Kathmandu government is offering rooftop training for 150 households. The most curious part of the announcement "pickaxes" will be provided to each household involved in the training. Pickaxes? The goal must be to make some pretty big gardens!

-They are really churning out the green roof research in the Mediterranean. The latest paper on Science Direct states there may be a marked difference in plant stress felt by some plants and water retention when soil levels are reduced as little as 3 cm, with 10 cm being better than 13.
Stateside research findings indicate that "older women living in counties where an insect infection killed off a large number of trees were more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or fatal coronary heart disease." So the take home lesson is somehow, if we take care of trees, we can help ourselves.

Aquaponic and rooftop farming news from Egypt

This operation has been operational for a couple of years, but they rarely release updates. What they have accomplished in a few years is very impressive!
There was another article about Egyptian living infrastructure this week, the missive takes a look at the rooftop garden operations.

-Here's a very long and well-written article from Business Insider about America’s largest crop, the American lawn. The thirsty crop drinks Nine billion gallons of water A DAY and covers more than 3 times the amount of area corn does!
Several of those interviewed believe it will be harder to get people to quit watering their lawns because the lawn is a symbol of the American dream. Subconsciously, letting your lawn die may be akin to giving up on the American dream, conspicuous consumption, social contract and multi-billion dollar industry, combined. Look for lobbying groups to fight restrictions as they pop up around the USA and beyond. It has already begun...

-A recent study suggests there are 3 trillion trees worldwide! That’s incredible! On the bad side, that’s half of what was there a few hundred years ago and 10 billion per year are currently lost.

-In a very, very curious story, the Vancouver Aquarium has decided to start raising fish...for sale at local stores! Wow!

-In other aquaponics news we learned something amazing, by accident. It appears the US is creating a Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force. The press release states "aquaculture, aquaponics and hydroponics being the fastest growing sector in agriculture"!

Perfume...inspired by green roofs

Yes, it totally exists! Here's the ad, now you can smell like a green roof too!

Latin America & Africa pave the way for 21st century urban agriculture

Although many of us have been involved in urban agriculture for some time, once upon a time everyone was new to it. Remembering that, it’s awesome to stumble upon an article which summarizes so many of the key issues and big projects for newbies. Here is a great one.

-We all know how much surplus and less than perfect food goes to waste. An ex-President of Trader Joe’s has decide to do something about it by opening a second hand grocery store, so to speak. Do we ever need this!!!! It’s a non-profit to boot!

-Here’s your next Highlinesaque project. It’s called the “Lowline” and features, maybe, growing vegetables in a park underground. Three years ago they garnered over $150,000 on Kickstarter, and they are hoping to finish negotiations with New York City by 2017 for a 2018 launch.

-Wednesday was the World Day to Combat Desertification. It’s a good start for sure, but we need to think about this and act on it every day.

-Preliminary findings from a green roof project based at the University of Toronto indicate a few things, including that indigenous plants may attract more native pollinators. Speaking of findings another study which shows just 40 seconds of viewing a green roof can improve your attention span.

-In the next 85 years, how can we make greener cities capable of producing food to achieve zero hunger? The FAO has an exhaustive report about what is currently being done in countries around the world.

App for Philly residents calculates green roof water savings

Every, and I mean every, city, town and village should have one of these apps. If you're in Philly you can use it to calculate, after installing green infrastructure like green roofs and rain gardens, how much less you'll have to pay in stormwater fees!

Brown (aka dead green) walls make us all grumpy

No one likes a dead living wall...and this one village councillor's expression is representative of the entire village's feelings!

-How much mulch is good for a green roof and how much do they effect water quality? And is organic farming really better than conventional? Three long running studies (one 30 years long) have your answers.

-One community run, city agency has gone from administering a few hundred to nearly 90,000 empty lots in Detroit in a few years. Is that a good thing or bad?

-Lastly Utne reader has a couple of previews to whet your appetite with two excerpts from upcoming books on the history of herbal medicine and educational benefits of school gardens.

 

Vertical farming in Japan

You may remember my pronouncement a while back how I wouldn't comment on concepts because they are simply artwork until someone puts numbers behind how to make it reality.
Covering Toronto's Gardiner Expressway with a green roof to resemble New York's Highline, was one of those fanciful ideas which got people talking, but seemed far from realistic. And it still is. Especially when you consider the first part of the equation, fixing the Gardiner has gone from $500 million to $950 million in four years.
Now a top bureaucrat is agreeing with some people who think the Gardiner should be torn down. If nothing else, I think we can all agree the Gardiner will never be topped with a green roof.

-Next door the City of Mississauga will add a storm water discharge fee to the bills of building owners to help rebuild their infrastructure.

-Back to Toronto, for a second, how cool would it be if they had a provision, like they do in Seoul, that if you get rebates, public funds to subsidize your green roof or wall, that it must be publicly accessible? Seoul has spent over $57 million in public funds greening their city and has a really big project up their sleeves, look out for their Seoul Skygarden in 2017. It's supposed to be like...wait for it...the Highline!

-In terms of ideas, here are a couple I really like. A team of Chicago entrepreneurs are hoping to lease rooftops to grow veggies. Let's see if they are able to do it, because no one has done it successfully yet. Of greater promise, I think, is leasing parking lot space for these pop-up farms. Maybe even stacking them a several stories high to maximize the space.

-In Japan this semi-conductor company has entered the vertical farming race and found a niche market for their lettuces, growing low potassium lettuces for those with kidney problems. That's a smaller version of their system up above.

-I'll round out with the best news of the week. France now has a ban on supermarket food waste. All surplus food must be donated to charities or used for animal feed!

