Goodbye to a living wall in British Colombia

Thomson Rivers University in British Columbia have a lovely 760 square foot living wall. Well, they had one. It was installed in 2011 sadly, it seems, it's location (near the library and the humidity jeopardizing the books), maintenance cost ($20,000-$30,000/year, which breaks down to $26-$39/square foot per year!!!), and general disinterest (70% of those surveyed wanted it gone) combined to mean it's all over.

Here's the wall in better times...

One less green roof bylaw + the world's largest vertical farm breaks ground

 It looks like construction started long ago, but last week was the official ground breaking for the largest vertical farm in the world. Politicians galore stopped by for the photo-op, here's hoping they can deliver on 80 jobs for the citizens of Newark, New Jersey!

Are you involved in urban farming? Then a Dutch grad student wants your help in filling out a survey to find out what role innovation has on urban agriculture.

China has big, big plans. Earlier this week was a story about their mega city, Jing Jin Ji, which would join several big cities to make a GIGANTIC one, as big as all of New England and with over 130 MILLION PEOPLE! Several of these cities have begun installing porous bricks and bio-swales, I hope the entire region gets the green infrastructure!

-Barbados becomes the latest island nation to embrace aquaponics.

-Jakarta has added 66 urban farming spots in the last year. It has been reported they are "modest" plots. Regardless of the size, that's a big commitment.

-If you have an environmental business based in Canada, ECO Canada just announced their internship program. With almost a $1 million dollars in wage subsidies for over 100 jobs, it's a great way to introduce a young person into your green field.

-One of the first cities to adopt a green roof bylaw, Port Coquitlam, has now rescinded it. This is big news for the green roof industry. There are only about 20 bylaws in North America. It seems their City Council how to decide which program to greenhouse gas program to support, so they went with something more general which targets an increase in building insulation and overall energy efficiency.
We'll keep watching to see if this is a one-off for the industry or a trend.

Bakery, laundromat and greenhouse

The Iberoamericana University in the Dominican Republic hosted a green roof symposium a couple of weeks ago. The school administers the program for the country, their stated goal "to preserve the structures of buildings and conserve native and migratory species."With so many benefits to green roofs, I love how different people, companies and municipalities embrace the technology for different reasons.

-In Europe, a Swiss company says it has just opened the continent's largest urban farming project. And they are no shy about touting that, look at that sign!!!

-How's this for an eclectic list of services, bakery, laundromat and greenhouse. These folks in British Columbia pull it off.

-The Design Trust for Public Space has released their toolkit, which they describe as “part how-to guide and part reference for urban farming”. Ohh...tasty


-In India a demo aquaponics project is trying to grow sea bass. You know what I thought of first, frickin' sea bass, of course!

More on EuropaCity and Post-Oil City

Last week I profiled a story about an entire city being covered in green roofs. The development seems to be more cultural and commercial development outside of Paris, as opposed to an actual "new" city, but here's an artist's rendering of what it may look like:

-In Toronto this week the Evergreen Brickworks, an amazing repurposed environmental center, opens the Post-Oil City, an exhibition, film, and talk concerning shrinking footprints.
Presented will be innovative projects from Africa, America and Asia that address a number of questions, for instance "How will the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy affect the process of urban planning and the city?"

-Simon Fraser University's Burnaby campus will get British Columbia's first modular, community gardening/student education space. Featured are easily removable sheds, rain barrels, composting units and 60 planting beds all atop shipping pallets.

-Interested in more moveable gardens? Check out the Nomad Gardens.

-New York City is accepting new applications for community gardens.

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.