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New York City Council Pushes Green Infrastructure At New Developments
The New York City Council plans to introduce a bill Wednesday mandating green roofs on certain new developments. Expect push-back from the real estate industry.
July 18, 2018
Bill would mandate rooftops be outfitted with gardens, solar panels or wind turbines
By Joe Anuta
The City Council plans to introduce a bill Wednesday mandating green roofs on certain new developments. Expect push-back from the real estate industry.
The legislation, sponsored by Brooklyn Councilmen Rafael Espinal Jr. and Stephen Levin, would require 100% of the rooftops on newly built or substantially renovated commercial or industrial buildings to be outfitted with some combination of green space, solar panels and wind turbines. The aim of the legislation is to save energy because buildings are responsible for three-quarters of carbon emission in the city.
"We have to look at the infrastructure improvements we can make here to ensure we're doing our part in reducing our carbon footprint and cooling our city down," Espinal told The New York Times.
But increasing construction costs and commandeering rooftop space that is increasingly used for amenities to lure commercial tenants are sure to provoke a confrontation with the development community.
The council has considered a number of bills recently that relate to urban wind power, which is far from the most viable way to make the city greener. Reducing consumption would have a much bigger impact, and wind power is most effective when harnessed at offshore farms.
Is it Really Safe To Eat Food Grown In Urban Gardens?
I wanted to start a vegetable garden in my backyard. But my yard is in Brooklyn, a land of street garbage, truck exhaust, and stray cats. So I decided to figure it out: Was it really safe to grow food there?
Is It Really Safe To Eat Food Grown In Urban Gardens?
© Gunmanphoto/Shutterstock
I wanted to start a vegetable garden in my backyard. But my yard is in Brooklyn, a land of street garbage, truck exhaust, and stray cats. So I decided to figure it out: Was it really safe to grow food there? I had no idea that the rabbit hole I burrowed in urban gardens would lead to dead cows in Georgia, a global contamination meeting in Sweden, and the strange price we pay to make sure kids don’t catch on fire.
I started by calling Murray McBride, a professor at Cornell University who researches contamination, to find out if city gardens are really safe. According to McBride, I should be worried about one main thing:
“We found lead to be the biggest problem,” he told me. “There can be high concentrations of lead even in the garden beds.”
Making things with this toxic metal is a bit passé, but lead doesn’t go away. The lead painted in houses and used in gasoline and industry is still floating around in dust and landing in backgrounds. But there’s a twist: plants don’t generally take this lead up through their roots.
“It’s not in the lettuce. It’s in the dirt that may stick to the lettuce,” another scientist named Sally Brown would tell me later. So I should use compost and wash my plants before eating them, McBride explained. I had my answer. Or so I thought.
“So I should just buy compost at the gardening store?” I asked.
“Well … a lot of soil in those stores isn’t well regulated,” McBride told me. “Don't trust topsoil. And make sure you’re not buying sewer sludge.”
“… What?”
© Devan King/The Nature Conservancy
McBride told me that sanitation plants take sewage sludge, clean it up a bit, and sell it as fertilizer. One popular brand of fertilizer, for instance, is sewer sludge from Milwaukee that’s sold around the country. These “biosolids,” as they’re called, can have pharmaceuticals, lead, toxic metals, and fire retardants in them. Safe amounts … maybe.
Hundreds of people who live near places where farmers dump biosolids have complained that the biosolids made them sick. Andy McElmurray, a dairy farmer in Georgia, fertilized his fields with biosolids. He grew hay in the fields and fed it to his cattle. Hundreds of cows got sick and died. McElmurray said the biosolids must have been tainted with industrial waste from nearby factories, poisoning the cows. He argued his case in court … and won.
“The administrative record contains evidence that senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of the EPA's biosolids program,” the court ruled.
I officially wanted to know more. Are these biosolids really that dangerous?
“You should talk to Robert Hale about it,” McBride told me. “He’s one of the world experts on a lot of these chemicals.”
So I called Hale, an environmental chemistry professor at the College of William & Mary who researches pollution.
USDA/Public Domain
Hale told me that he’s analyzed biosolids and found all kinds of contaminants.
“They found flame retardants in this stuff in 2000,” he said. “And they’re still in there.” These chemicals are used to make stuff not catch on fire, and a lot of people are worried about their health and environmental effects. The EPA says they may cause learning disorders, thyroid disorders, and cancer.
