What is the place of food in the city?
How are “waste” spaces being transformed by food projects?
What are the implications on materials, technologies and structures?

Carrot City is a traveling exhibit that shows how the design of buildings and cities can enable the production of food in the city.  It shows how the design of buildings and towns is enabling the production of food in the city. It explores the relationship of design and urban food systems as well as the impact that agricultural issues have on the design of urban spaces and buildings as society addresses the issues of a more sustainable pattern of living.

The focus is on how the increasing interest in growing food within the city, supplying food locally, and food security in general, is changing urban design and built form. Carrot City showcases projects in Toronto and other Canadian cities, illustrating how such concerns are changing both the urban landscape and architecture. It also includes relevant international examples to show how ideas from other countries can be integrated into the Canadian experience. The exhibition contains a mix of realised projects and speculative design proposals that illustrate the potential for design that responds to food issues.

These projects are presented through three main sections, representing three scales of analysis: City; Community; and Home & Work. In addition to the projects, a fourth section, Products, illustrates technologies and systems that are innovating food production approaches in urban contexts.

Image: tardigrade via flickr CC

From “Cuba plans city farms to ease economy woes“, by Marc Frank

Project launched to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in bid to reverse agricultural decline

Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country’s agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.  The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba’s cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.  The island’s authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labour.  But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the communist-run nation.

The pilot programme for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town.  The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75% of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.

On a recent day, dozens of people were hard at work plowing fields, hoeing earth, posting protective covering for crops and putting up fencing as the sun came up.  “This land they gave to us, the private farmers. I have four hectares (10 acres) and now they have leased me eight (20 acres) more,” one of the farmers, Camilo Mendoza, told Reuters.  “Look, on this side and the other side are other plots, and over there another. Here they have given quite a bit of land and support to private farmers,” he said.

The project is modelled after the hundreds of urban gardens developed by then-defence minister Raul Castro during the deep economic depression of the 1990s that followed the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.  He proclaimed at the time that beans were more important than cannons, marking a strategic shift towards a more domestic focused agenda by Cuban leaders after decades of active support for liberation movements and leftist guerrillas overseas.The suburban project dovetails with other steps introduced by President Raul Castro since he took over the day-to-day leadership in 2008.  These have included the leasing of fallow state lands to 100,000 mostly private farmers, raising prices for farm products and allowing farmers to sell part of their crops directly to the people instead of to the state.

On the other side of Camaguey and a few miles up Cuba’s central highway, Armando, the head of a cattle cooperative, said his group was persuaded to join the plan by the offer of land to raise garden and root vegetables and the chance for direct sales to the public.  Stands have been set up every mile or so along the city’s ring road for the sales, but Armando said they are taking their products to the customers.  “They assigned us a district where we can sell our produce. We are using a mobile system, a bicycle cart, and sell out every day,” he said.  “In December we produced around five tonnes. The root vegetables we had to sell to the state, but we were free to sell the garden vegetables directly,” he said.

The changes are tweaks to Cuba’s centralised socialism, not a significant step away from it, keeping with Raul Castro’s vow to protect the system put in place after his brother took power in the 1959 Cuban revolution.  He has balked at more sweeping, market-oriented changes that many expected when he took power and without which many economists say Cuba will not significantly increase agricultural output.  Cubans have seen many past government efforts to transform the country’s agriculture fail, so the farmers at Camaguey said they were taking a wait-and-see attitude on this latest one.

“For sure there will be more food around here if you come back in a few years,” Camilio Mendoza said about his expectations. “More than that, I can’t say.”

From “Cuba plans city farms to ease economy woes“, by Marc Frank, the Guardian UK

Report Source: Forum for the Future

It’s been a big year for agriculture and climate change, and the Forum’s Farming Futures project has been at the heart of the action.

The Low Carbon Transition Plan, launched by the UK Government in June, recognised that nitrous oxide and methane are the main greenhouse gas culprits in the sector, and challenged the agricultural industry with the first ever reduction target: an 11% cut in emissions by 2020.

