America's parks, not sponsored by Starbucks

America's national parks will not be "sponsored by Starbucks", to the fear of many, but they will recognize donors and need to adapt even further due to global warming.


It's refreshing to see articles on outlets like Vox are now expanding the urban farming debate, there's been a shift from the mantra that "urban farming can feed cities" to "urban farming won't solely feed cities, but that doesn't matter".
If you need ways to figure out how to acquire land for your Urban Agriculture program your prayers have been answered.

Here's a little eye candy to wrap up your week, the United Arab Emirates' best green walls. For a review of weekly green infrastructure news from Latin America, head over to NRDC.org.

Friday quick hits

On Thursday the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report updating how the policies and procedures in place across Latin America and the Caribbean have changed since their "Medellín" report in 2009. The region is now the most urbanized in the world!

-By now many people have heard of Bitcoins and perhaps the wider cryptocurrency movement. Some permaculture fans are trying to create their own crypto-green credit, called Permacredits.

Green roofs (techos verdes) of Latin America

Living in North America there's a lot about what's happening around here. And we get a decent amount of living architecture news from Europe. But Asia? Little. Africa? Zilch. Latin America? Forget about it! So I need to do a post highlighting some of these underreported treasures. This, I feel, will be the first of many posts.

Let's check out the Techos Verdes!!! 

Mexico -
Green roofs at 'El Acantilado' in Zapopan, Jalisco are spread out over a couple of buildings. I love how the white walls really brings out the color of the vegetated roofs! Ah yes, I cannot forget that  from what I can sleuth in Mexico City, as of late 2011 there were over 8000 square meters of green roof so far.

Colombia - 
Both Bogota, Colombia and Buenos Aires, Argentina require green roofs on city buildings. 

Argentina - 
Okay, I couldn't resist adding a green wall to the mix, although I could do an entire post on green walls in Latin America.  The Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) was one of the first to get both a green roof and a green wall, to set an example for the rest of the city (Buenos Aires). Can't recall seeing any green wall before around oval windows!

Brasil-
How about some more residential green roofs? Ecovilas is a sustainable village in the province of Rio Grande do Sul. In total there are 18 green roofs, each about 1100 square feet big.