Dickson Despommier, author of "The Vertical Farm", on the concept, what it might look like and the eco-cities of the future.
View the video here. The Economist also notes:
The idea is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. As well as creating more farmable land out of thin air, this would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances. It would also reduce the spoilage that inevitably occurs along the way, says Dickson Despommier, a professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University in New York who is widely regarded as the progenitor of vertical farming, and whose recently published book, “The Vertical Farm”, is a manifesto for the idea. According to the UN’s Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So it just makes sense, he says, to move farms closer to where everyone will be living.
Read that full feature, at the Economist.com. See also:
Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture
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Farms: Vertical Farming
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15 Living Walls, Vertical Gardens & Sky Farms
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