Meanwhile, the new UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) data (UKCP09) showed farmers that hotter, drier summers, longer growing seasons, and new crops, pests and diseases are likely to be on their way; the Renewable Energy Strategy is demanding greater clean energy production; and a set of reports about food security are challenging us to think about how we can produce more food whilst simultaneously reducing our impact on the environment. The industry is responding with a Voluntary Action Plan to reduce emissions, and has put Farming Futures – the key communications project in the sector – at the heart of it. In its third year of delivery, Farming Futures is getting the message across to farmers that a low-carbon agricultural sector can be profitable and lower risk.

Evidence that it’s making a difference include a growing number of farmers signing up for on-farm events, on subjects from beef and sheep to renewable energy and irrigation; rising web hits on the dedicated site www.farmingfutures.org.uk; and rising profile for the project in farming media.

With an independent survey showing that 41% of farmers are now familiar with the project brand, we are now exploring new partnership opportunities for a fourth phase, and are keen to hear from anyone in the Forum’s networks who’d like to find out more or get involved

Globe Forum has decided to challenge all European cities to share their sustainability projects to promote urban sustainable development. City Challenge arose with the goal of showcasing innovations and promoting collaboration between city, municipality and region.  The City Challenge database will give cities from all over Europe a tool for sharing best practices and together shape the cities of tomorrow.  The challenge launched at the EUROCITIES meeting in Stockholm 27th of November 2009 and will go on until Globe Forum 2010 in April.

The first phase of the challenge is all about data collection and finding the right projects. Starting in January, the database will open up and the participating cities will start to fill it with information.  The goal for the cities will be to get as many sustainable projects as possible registered and linked to the city. These projects will form the basis for a unique global database for projects, innovation and ideas about sustainable development.  This is an ongoing process of collaborative problem solving, and the vision is to gather all best practises, from all cities, all over the world.

The database will be used for collaboration and inspiration. The city with the most sustainable projects registered will be recognized at Globe Forum 2010 in Stockholm.

Why take on the challenge?

1. By taking on the challenge the city will become one of the pioneering members of the City Challenge.

2. Your city will get access to the innovative technologies and solutions you need to succeed.

3. Leading tool for cities, researchers,businesses and innovators when looking for best practises within sustainable urban development.

4. Profit from the expertise of many in sustainable urban development – simply by using the power of collaborative problem solving.

5. Showcase your city as a leading sustainable city.

6. Display your results, progress, and receive real time status of what is going on globally insustainable development.

7. Find projects and practises by regional affiliation, industry and type of project.

8. Pin down what to focus on in urban development.

9. Collaborate more effectively across industries.

10. Get powerful feedback instantly.

11. The city with the most sustainable projects registered will be acknowledged during the Globe Forum sustainability conference,Stockholm 28-29 April 2010.

12. All shared cases will undergo the vetting process for Globe Award 2010, leading sustainability awards, nomination.

Source: Globe Forum

Image via tokyo green space

From “The Ginza Honeybee Project — Urban Development Inspired by Beekeeping” by Yuriko Yoneda

Ginza is one of the world’s leading downtown districts, complete with high-class department stores and designer shops. Ginza honeybees are nicknamed “Ginpachi” (short for “Ginza bees” in Japanese), and recently they have become somewhat of a new mascot for the district.  In March 2006, the Ginza Bee Project placed three hives on a rooftop 45 meters above the intersection at Ginza 4-chome, and bees began flying into the sky above Ginza.  Parks such as the Imperial Palace, Hibiya Park, and Hama-rikyu Gardens are located within two kilometers, and many roadside trees are also good sources of nectar. The amount of honey collected has been increasing steadily, growing from 160 kilograms (kg) in 2006, to 290 kg in 2007, 440 kg in 2008, and over 700 kg in 2009.   The beekeepers are using the honey to make Ginza-based products using local skills.