And this stuff isn’t just in gardens. Most biosolids are spread over farmland. In fact, about half the sewage sludge in the country is applied to farmland (though generally farmland used to grown stuff like soybeans for fuel and animal chow rather than human food). Hale has even found flame retardants in Antarctica.
“Is that … a problem?” I asked. “Are biosolids safe?”
“That’s kind of the six million dollar question,” he answered. Nobody’s done enough research to know for sure how these chemicals affect people, or how many chemicals is too many. It wasn't really the answer I was hoping for.
“Should I be worried?” I asked. “Should the government step in?”
“The government is part of this,” Hale answered.
© From water to trees to bees, there are a lot of natural elements that go into making our food that aren't listed on nutrition labels. PHOTO: Chris Helzer/TNC
The governnment actually makes a lot of these biosolids; they sell them and give them to farmers. “We’ve got this viewpoint in this country that things are safe until proven dangerous,” he added.
Hale says that other countries are more concerned. He once gave a talk in Sweden where experts from around the world met to discuss contamination. They were banning a particular flame retardant.
“They were congratulating themselves on how they solved the problem on a global basis,” Hale said. “I stood up and said, “Uh guys? All you have to do is look at the production statistics. We use 95 percent of it in North America, and we’re still using it.” A few jaws in the audience dropped.
I wasn’t concerned about urban gardens anymore. Instead, I was feeling the weight of yet another massive global problem settling onto my shoulders. Did I really have to live in a contaminated world now?
Still, something itched. This all seemed so extreme and, I don’t know, oddly cinematic. Was the situation really so dire? Was there something oddly familiar about this storyline? And would it make for a good Mr. Robot meets Farmville style show?
I wanted to talk to another expert before I made up my mind. So I called up Sally Brown, a University of Washington professor who, you guessed it, also researches this stuff.
We chatted about urban gardens as I wondered how I’d bring up biosolids. Fortunately, she started telling me about a great urban gardening program in Washington and mentioned that it used biosolids.
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too excited. “I heard biosolids are dangerous.”
“They’re not,” she said flatly. “People always think they are, but they’re not.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“I talked to Robert Hale,” I said.
“He’s made a lot of his fame and fortune by telling people they’re going to die if they eat biosolids,” she said. “You can make a name for yourself screaming the sky is falling.”
© K Martinko
Brown didn’t exactly disagree with Hale’s research. She told me that, yes, there are flame retardants and other chemicals in sewage sludge, but the levels are kept low (Hale isn't so sure about that), they aren’t going into the plants, and nobody really knows if they can make people sick. Besides, the chemicals in sewage come mostly … from our houses.
“They’re in our TVs, they’re in our furniture, they’re in our laptops,” she said. “They used to be in kids’ pajamas. The concentration of this stuff in dust in your home is much higher than in biosolids.”
Brown pointed out that if your kid chews on his flame retardant pajamas, he’s getting exposed to “several million times” more of the stuff than is in biosolids. Hale actually told me something similar: a couple decades ago, a study found that flame retardants in Swedish women’s breast milk have been increasing exponentially over a ten year period. Then someone tested American women.
“The levels were ten times higher,” Hale said. The flame retardants probably came from indoor dust. Hale agrees that there are generally more of these contaminates inside than in biosolids; he's just worried about them everywhere.
I was not feeling particularly reassured.
“Wait, so should I be worried about all these chemicals in my house?” I asked Brown.
“It’s really, really hard to say,” she answered. “Just because chemicals are there doesn’t mean they can hurt you.” Besides, even if these chemicals are questionable, they might be worth the risk.
“It’s much better to have a kid exposed to flame retardants than for the kid to catch on fire,” Brown said.
So there you have it: We’re putting sewage with flame retardants, toxic metals, and other surprise stuff in it over our gardens and farmland. But that’s largely because sewage comes from the buildings we live and work in, which have even more of these chemicals in them. And the jury’s still out on whether these chemicals in these amounts are dangerous contaminates or harmless specks of dust. Or somewhere in between. But hey, at least we don’t paint our walls with lead anymore.
On the bright side, the scientists all seemed to agree on one thing: As long as I use compost and wash my vegetables, I can totally start an urban garden.
Can We Make Green Roofs More Biodiverse?
A study of decades-old German green roofs found that they don’t support a wide range of animal and plant life. But researchers and designers are trying to change that.
