Showing posts with label italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label italy. Show all posts

Thursday, March 3, 2016

The Great Green Wall gets creative

 

Africa's Great Green Wall has thankfully received more attention as of late. Branding is always helpful for selling products and programs, it's wonderful to see what these students created, like the poster above, to publicize the campaign.

-As many of you know, China is attempting their own green wall, affectionately called "the Green Wall of China", to hold back desertification. And they've done a lot, 66 billion trees planted since 1978. The problem? Fast-growing and thirsty, non-native species were planted making things worse! And they were all cuttings, meaning they are all dying at the same time. Encroaching deserts threaten 400 million people in total with poor agricultural land, water shortages and air pollution from giant sandstorms. Officials are even worried about civil unrest. If you have a chance, read the story.

-Aquaponics and marijuana are two of the hottest trends in agriculture. What happens when you combine the two? I'm predicting really big things for this Hamilton, Ontario outfit.

-Building owners in Geelong, an hour long drive south from Melbourne, Australia, have a chance to win $10,000 for their green roof. If you live there, throw your hat in the ring!

-A design competition in Italy has yielded some fantastic renderings and further interest from local cities to make a combination pre-school/urban farm.

-Two weeks ago France banned supermarket waste, this means companies must find other ways to dispose of their food. Hopefully they won't dispose of it, but it becomes another revenue stream if they sell it to supermarkets, which exist in Denmark, which only sell second hand food.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

The future of farming today


What will farming look like in the future? At Expo Milano, which kicked off last week, the architects at the US pavilion think vertical farming will be key. This year's Expo theme is "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life". $60 million was raised to put the pavilion together!

-Dubai has a vision for 2020 and has set aside over half a billion dollars to green 12,000 hectares of land (which would be 8% of their total space) with landscaping and horticultural projects.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

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!

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

World Cup green roofs - Group D

Group D has understated Costa Rica, totally unpredictable England, tough and elegant Uruguay and clockwork like Italy to enjoy.

Uruguay




Costa Rica





England




Italy




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!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Boston's big urban agriculture month

-If you're looking for a job in the food security field and live in Ottawa (Ontario, not Kansas) get that resume updated.

-Lots happening in Boston. January 30 you can join Will Allen to brainstorm the future of agriculture in Boston. While you're downtown, you can hop on that Red Line to check out the first winter farmer's market.

-Italian architect Stefano Boeri goes big (and green) or goes home. He has created six bold, transformational "ideas for a bio-diverse metropolis" that could be installed in and around the city of Milan, to establish "transitional states between the city, nature and agriculture" and provide "energy sources for a new model of urban economics." Visionary and Idealistic, they challenge us to think about cities and the possible in new ways. The concepts were first introduced to the public at an exhibition in Rome last year.