Monday, April 8, 2013

28 activities and 18 benefits to urban agriculture




Do your friends want to know why they should support urban agriculture? Here's a fantastic metrics framework from the Design Trust for Public Space detailing 18 benefits and 28 activities. 

-Stat of the day: according to one calculation Beijing has 93 million square metres (23,000 acres) of green roof ready rooftops. Particle pollution could be reduced by as much as 880,000 kilograms every year, (equal to removing 730,000 cars from the road) and a reduction of 3.5 million cubic metres of stormwater.

-Back in July I first talked about the Bayview Compass' coverage of Sweet Water Organics, the Milwaukee based aquaponics organization. That article was perhaps the best one of the year, in the living architecture world. This follow-up one is not that bad either, SWO defaulted on a loan which could be renegotiated. For the life of me I don't know why SWO has such a spotlight on them, it seems organizations run into trouble all the time. Perhaps when you garner as much positive attention as they have, when something goes wrong, you get as much negative attention.

-Coming soon to Vancouver, a 1,000 tree urban agriculture orchard.


Friday, April 5, 2013

Green energy and green walls - with algae

BIQ House 

I profiled a bio-adaptive building late last year. At the time, it was just a fantastic concept with pretty pictures. Fast forward three months and the building is going up!

-If you're in Philadelphia, hopefully in the next few months you'll be able to use a new app called "GrowShare". The app lets you search for vacant lots which could be used for urban gardens or farms and share growing resources as well. 

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The world's first vertical forest + get permaculture on the Colbert Report!

























Milan can now stake its claim to being the first city with a vertical forest, unless someone gets one up in the next 7 months! If the pictures look half as good as the real thing...this will be an amazing building!

-Also, there's a growing movement to get a permaculture expert on the Colbert Report.
Click the link, join the petition and like it on Facebook!

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

April songs

Without further ado (one day is way too long, right?) here are great songs for the month of April!

Count Basie Orchestra - April in Paris
Bambi - April Showers
The Beatles- Octopus's Garden
Deep Purple - April