The honeybee is said to be an environmental indicator species because it is extremely susceptible to pesticides, which are used on vast areas of farmland in Japan, and are causing the survival rate of bees to drop. Meanwhile, in Ginza, which is in the central part of metropolitan Tokyo, the use of pesticides is avoided because of the growing number of people with allergies. So Ginza has ended up being a bee-friendly environment, and the high-quality honey-producing Ginza bees have made people aware that the district has a rich natural environment.  Since the bees were brought to Ginza, cherry blossoms that had previously not been pollinated began to produce cherries. People began to see birds eating the cherries, and small insects began rejuvenating the environment around the area.

Ginza Green Project Focused on Growing Local, Eating Local

In order to provide a more comfortable environment for the bees, the Ginza Green Project was launched in 2007, with the aim of creating flower and vegetable gardens on building rooftops to increase the amount of green space sources of nectar for them. The project’s objectives are not only to produce honey but also to reduce the negative impacts of the urban heat-island effect, by which concrete and roads retain heat from the sun and increase local temperatures. The aim is also to realize a “grow local, eat local” ethic in the true sense by collecting the honey that Ginza bees produce from local nectar sources, and making food and sweets using the honey harvested from the rooftop plot. It also aims to encourage person-to-person relationships among people who may have otherwise been complete strangers.

With interest growing in the Ginza Green Project, various people — including students and people from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries — are frequently visiting the project sites. Besides the Matsuya department store, Ginza Blossom (a wedding hall), an art gallery, and some commercial establishments are now participating. They grow a variety of things on their rooftops, like herbs for cooking, rice for brewing sake, fruit for sweets, and green soybeans to be served as snacks at high-class bars, so the Ginza Green Project is expanding further while involving a growing number of neighbors.

Japanese Honeybees

Three of the beehives brought to Ginza in March 2006 were populated by European honeybees, first introduced to Japan in the Meiji period (1868-1912). Because the European honeybees are better at producing honey, they have been playing a central role in beekeeping in Japan, and many Japanese beekeepers raise them.  Indigenous Japanese honeybees, in contrast, produce less honey and are more difficult to raise, so they are considered inferior to European honeybees from an apicultural point of view. Recently, however, it has become better understood that Japanese honeybees are skilled at fighting hornets, a natural enemy of European honeybees. Furthermore, Japanese honeybees are more disease-resistant and tolerant to extremes of heat and cold, which are attributes better suited to Japan’s natural environment.  Japanese honeybees have generally been considered to be pests, and are often exterminated when they build beehives in street-side trees or in residential areas, but in 2007 the Ginza Bee Project started an initiative to conserve Japanese honeybees by rescuing them from extermination and raising them in Ginza.

Creating a Ginza “Satoyama”

“Our future vision for Ginza is not a place where buildings compete for height, but where people and even small insects can coexist in harmony with nature,” said Atsuo Tanaka, co-founder of the Ginza Bee Project. “We believe that honeybees and people’s appreciation for them will help to create an urban district full of greenery, just like the “satoyama” of old (traditional nature-rich rural landscapes near villages). We would be happy if our project could be of some help for future urban planning in Japan,” he said.

Read the full article by Yuriko Yoneda.

Image: Shidhulai Boatschool

Ivili.org is a free and evergrowing library of tools, solutions and inspirations for sustainable living. Whether you are looking for advice on sustainable living, such as growing food in your garden using permaculture techniques or generating your electricity in a more ecofriendly way; or if you want ideas and inspirations for community projects that might work in your own area; or are keen to volunteer on an environmental project but don’t know what’s out there; or perhaps you are a funder looking to support essential work in an area you are passionate about, then Ivili is a unique place to start looking for what you need as it only focusses on bringing you sustainable solutions from all over the world. Furthermore, if you are involved in or know of something you think should be on here, all you have to do is sign up and you can add it in.