Self-guided living architecture tour of Toronto

A green minded philosopher in Toronto has compiled a list of living architecture in Toronto and mapped it so that you can give yourself a self-guided tour of the publicly accessible green beauty.

President Obama releases comprehensive plan to save American bees

Kibera, Kenya has one of the largest slums in the world. To combat food insecurity the National Youth Service (NYS), a government agency that promotes youth affairs through the ministry of devolution and planning, has begun distributing a series of sacks that are filled with manure, soil and small stones to create simple, and cheap, urban gardens.

-New Jersey has signed into law that the third week in March is now, statewide, know as “Horticultural Therapy Week”.

-D.C. wants more green roofs to ameliorate their overburdened stormwater system and now, they will certainly get more! Speaking of D.C., on the federal side, President Obama has created the first "National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators". As everyone is aware by now, this is definitely needed!

-Historically farmers turned to agricultural colleges, usually in rural areas because that's where the farms are, for assistance on questions like "What crops can I plant (and how) to diversify?" and "Where can I have my soil tested?" With the rise in urban agriculture, perhaps urban operations need similar, expert help...which is local?
The Sustainable Cities Collective is trying to chip in by offering a free webinar on how to start and run a sustainable urban agriculture company.  They were incredibly thorough!

-Costa Rica is now the most recent nation to give aquaponics a whirl.

-And lastly for today is NPR tackling food forests. Look at all the comments!

Green roofs installations are down, what does it mean?

For the first time since they started keeping records, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC) reported in 2014, among corporate members in North America, green roof installations were down 10%. What does it mean?
GRHC offers a few possible explanations as to why, after years of posting strong numbers according to their methodology, the industry suffered what appears to be a downswing:

-A few key federal subsidies ended last year;
-Private sector companies may be sitting on capital rather than investing them in building improvements.

I believe both of these could have contributed to the lower numbers. We should also remember a few other things:

-Not all firms in the industry are (or are required to be) GRHC members;
-Not all firms are willing (or have the time) to participate in the survey;

So what we've had in the past, and will continue to have, are data from a fraction of the projects. To know how many roofs were actually done, I would think more exhaustive research techniques might be necessary. Contacting medium suppliers, regardless of their affiliation, to see how many projects they are aware of. Plant suppliers are well. 

-And while we are chatting about publications, here are a couple from the academic realm. The first attempts to quantify how well mature green roofs retain water. Can they green roofs really be used for flood mitigation? The second focuses on a specific type of turfgrass used on green roofs and asks the question, how do you best take care of it?

Plant for free on the devil's strip

What do you call that piece of land between the sidewalk and street?

I had no idea. It appears it's often called the "road verge". And it goes my many other names, tree belt, utility strip, out lawn. Well whatever you call it in Los Angeles it's city owned and you can now plant on it for free. Question...do you want to, if it's in a high traffic area? Maybe that's why it goes by another name: the devil's strip.

-San Jose, California seems very serious about offering tax breaks to owners of undeveloped land. The purpose? Agree to a 5 year lease for urban agriculture. 

-Want to bulid your own multi-story worm hotel but not pay a dime? These munificent souls have posted some open source design. Download the blueprints and tweak to your satisfaction.

-Chulalongkorn University has invested about $180,000 USD in a 17,000 square foot green roof on a nearby mall. This is the biggest green roof I know of in Thailand and they got very good bang for their buck!

-It's always great to have more scientific evidence detailing the efficiency of green roofs. Here's a study of some green roofs in Italy which has determined "incoming heat into the building through the roof is 60% lower than the incoming heat without vegetation."

-Two professors point out something which seems obvious in retrospect, holding 20% of the Earth's fresh water, how climate change affects the coastlines of the Great Lakes is something we should pay attention to!

Three green roof conferences in April, the first in Qatar

In the Northern hemisphere things are looking green...or they will be soon and it's time to start planting again. If you have time for some conferences, there are three great ones this month.

First up on Wednesday, April 1 at Qatar University is a joint Qatari-Swiss one day conference entitled "Landscape as Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Food Security: Perspectives from Switzerland and Qatar".

Next, from April 6-12 is Greenroofs.com's annual virtual summit. Over 300 people tune in and participate from over 125 countries.

Later in the month is the fourth annual Green Roof Congress in Istanbul. From April 20-21 at the Zorlu Center's Raffles Hotel green roof folks from around the world will gather. The Zorlu Center has over 775,000 square feet of green roof!

Green roofs (or solar panels) for all new (commercial) buildings in France

The biggest news of the last few days has been France's new law mandating a green roof or solar panels on all new commercial buildings!

GILA word of the week: Edible Riparian Buffer

I haven't encountered this phrase before: Edible Riparian Buffer. It's a kind of green infrastructure,
meant to combat climate change and boost community resilience. If you're going to put a vegetated buffer around a river, why not focus on having edible plants? Kudos Iowa City!
This edible riparian buffer may not be everyone's cup of tea and that's why it's important to have, argues this landscape architect, small, incremental actions which result in an immediate, local effect.

-Forceful words from the UK Green Building Council (UK-GBC), calling on developers 'to stop downplaying green infrastructure as "a fluffy optional extra".

-A massive luxury Cairo green infrastructure project, complete with green roofs, green walls and gardens now has over half a billion dollars in investment! Construction is expected to be completed in 2018. Talk about over the top, it has limo services as well.

-A government minister praised the Nigerian section of the green wall being built to combat desertification. Not a few hours later planting was stopped due to insurgent forces. I had never thought about the role insurgents could play in environmental degradation and climate change.

-And lastly for today, he's a nifty five acre farm in Australia, which includes an outdoor aquaponics system as part of it's permaculture orientation.