Posts Tagged ‘urban agriculture’
CERES: Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies
Posted in Models, Research by Kate Archdeacon on May 2nd, 2011
CERES – Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, is an award winning, not-for-profit, environment and education centre and urban farm located by the Merri Creek in East Brunswick, Melbourne, Australia. Built on a decommissioned municipal tip that was once a landfill and wasteland, today CERES is a thriving, vibrant community. Over 300,000 people visit CERES each year. Many more connect with us through our innovative program taking sustainable education directly to schools across the State.
CERES is recognised as an international leader in community and environmental practice. CERES Organic Farm, Market, Shop, Co-ops and Café and Permaculture and Bushfood Nursery are unique social enterprises that offer new solutions and ways to combat climate change. Community groups such as the Bike Shed, Community Gardens and Chook Group that call CERES home are also vital to CERES culture.
All waste and water on the site is recycled and much of the site is powered by renewable energy such as wind and solar. CERES is now working towards making the site completely carbon neutral by 2012. CERES is a model for a possible future where innovation, sustainability, equity and connectedness are valued. Both as a place and a community, CERES is striving to create a new way of being.
Watch a video about CERES here or visit the website to explore the enormous range of projects, enterprises and opportunities CERES supports: www.ceres.org.au
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Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design (FSPUD): Report
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on April 7th, 2011
Food sensitive planning and urban design (FSPUD) recognises that access to healthy, sustainable and equitable food is an essential part of achieving liveable communities.
VEIL and David Locke Associates were commissioned by the National Heart Foundation of Australia (Victorian Division) to develop a resource further articulating the idea of ‘Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design’ (first articulated by VEIL in 2008 as Food Sensitive Urban Design). This new resource – Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design: A conceptual framework for achieving a sustainable and just food system – is intended to raise the awareness of planners, architects, urban designers, engineers, policy makers, community members and elected representatives of the need to integrate food considerations into urban land use and development.
It outlines: key areas in planning legislation, policy and processes to realise this outcomes; how meeting people’s food needs contributes to the broader objectives of planning and urban design, including: health and fairness; sustainability and resilience; livelihoods and opportunity; and community and amenity; and a challenge to professionals and the broader community to take on a stronger role in ensuring that healthy, sustainable and equitable food is available for all Australians into the future.
The summary and the conceptual framework are available from the VEIL website: www.ecoinnovationlab.com
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Super Short Supply Chain: Supermarket Roof Garden
Posted in Models by Rob Eales on March 15th, 2011
Source: guardian.co.uk
From “The supermarket growing food on its roof” by Laura Barnett:
Of all the things you might reasonably expect to be doing on a blustery March day, standing on the roof of a supermarket and dragging a rake through a bag of decaying vegetables is probably not one of them. I am on top of Thornton’s Budgens supermarket in Crouch End, north London, which volunteers have transformed from a flat expanse of concrete into a flourishing potted garden and vegetable patch.
The project, called Food from the Sky, is an unusual exercise in the principles of permaculture and sustainable gardening, and is the brainchild of former silversmith and art consultant Azul-Valerie Thome. It opened last May, when a crane lifted 10 tonnes of compost and 300 green recycling boxes donated by Haringey Council on to the roof. Now the garden is producing enough vegetables to sell in the aisles downstairs every Friday, and has just won a community prize at the Co-operative’s annual People and Environment Achievement Awards.
On a quick tour of the garden, Thome and several volunteers show me an impressive array of vegetables – from peas and potatoes to kale and purple sprouting broccoli – alongside flowers, tiny strawberry and raspberry plants, and a composting area. Here, fruit and vegetables left unsold each day in Budgens are mulched, along with woody branches and soil, by the 20 local people who volunteer in the garden.
Volunteer Peter Budge tells me the conditions are perfect for the plants: the warmth from the supermarket’s heating and lighting systems comes up through the roof, sparing the seeds the worst of the frosts – and there are no slugs or snails, while marauding pigeons are deterred by CDs hanging from the perimeter fence. “It might seem mad that we’re growing things up here,” Budge says, “and it is. But it really works.”
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Read the full article by Laura Barnett on The Guardian.
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Not Far From The Tree: Urban Orchard Network
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on March 9th, 2011
© Not Far From The Tree
Not Far From The Tree puts Toronto’s fruit to good use by picking and sharing the bounty.
When a homeowner can’t keep up with the abundant harvest produced by their tree, they let us know and we mobilize our volunteers to pick the bounty. The harvest is split three ways: 1/3 is offered to the tree owner, 1/3 is shared among the volunteers, and 1/3 is delivered by bicycle to be donated to food banks, shelters, and community kitchens in the neighbourhood so that we’re putting this existing source of fresh fruit to good use. It’s a win-win-win situation! This simple act has profound impact. With an incredible crew of volunteers, we’re making good use of healthy food, addressing climate change with hands-on community action, and building community by sharing the urban abundance.