“There’s a man in China who has invented a solar water heater by lining his roof with glass bottles. Elsewhere permaculture gardeners are greening the deserts of the Dead Sea. A community tourism project in Thailand is helping villagers rebuild their lives after the tsunami. And a group called The Dinner Garden in the US is offering free seeds to anyone looking to grow food to feed themselves.

I could go on and on. I love that there are solar-powered floating schools in Bangladesh. An alternative currency helping the local traders of Brixton. And the ‘Pot-in-Pot’ desert fridge that uses no electricity to keep food cool.

These stories give me hope. And they make me wonder why they get so little play in the mainstream media. Sure, there is occasional coverage, such as BBC Worldwide’s World Challenge, which each year selects six or so inspiring projects from among a host of nominees to make a programme about and funds the winner to the tune of $10,000.

But what of the many nominated projects they examine that don’t make the final cut? Are all of them not worth reporting on, bringing to a wider audience, potentially inspiring others or opening up doors to funding? For the average person home at night after a long day’s work, to flick through the channels and find yet another documentary following a beleaguered polar bear as it drifts to oblivion is disempowering.

Learning that there are thousands – maybe even millions – of people all over the world making a difference, and maybe living happier, more fulfilling lives as a result – might that not be a more effective driver to change?”  Read the full article by Jeremy Smith.

Image: dmitri krendelev via flickr CC

From “BBC Worldwide bans short-haul executive flights” by James Murray, BusinessGreen, 02 Oct 2009

Staff at BBC Worldwide have been banned from taking domestic and short-haul flights as part of one of the most wide-ranging green travel programmes yet attempted in the UK. Executives have been told they can only fly when travelling by train adds more than three hours to the journey. The edict, from the BBC’s commercial arm, means that staff have to take the train to all domestic locations, as well as European cities as far afield as Strasbourg, Amsterdam and Bordeaux.

In addition, they must formally explain why a meeting cannot be held using one of the company’s five videoconferencing suites before they can book a long-haul flight.

“For some people it has been a bit painful,” admitted David Halford, head of ethical sourcing and environmental policy at the company. “But we consulted with the baird {sic} before we introduced the policy and took the view that if we are really serious about cutting emissions it will be painful at times.” The company’s environmental department also undertook a study of all journeys taken in the year prior to introducing the policy and found that switching to the train would save the organisation money. “One of the complaints was that rail travel would be more expensive than flying, but we analysed the data from an entire year and that was just not the case,” said Halford.

Read the full article.

Image: net_efekt via flickr CC

David and Kay Hicks run a small family farm, “Chyanhall”, in Cornwall (UK) with their daughter Carly. Just over two years ago they decided to look for an alternative income from the land and considered such things as moutain- and quad-biking tracks. Realising that there was a growing demand for allotments, they decided to research this area instead.

Eighteen months ago the first allotment was fenced for the first tenant, now there are 120 allotments on 8 acres, which cover three small fields, and a waiting list of another 40 interested people.  A full size allotment costs just £1.92 per week.  Prior to the allotment scheme David and Kay’s eight acres were generating around £700 per year, mostly as grass keep for livestock, or producing a cut of silage or hay. It does not take too much time with a calculator to discover that the income from this ground has risen from £700 per year to around £12,000.

There are no CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] subsidies operating here, no top down European directives, no skewing of world markets to generate activity, just pure common sense and responding to local demand.

All new allotment holders are allowed a period of one year to develop their plot, as it comes with no work done apart from a round post at each corner. The tenant puts in the remaining posts and erects the rabbit proof fencing. The ground will just be original pasture, which makes the first year potentially hard work. If after the first year the allotment isn’t sufficiently cultivated and is neglected then the tenant is asked to make improvements within a fortnight. If this is not done they are asked to leave and their allotment is re-let. Tenants are encouraged to practice rainwater harvesting as the farm would struggle to maintain low allotment rental prices if it supplied all the water. A local water supply company does offer large tanks and a regular delivery of water, but this can become expensive in dry summers.