A man puts a pallet of live plants on the roof of the Illinois Department of Agriculture building in Springfield, Ill. Seth Perlman/AP
Can We Make Green Roofs More Biodiverse?
A study of decades-old German green roofs found that they don’t support a wide range of animal and plant life. But researchers and designers are trying to change that.
Every time Kelly Ksiazek-Mikenas scrambled onto a new green roof, it was hard to tell exactly where she was. The city below was definitely Berlin or Neubrandenburg, but the expanse of scraggly greens ahead of her looked a lot like the green roofs in Chicago, her home.
The only difference was that the German green roofs were much older than anything found in the United States: three to nine times older. Which is why the Northwestern University Ph.D. student in plant biology spent her summer there a few years ago.
The ability of plants to absorb and evaporate stormwater, reduce a building’s energy use, and clean up some air pollution makes green roofs effective as a sustainable-building technique. They also just look nice. Germany began tinkering with green-roof technology back in the late 1800s when owners of some buildings tried fireproofing with gravel, sand, and sod.
In 1975, German construction businesses got together to document the nitty-gritty construction standards. Their 2002 manual detailed everything from the ideal roof slope to the best soil depth and waterproof barriers. By the time Americans started experimenting with green roofs, their German counterparts were already professionals.
America’s green roofs were modeled after Germany’s. In both countries, the standard design is a thin layer of lightweight, low-moisture, and low-nutrient dirt blanketed by sedum, a hardy genus of succulent. Landscapers can easily install a roof of this type and check in on it once or twice a year.
A farmer stands in front of his sedums in Montana's Bitterroot Valley. The plants spring from a geo-textile mat (foreground) topped by thin layers of soil. The mats will eventually be transported and installed on rooftops. (Laura Zuckerman/Reuters)
“We ended up just copying what the Germans did,” said Ksiazek-Mikenas. By “we,” she meant the organization that defines American construction standards, which used the German protocol as a template in the early 2000s, as the green-building movement was taking off in the U.S.
The German model was dependable and low-maintenance. Why start from scratch, Americans figured, when someone else had done the stressful experimentation and developed the final product? Besides, even in cities that offered substantial financial incentives for green roofs, you got nothing extra for keeping them lush. Developers could follow the German method, stick hardy plants in a roof, and walk away, rewarded for their environmentally friendly choice.
Ksiazek-Mikenas wanted to know if green roofs ever come to host a wide range of species. American roofs were too young for her to tell. “As an ecologist, I realized a decade is such a tiny period of time as far as a succession of a plant community goes,” she said.
So she examined the diversity of 16 German installations that were between one and 93 years old. She collaborated with Manfred Köhler, a long-time researcher in the German green roof scene, who had monitored about a third of the plots at least once a year for between 12 and 27 years. The pair also closely studied 13 other roofs of different ages for one season. That way, they could measure how individual green roofs evolve, and approximate how one might look after nearly a century.
The results, published earlier this year in Urban Naturalist, make a case for breaking with tradition and investing more resources in green roofs.
As it turns out, the German plots stayed the same. Time didn’t translate into a broader spectrum of plant and animal species, just more plants overall. Rooftops receive more sunlight and wind, so as a precaution against weeds, green roofs are commonly given soil that holds little moisture and few nutrients. Species (like chives) that proliferated the most, the researchers found, could withstand the setting’s harsh conditions. “The survivors have traits that allow adaptation,” Ksiazek-Mikenas said.
Chuck Friedrich, a horticulturist and landscape architect, learned a similar lesson. As a member of the subcommittee drafting green roof recommendations in the U.S., Friedrich saw the German style adopted around the country, and tried it himself. After a decade of battling one test installation, he gave up maintaining the right balance of plants.
The hardiest plants, Friedrich realized, dominate green roofs. In subtropical North Carolina, where he lives, sedums dry up in the sun unless watered frequently. To Friedrich, a truly hand-off roof in the South must incorporate a range of native plants. If you’re dead set on the German approach, “it is maintenance, maintenance, maintenance,” he said, “and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Lauren Woodward Stanley, a Texas-based architect who has advised the City of Austin on green roofs, tests different species as alternatives to sedums. Not all make it—the blue grama grass died out, while red yucca thrives—but that’s part of working with plants. “If you really drill down [into] defining ‘exactly what you can expect,’ as if it’s a known quantity and not a living system, you’re discounting what it is,” she said.
