Green roof athletic field...North America's first

Totally forgot to post this one. North America has its first green roof field, I think second in the world. Worcester Polytechnic Institute will have their soccer, softball, field hockey, lacrosse and rugby players playing atop an underground parking lot. 

Battle of the C towns, Community engagement + can Rio Ferdinand keep fit on his green roof?

I'm a friendly fellow and as always I'm looking for more ways to get to know my neighbors. Yes magazine comes through with a great article about the awakening the power of families and neighborhoods.

-The local food movement is expanding throughout the US heartland, Indianapolis keep doing your thing!

-Whole Village , just an hour from Toronto, is looking for more folks to join their eco-village. Previous members have moved on there's a terrific opportunity for those interested to join right away!

-Interesting developments in Colorado, Colorado Springs. 1/3 of the traffic lights have been turned off, evening and weekend bus service was eliminated entirely. Sounds like the anti-Cranston, Rhode Island.

-Soccer is the best sport in the world...I can state that unequivically and there is no way one can argue that. :) Exhibit one, when you have luminaries of your sport, like Rio Ferdinand, building eco-friendly homes (which will include a green roof, naturally) how can your sport be beat? The house will be 12,000 square feet, however. Don't laugh, I didn't say footballers were perfect!

In Honor of the World Cup...

...I feel it's my duty to spread the word about this incredible green roof soccer field. So that makes TWO that we've profiled this year. Do I see a connection? The first was in Slovenia, the second France. Does that mean you need to build a green roofed soccer field to have a shot at World Cup glory?

-In Vancouver, a few urban food security projectssplit $100,000 to do a slew of cool things, including expanding composting programs.

-You never know when a mayor makes an announcement for his/her city to be the "biggest _______" (<----insert cool/trendy initiative here), but it looks like Indianapolis is giving this infill urban gardening thing a try. Baltimore too, has changed it's zoning codes for only the third time in city history, to create space for urban farms to grow.

-Lastly, via City Farmer, I stumbled upon this fantastic dissertation by entitled: Urban Agriculture as Revolution. Grab your favorite beverage, it's a good but long (over 200 pages) read.

lots o' things + Passing Strange

It's been a busy week, lots of posts and a few others interesting articles:

The 2010 Shanghai World Expo • World Green Roof Development Conference is coming up in May. It's INCREDIBLE what's happening in China, check out the pictures and check out this stat: Beijing has signed on to green 100,000 square meters of roof per year.
Having no clue how big this is, I did the math. That means the government has committed to greening enough rooftops to equal the size of Manhattan every 4 YEARS! So far, China has greened the equivalent of 10 MANHATTANS.
WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!

-More on Detroit's urban ag experiment. What do you do with a population of 700,000 in a geography that can accommodate three times that much? Grow, grow, grow.

-The newest design trend? How about volcanos?

-From the four corners region of the USA, Mark Moody is bettin' the ranch on mesquite. Mesquite wood, mesquite flour, mesquite honey. If he makes that mesquite smoke flavoring in a bottle, I'll be giving him a call.

-Next week look for the start of a semi-regular column interviewing folks from the living architecture field. It should be a blast.

-Also on a completely unrelated, but truly important note, for those who don't know Passing Strange is on Great Performances on PBS. But what is Passing Strange, you might ask? See it... hear it ...and you're good for the arts for the rest of your life. Oh yeah, my brother's in it too, he's got talent to burn.

Sustainable soccer stadium/sports hall/shopping center in Slovenia

It's rare that a story comes along with such alliterative potential, to the rescue is this sustainable soccer stadium .

For up-to-date pictures, check out the architect's website .