With our first full season in 2008, Not Far From The Tree has grown quickly:
- We transport all of our equipment and fruit by bicycle, keeping our carbon footprint low.
- We were an official part of Nuit Blanche with our all-night cider-pressing art installation, City Cider.
- We participated in 40+ fairs, festivals, and community events across the city this year.
- We ran 12 preserving workshops to extend the harvest year-round and share local food skills.
- We harvest maple syrup from city trees, too, to demonstrate a local winter crop from Toronto trees (see Syrup in the City)
- We will be starting a public fruit tree mapping initiative to be launched in 2011.
- We helped Toronto’s first community orchard become established.
Visit the website to find out more about this very active project http://www.notfarfromthetree.org/
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Urban Winery Uses Local Fruit
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on February 21st, 2011
Source: Springwise
The Infinite Monkey Theorem is urban winery operated by one mad scientist working out of a converted Quonset hut on a back alley in the Santa Fe Arts District of Denver. It makes no pretensions about having a vineyard of its own. Rather, “we buy the best grapes and we make ridiculously good wine,” in the site’s own words. It’s primarily local fruit that’s used, according to the site, and the results of IMT’s efforts are now available in 125 local restaurants, wine bars and stores.
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Imagine if local wineries bought up all the excess grapes people grow as shading in their backyards? Super-local wines! KA
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Dig Bristol Get Growing Campaign
Posted in Events, Movements by Rob Eales on February 16th, 2011
A new urban food growing campaign is being promoted on our companion site, Sustainable Bristol. 
Images via Bristol Local Food organisers of the Dig Bristol Get Growing Campaign
The Dig Bristol ‘Get Growing’ Map promotes alternatives to traditional garden or allotment growing, as part of the city-regions’ campaign to get more people involved in urban veg production.
Do you want to get mucky in a Community Garden? Or learn to look after chickens at a City Farm? Ever wanted to pluck your own apple from a Shared Orchard? The Bristol ’Get Growing’ Map has put all this information in one easy to use online map, making it simple for people to find peaceful city sanctuaries and social garden spaces on their cities’ doorstep.The Dig Bristol urban growing campaign is run by Bristol Food Network, an umbrella group, made up of individuals, community projects, organisations and businesses who share a vision to transform the Bristol city-region into a sustainable food city.
Urban Cultivators in Romita: Sembradores Urbanos
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on November 25th, 2010
Sustainable Cities Net: Posting from the UCLG Congress in Mexico City 18-25 November
All photos: K. Archdeacon 23-11-10
From Appropedia:
“Sembradores Urbanos is a nonprofit urban agriculture demonstration center and outreach group in Mexico City started by three women living in Mexico. There vision is to transform urban soil into green, productive, and sustainable spaces. They opened the The Center for Urban Agriculture Romita, one of the first urban agricultural community spaces in Mexico. The center demonstrates a variety of urban agriculture and organic gardening techniques as well as serving as a space for workshops and courses. Sembradores Urbanos helps give talks at schools and businesses, puts on community movie nights, and helped start the Barter Exchange Merkado de Trueke in Plaza Romita. They also help install gardens in homes and apartments, hospitals, and juvenile detention centers with local volunteers.”
VEIL colleague Dianne Moy made sure I knew about Sembradores Urbanos before I came to Mexico City, so I visited the site yesterday afternoon. More than three years after the launch, the demonstration projects have increased in diversity, always following a simple, effective approach – making it, naming it and illustrating it – which is lucky because my Spanish is non-existent. This tiny corner of Romita is hidden away in a typically dense neighbourhood, so the gardeners here struggle with the same issues many city-dwellers face – small spaces, limited sunlight, polluted rainfall and nowhere for deliveries of compost or other bulk supplies.
The main website is in Spanish, but the Appropedia article on the project has links to most of the gardening techniques and planting information – both sites are well worth a look.
(I noticed a jar of seed-bombs on the shelf there – will have to keep an eye out for guerilla gardens around the city.)
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Low-Income Sustainable Housing: South Bronx, NY
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on October 22nd, 2010
Source: The Ecologist
From “Greening the Big Apple: how building got sustainable in the Bronx” by Gwen Schantz
In 2008, in an effort to raise money in the face of a crippling budget deficit, the New York City Housing Authority announced that it would sell off several acres of public land in the South Bronx. Rather than simply giving the land to the highest bidder, however, the city prioritised developments that would incorporate sustainable design and give affordable housing a modern green face. Blue Sea Development Company was one among four firms with winning proposals, and will break ground this October on the Forest Houses development, a beacon of green building set among 15 ageing brown-brick public housing towers in the neighbourhood of Morrisania.
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This new building will raise the bar for New York’s green building sector as a whole. Inside and out, the structure is designed to maximise efficiency and exploit green materials and techniques. Energy savings add up bit by bit throughout the building, from the smallest energy-star household appliances to the direct-drive lifts that use as much as 60 per cent less energy than conventional ones.