A landscaper mows the grass during its annual grooming on the roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre. The six-acre green roof has a range of indigenous plants, as well as beehives. (Andy Clark/Reuters)
There is rising interest in native green roofs, and Ksiazek-Mikenas is focused on finding native species that can tough it out on Midwestern rooftops. Going with native plants means choosing unpredictability because little of this work has been done before—especially in Chicago, where the usual sedums do just fine. But it may be more ecologically rewarding than plopping down proven species.
For green-roof projects where experimentation isn’t possible, Ksiazek-Mikenas has advice on how to modify the German style for greater biodiversity. Start by planting the widest range of suitable plants possible, not just one or two kinds of sedum. Spend a little bit of time culling a species that’s taken up more than its fair share of the roof. Put up some bee nesting boxes or leave some decaying wood behind to encourage insects into a new home.
Individual green roofs are often small, but these slight changes can provide havens for species whose ground-level territories are fragmented or disappearing. “Even minimal is better than nothing,” she said.
About the Author
Leslie Nemo is a writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, and elsewhere.
Green Roofs Improve Our Lives. Why Don't We Have More of Them?
Green Roofs Improve Our Lives. Why Don't We Have More of Them?
Jenna Hammerich, Iowa City Climate Advocates Writers Group
Published April 20, 2018
Every day, it seems, a new building appears in our skyline, whether in Iowa City’s downtown or Riverfront Crossings districts, Coralville’s Iowa River Landing, or in Tiffin or North Liberty. Sometimes the new building is LEED certified — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the rating system used by the U.S. Green Building Council to measure a building’s sustainability and resource-efficiency. A few are even beautiful. But almost all of them have dead, black tar and asphalt roofs. Empty, heat-sink roofs. Wasted space.
Imagine seeing a magnolia tree in full bloom on top of an apartment building or prairie grass swaying in the breeze out your bedroom window. Imagine tending a vegetable garden on the roof of a school or strolling through a meadow on the roof of a hotel.
Despite our county’s recent environmental strides — e.g., Iowa City Council’s endorsing federal carbon fee-and-dividend legislation and mandating that multifamily units provide recycling — only a handful of buildings in our area have green roofs.
Green or “living” roofs — those partially or completely covered with soil and vegetation over a waterproof membrane — provide multiple benefits to individuals and communities. By absorbing rainwater, they reduce erosion, prevent flooding, and filter pollutants. They prolong roofing membranes by protecting them from ultraviolet rays. They conserve energy and lower air-conditioning costs by absorbing and reflecting heat. They reduce noise and air pollution, provide wildlife habitat and sequester carbon dioxide. Plus, research continues to show that visual and physical access to nature improves our health. (In one notable study, hospital patients with views of green space recovered faster.)
Green roofs can function as parks, urban farms, playgrounds, outdoor classrooms and peaceful retreats, even in winter. They can be public or private. They can be installed on most roofs (up to a 45-degree pitch), at various levels of cost, access, and maintenance — from shallow, lightweight, perennial grass plantings requiring little to no maintenance to deeper beds with trees and shrubs. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, simple green roofs cost about $10 per square foot to install and provide a 220 to 247 percent return on investment.
Given that green roofs improve our vistas, our air, our water, our soil, our moods, our health and our roofs; provide food; reduce community resistance to infill; create jobs; increase buildings’ marketability; pay for themselves; and, I would argue, make an area significantly more attractive to young professionals — why don’t we have more of them?
Two reasons, as I see it: lack of understanding and funding.
The U.S. as a whole lags behind the rest of the world in supporting green roofs. Germany has encouraged the industry since the 1970s via incentives and requirements at multiple levels of government, resulting in 10 million square feet of new green roofs every year. The U.S. installs 7 million.
That said, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, D.C., have robust green-roof industries, thanks to green infrastructure mandates, and San Francisco and Denver recently approved initiatives requiring all new and existing buildings meeting certain thresholds to incorporate green roofs.
I urge every jurisdiction in Iowa to develop green roof policies for all new developments. Cities and counties could also advocate for green-roof tax incentives at the state level, plus more funding for cities’ Stormwater Best Management Practices Grants, which financially assist residents who install stormwater features, including green roofs, on their properties. (Coralville, Iowa City and North Liberty currently provide these grants.)