David and Kay have had an obvious increase in income.  What they have also done, though, is create a strong customer base for their other farm produce, pigs and poultry. Allotment holders buy the pork to go with their homegrown vegetables and invariably the Christmas bird comes from Chyanhall as well. And there is an obvious market for bags of well-rotted manure.

For people in urban communities with no access to land, being able to provide for one’s own needs is empowering, and being able to grow your own food gives a feeling of security. Reducing the food miles of what we eat is essential. Learning to harvest, and store and save seed are all skills that surely must be re-learnt as worldwide food production becomes challenged.  Giving urban populations access to the land immediately surrounding their communities for food production can only make simple and perfect sense. It doesn’t take a scientist or a politician to make this happen and we don’t have to wait for any top-down initiatives. We just need to convince farmers and landowners that it can work and can benefit all involved.

Thanks to David and Kay Hicks there is now a working model on which to base future farm allotment schemes. For any farmer owning land close to a large centre of population this must surely be an option worth considering.

David and Kay were greatly assisted by The National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners (NSALG), which was able to give advice on tenancy agreements and the general running of an allotment site.

Read the full article  “Room to grow: turning farmland into allotments“, by Dorienne Robinson.

One of the first travel companies to offer carbon offsetting to customers has decided to remove the facility from their website.

Responsibletravel.com, which introduced an offsetting option in 2002, said the travel industry’s priority must be to ‘reduce carbon emissions, rather than offset’.   ‘Too often offsets are being used by the tourism industry in developed countries to justify growth plans on the basis that money will be donated to projects in developing countries,’ said managing director Justin Francis. ‘Global reduction targets will not be met this way,’ he added. Mr Francis said his company was now advising its customers to fly less, travel by train and take holidays closer to home. ‘We will continue to offer a more responsible choice of overseas holiday so that when tourists do fly they can ‘make their holiday count’ by choosing a more responsible holiday,’ he said. It is not clear whether other travel agents will follow responsibletravel.com’s lead.

Read the full article,  “Eco travel agent ditches carbon offsetting” on The Ecologist website.

Image: Sourcemap

From Kirstin Butler’s The Backstory of Stuff: New Sites Enable More Transparency in the Supply Chain

Until recently, visualizing global goods’ sourcing was the domain of contemporary artists and technoactivists. Tracing an object back to its origins could be a time-consuming and frustrating process that meant doing solitary research and creating original interfaces. But the increased accessibility of online mapping tools and wiki-style collaborations have changed the cartography of consumption.

Enter Sourcemap, an open-source application for collective supply chain research and mapping. When WorldChanging first reported on Sourcemap last year the project had yet to launch; now its users have already traced the global travels of products as diverse as cars, granola, and lace (even though the site is still in beta mode).  An MIT-based team built Sourcemap’s applications around Google Earth, and its geotagged food, travel, and product maps will look familiar to anyone who has called up a set of road trip directions. Still, while not the exclusive province of programmers, Sourcemap does require some skill with computing language to manipulate data. Most visitors to the site will probably gain the most from viewing supply chains in progress.

Even the pinpoint accuracy of a global map, however, can lack the immediacy of a human story. That’s where high-profile advocacy can take up the charge of transparency for more just and sustainable sourcing practices. A great example is the Enough Project’s Come Clean 4 Congo campaign, which seeks to connect the points between your cell phone and conflict minerals.

Where Sourcemap will tell you the carbon footprint of your computer’s production, the Enough Project will show you the Congolese miner who gathered minerals for its motherboard. It’s one thing to be aware of the abstract threat posed by your devices and gadgets, and quite another to know that they directly support global conflict.  The Enough Project’s strategies include urging companies to pledge that their products are conflict free and providing letter-writing and petition tools for congressional lobbying.

Now that crowdsourcing models, data-driven applications, and social media tools are being widely embraced as ways to tell the supply-chain story, the next step is to integrate these developments into public awareness of the things we buy.

Read Kirstin Butler’s  The Backstory of Stuff: New Sites Enable More Transparency in the Supply Chain on Worldchanging