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In addition to energy-saving systems and design for healthy living, the development will be a showcase of green building materials. The apartments will feature durable faux-wood flooring made from 70 per cent recycled vinyl content, common areas will be laid with recycled nylon carpet tiles and doormats made from recycled tyres, and vinyl panelling made with 53 per cent recycled content will cover interior walls.
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Perhaps the most interesting feature of this new development, however, is the 10,000 sq ft hydroponic greenhouse on the roof that will tie into the efficiencies of the building, utilising waste heat while insulating the top storey against heat and cold. Photovoltaic panels will supply electricity to the greenhouse and power air conditioners in the summer, cooling the greenhouse during the hottest times of the day. Additional cooling will come from passive design that maximises air flow and incorporates shade cloth and evaporative cooling pads.
The greenhouse will collect and filter rainwater to grow hydroponic vegetables year-round, yielding 10-20lb of fresh food per square foot. The rooftop structure won’t be carbon-neutral, but according to Benjamin Linsley, whose firm Bright Farm Systems designed the greenhouse, the energy draw of an urban rooftop greenhouse ‘is tiny compared to putting a greenhouse on the perimeter of the city’, because it benefits from the rising heat that constantly radiates from below.
Read the full article by Gwen Schantz for more details on the construction, including systems for heating & cooling, and reducing pollution-related illnesses for the residents.
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Urban Agriculture: Underused Spaces
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on October 14th, 2010
Source: The Ecologist
From “How to grow food in strange places – by the experts” by Helen Babbs:
You don’t need a garden to grow your own fruit and veg. If you’re a budding horticulturalist with no space to swing a trowel, here are some creative – and sometimes bizarre – ideas from around the world
Mushrooms in disused railway tunnels and strawberries in drainpipes… perhaps it’s silly but I find food growing in strange places both bizarre and romantic. Horticulture can be so creative. It can involve melons growing on net curtains and rice growing on pavements. Introduce an against-the-odds element – like doing it in Tokyo, that seething, steely metropolis – and it’s somehow all the more exciting.
My love of the bizarre and the romantic – and of vegetables – has led me on a journey, albeit it an armchair one. I’ve found people growing food in some unlikely places, for fun and from necessity, and on a personal and a commercial scale.
Rowena and Philip Mansfield farm fruit, herbs and fish in Anglesey, North Wales. I was drawn to this Welsh couple, who have swapped urban life for something very rural, because they’ve been growing strawberries in a drainpipe.
From sections of humble pipe, and employing less humble hydroponics, they’ve harvested 75lb of berries. They’re dismissive of my delight. ‘Nothing original about drainpipes,’ says Philip. ‘We look at all pipes and see them sprouting food. Just pass water along the tube and let the plant roots touch the liquid – they’ll take up whatever nutrients they need.’
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Read the full article by Helen Babbs for more on urban food-growing (and some inspiration)!
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From Township Garden to City Table: Cape Town Planters
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on September 22nd, 2010
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
From “From the Township Garden to the City Table” by Molly Theobald:
Around 1 million people in South Africa—the majority of whom are recent arrivals from the former apartheid homelands, Transkei and Ciskei— live in the shacks that make up Khayelitsha, Nyanga and the area surrounding the Cape Flats outside Cape Town. Just under half, or 40 percent, of the population is unemployed, while the rest barely earn enough income to feed their families. In Xhosa, the most common language found in the area, the word ablalimi means “the planters”. Through partnerships with local grassroots organizations, the aptly named, Abalimi Bezekhaya, a non-profit organization working with the people living in these informal settlements, is helping to create a community of planters who can feed the township.
Abalimi Bezekhaya is helping to transform townships into food—and income—generating green spaces in order to alleviate poverty and to protect the fragile surrounding ecosystem. Providing training and materials, Abalimi Bezekhaya helps people to turn school yards and empty plots of land into gardens. Each gardens is run by 6 to 8 farmers who, with support and time, are soon able to produce enough food to feed their families. Abalimi Bezekhaya encourages community members to plant indigenous trees and other flora in the township streets to create shade and increase awareness of the local plant life, much of which is endangered due to urban sprawl.
But while Abalimi Bezekhaya is bringing food and wild flora into the townships, it is also helping the townships to bring fresh produce into the city. Harvest of Hope (HoH), founded in 2008, purchases the surplus crops from 14 groups of farmers working in Abalimi Bezekhaya’s community plots, packages them in boxes and delivers them to selected schools where parents can purchase them to take home.
For families in Cape Town, HoH means fresh vegetables instead of the older, and often imported, produce at the grocery store. But for families of the farmers working with Hope of Harvest, it means much more. “To grow these vegetables here for me, first, is a life,” said Christina Kaba, a farmer working with HoH in a video about the project. “Second, is how you can give to your family without asking anyone for a donation for money or food. Here you are making money, you are making food.”
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