If you’re a homeowner interested in installing a green roof on an existing building, first contact a structural engineer (most architectural firms have one on staff) to ensure that your roof can withstand the weight. While you can do the installation yourself, I recommend finding a certified contractor like West Branch Roofing, T&K Roofing or Country Landscapes, which work with Roof Top Sedums in Davenport. Visit jcgreenroofs.wordpress.com for a list of local financial resources and certified installers.
In this era of climate change, only cities that invest in green infrastructure will thrive. Iowa has embraced renewable energy. Now let’s take the next step and green up our rooftops.
Jenna Hammerich is a member of Iowa City Climate Advocates and a resident of Iowa City.
Future Cities Have Green Roofs
Future Cities Have Green Roofs
Green roofs can provide several benefits, not only to the building itself but also to the city environment. Besides the mitigation of noise pollution or the moderation of temperatures inside buildings, vegetated roofs also help to filter and purify the air and offset overheating generated by the city. In addition, having a permeable surface minimizes the effects of floods and lessens the possibility of leaks. Being really as beneficial as they look the remaining question is: why aren’t we turning every unused and cemented rooftop into green spaces? Well, Copenhagen, San Francisco, and Paris have already started!
Starting at a city scale…
By 2009 Denmark was in charge of the UN Climate Change Conference COP15. During that period the focus on green roofs intensified and the city ended up setting a goal for urban design with green roofs in the Climate Plan of the City of Copenhagen. The mandate of green roofs for all Municipalities buildings was one of the guidelines. But today Copenhagen has more than 40 green roofs installed on a number of different types of buildings from residential condominiums to libraries to cruise terminals.
Also in 2009, Toronto City Council adopted a bylaw requiring and governing the construction of green roofs on new developments. This was first applied to new building permit applications for residential, commercial and institutional development but then extended to industrial buildings in 2012.
This year, 2016, San Francisco became the first city in USA where it is required that new buildings incorporate from 15 to 30 percent of roof space with solar or green roofs
and extending to the whole country…
Curiously, in the year that Paris hosted the COP21, France tried to approve a project law stipulating that any new building in a commercial area would have to install vegetation devices or renewable energy production on all or part of the roof. Although the approval of the law was widespread in 2015, the law for the biodiversity act and green roof statement has been slowed down by the Senate, which claimed lack of study on the negative impact of green roofs. But it seems now it is official and by 2017 “Bringing nature back into the city” with an“obligation for every new commercial development to integrate green roofs OR solar panels”. Some problems might come from this “or” as many developers might be more likely to choose solar, but it’s undeniable that this is a major step in the right direction. In turn Paris is taking this direction seriously as the Mayor Anne Hidalgo stipulated the goal of creating 100 hectares of living walls and green roofs by the year 2020.
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Here’s Why Rooftop Gardens Are Good For Your Health, Your House, And Your Wallet
Our vote is yes! The Baxter Senior Living facility will be designed to allow installation of a rooftop greenhouse, according to a recent Daily News article.
Here’s Why Rooftop Gardens Are Good For Your Health, Your House, And Your Wallet
- Author: Barbara and Clair Ramsey
Alaska Home and Real Estate
03-08-18
Artist rendering: Baxter Senior Living, a planned senior housing project in East Anchorage, included rooftop greenhouses as part of its initial plans, but that piece is on hold until the city approves new regulations. (Provided by J.R. Wilcox / Baxter Senior Living)
Our vote is yes! The Baxter Senior Living facility will be designed to allow installation of a rooftop greenhouse, according to a recent Daily News article.
This is exciting! While food self-reliance is a major benefit, there are at least two other reasons why this type of development is a good thing for Anchorage.
First, garden roofs potentially result in cost savings in several ways. According to a study by the National Research Council of Canada, normal roof temperatures can exceed 150 degrees on hot days. As the roof heats, air conditioning kicks in to maintain interior comfort level. In cold weather, interior heat seeps out the roof. These extreme hot and cold temperatures cause the roof membrane to dramatically expand and contract, which decreases roof lifespan.
A garden roof helps to maintain a more even temperature inside the building by shading during hot days and insulating during cold days. Eliminating temperature extremes reduces energy needs, allows mechanical equipment to work less, and increases a roof's lifespan. All of this saves money. When spread out over the "asphalt jungle" of a city, it helps to reduce urban heat island effect created by the solar gain amplified from man-made materials like asphalt and concrete.
