A NYT article on the very cool idea of vertical farming, which involves building self contained, off the grid, multi-storied (even skyscraper sized), farms in urban areas. Given the end of cheap oil (whatever daily gyrations in price we might see), this concept helps address the 1,500 average miles food travels to our plates and all the fossil fuels and attendant CO2 emissions that brings. As with the best of green design and architecture, it also brings many added benefits such as beauty and air filtration to living spaces.
Dickson Despommier, the Columbia University professor who created the concept with students of his in 1999, is trying to push a conceptual 30 story model through to eventual construction in Manhattan. Given the price per square foot of real estate in Manhattan, I wouldn't necessarily pick it as my proving ground, but I love the audacity of proposing a farming skyscraper blooming in Gotham, whatever the practicalities.
My own sense of the future is that we'll need a lot more small scale garden plots in yards and rooftops. Heck, during WWII, 40% of the US's fruits and vegetables were raised in Victory Gardens, so we've done it before. But vertical farms, distributed throughout an urban environment, could be part of fundamentally changing the relationship between country and city, between food producing and consuming regions, and between fossil fuels and plates full of food.
The article also has some more cool conceptual pix in the associated slide show.
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