Additional benefits are a natural filtration of rain run-off as garden roofs slow water movement. Based on a New York Metropolitan Region research report, a garden roof retains over 74 percent of rainfall. A standard roof retains only about 25 percent of rainfall, and the resulting run off allows much more water to flood streets and inundate drainage systems. This extra water weight is why a garden roof needs additional engineering and structural reinforcement.
This technology is not new. Roanoke, Virginia's municipal building has a successful green rooftop. The Chicago City Hall's roof is home for beehives, which help pollinate the green roof plants. Pennsylvania State University has four large-scale buildings: 1. Forest Resources Building, built 2006, with 4,700 feet of extensive roof plantings; 2. Root Cellar, built in 2006 and 2007, with six separate sections totaling 4,500 feet of green roof; 3. Student Health Center, built 2008, with 12,500 feet. of green roof; and 4. Dickinson School of Law Building, built in 2009, with 22,000 feet of green roof. (The last two are not public accessible.)
Next, rooftop gardens and greenhouses have definite health benefits for participants. The AARP offers five primary benefits.
1. Outdoor activity helps increase Vitamin D levels, which benefits bones and the immune system.
2. According to a 2006 Dubbo Study of the Elderly, gardening might also help to lower the onset of dementia by 36 percent.
3. A study in the Netherlands found gardening helped test subjects lower the cortisol (stress hormone) levels in their blood and positively enhanced their mood.
4. Gardening is a great aerobic exercise that helps with stamina, strength and flexibility.
5. Gardening helps to foster a sense of community and accomplishment. Everyone can contribute, no matter what their physical level. Harvesting the nutritional results is a wonderful reward and provides an incentive to continue.
If you doubt the benefits, try wandering through Bell's Nursery during the winter and see how you feel. Did you notice others lingering with their coffee or strolling through the plants? You might not have even realized why you went.
So let's all get excited about the benefits and adapt new building regulations to improve Anchorage's livability and provide green spaces in our urban jungle. Who knows, as the process and designs develop, roof gardens may even become more prevalent on residential homes.
About this Author
Barbara and Clair Ramsey are local associate brokers specializing in residential real estate. They can be reached at info@ramseyteam.com.
This High-Tech Skyscraper Will Be Covered In Vegetation
We’ve known for years that being in nature, or even having a view of it, can help soothe the soul and make us feel calmer. So it’s little wonder, then, that architects are increasingly designing buildings that incorporate all manner of plants, grasses, and other kinds of greenery, with an increasing number of extraordinary designs popping up in cities around the world.
This High-Tech Skyscraper Will Be Covered In Vegetation
BIG
We’ve known for years that being in nature, or even having a view of it, can help soothe the soul and make us feel calmer. So it’s little wonder, then, that architects are increasingly designing buildings that incorporate all manner of plants, grasses, and other kinds of greenery, with an increasing number of extraordinary designs popping up in cities around the world.
The latest to break ground is in Singapore, with the 280-meter-tall skyscraper set to become one of the highest buildings in the small city-state.
Designed by Carlo Ratti Associati and Bjarke Ingels Group, the building will blend urban life with tropical nature and feature office space, residences, and retail sites.
As the images show, once complete, green vegetation will seemingly sprout from the exterior of the building, “allowing glimpses into the green oases blooming from the base, core, and rooftop,” Carlo Ratti says.
But the interior will be even more lush, with a “rainforest plaza” and small park greeting visitors as they enter the building. According to ArchDaily, so-called “activity pockets” will be used for fitness sessions, art installations, and various other events.
From the ninth floor you’ll find a 30-meter-high space for the “Green Oasis” featuring a “botanical promenade” with views of the interior as well as of the city itself.
Ratti says the tower’s natural elements will be “essential to the experience of the building,” as will its “advanced digital technologies, offering us a glimpse of tomorrow’s offices.”
Those technologies include sensors for automatic control of the environment, as well as Internet of Things and artificial intelligence capabilities so tenants can customize their experience of the building.
Benefits of green buildings
Besides fostering feelings of well-being among workers, tenants and visitors, buildings bedecked with greenery can also reduce pollution levels and heat buildup, while also helping to dampen noise, and, with some designs, even enable food production.
The Italian city of Milan is already home to a couple of buildings like this. Designed by Stefano Boeri, the Bosco Verticale (Italian for “Vertical Forest”) is covered with more than 21,000 trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. Boeri is working on similar designs for Lausanne in Switzerland, and also Nanjing in China.
Singapore’s green tower is expected to throw open its doors in 2021.
Rooftop Gardening For Greener Cities
February 15, 2018
Rooftop Gardening For Greener Cities
Shykh Seraj with Sheikh Al Ahmad Nahid at the latter's rooftop garden in Chittagong. PHOTO: Hridoye Mati O Manush
Rooftop farming is expanding throughout the country very fast.
Two and a half years ago, the initiative of featuring rooftop farming on the television was taken by Channel I's Hridoye Mati O Manush (Soil and People in Heart). In fact, this was my second attempt to expand rooftop agriculture across the country.
During the late 80's, I worked with rooftop gardening in Bangladesh Television's Mati O Manush. At that time, many people raised orchards to grow Kazi guava on their rooftops. Cultivation of other fruits and flowers on rooftops also started. Many housewives and working people used to find self-satisfaction by growing fruits and vegetables on rooftop gardens.
The work was very much out of passion. Later on, I did many TV programmes that featured even poultry farms on rooftops. Raising chicken on rooftops and balconies spread rapidly afterward. Many unemployed youths, housewives, even service-holders, and businessmen started investing in the poultry industry. I mentioned those stories in different articles and TV programmes. A huge expansion of rooftop farming followed countrywide.
Today, more and more people are becoming interested in rooftop gardening, especially in city areas. Many have already turned their passion into a commercial endeavour. Their efforts are helping to make the cities greener, despite lack of cultivable lands there. Some people even rent others' roofs for the purpose. It's expanding also because people always prefer chemical-free organic vegetables and fruits. They can easily get organic and fresh food from rooftop gardening. Moreover, through the spread of greenery on the rooftop, these people are also contributing to creating a healthy environment in urban areas.
Dhaka city has been facing the question of liveability for years. In the yearly residential report of UK's Economist Intelligence Unit, Dhaka stands at 137 among 140 cities of the world. If we want to get out of this situation, obviously Dhaka has to be turned green. The growing number of concrete structures in Dhaka means shrinking of greenery in the megacity.
In 1997, according to the decision of Kiyoto Protocol, Japan made it mandatory to grow spacious gardens on roofs to save the cities from the greenhouse effect. But very few people in our country think that the roof needs to be filled with greenery. When we took 'rooftop farming' as a regular TV programme, there were many issues in front of us. First, we can ensure the production of pure and nutritious vegetables and crops by small-scale rooftop agriculture. Secondly, we can contribute to a better environment by doing it. Thirdly, the roof can be a source of income. Fourthly, it can refresh the mind.
According to World Health Organization, every year 250 thousand people are getting affected by cancer in our country and 150 thousand die. The number is increasing day by day. According to International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) survey, the rate of death caused by cancer is 7.5% in Bangladesh at present. One of the many reasons for cancer is the consumption of poisonous food. We need to produce pure food to evade such poisoning. We need to turn to organic farming. To meet the family needs, many people are growing organic vegetables, fruits, and crops on their roofs.
I have seen that retired government and private service holders, businessmen and industrialists have made their leisure time productive by getting involved in rooftop agriculture. It gives them peace, they say. Even a section of people who don't have their own house or roof, convince their house owner and do gardening in one side of the roof or even in the balcony. It also provides nutrition for the family. Besides cultivating fruits and vegetables and raising chickens, pigeons, turkeys etc, some are cultivating fish in drums set on roofs. This might sound strange, even goats, sheep, and cows are being raised on rooftops.
I have seen an inspiring scene recently. Sheikh Al Ahmad Nahid, assistant professor of Fisheries Department of Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, established an integrated rooftop agriculture research centre on the roof at their campus quarters. Many students successfully do research there. Along with vegetables and fruits, there is a reputable research centre for aquarium fish reproduction. He is finding new technologies to spread rooftop agriculture nationwide. This is a great milestone for our rooftop farming mission.
Those who are building a new home can take advice from experts to make the roof suitable for small-scale agriculture. Those who don't have their own home can do it by persuading their house owner or do it in the balcony. I have seen people of different cities becoming interested in rooftop agriculture. To lessen the pollution of the city and increase the oxygen in the air, rooftop agriculture can be a nice solution. In this case, the government has a role to play. For example, they can make it mandatory to arrange solar panel and greenery while constructing a building or house. Everyone will make their roof green. I hope that the day is not far when every city including Dhaka will have a layer of greenery.
Anchorage Wants To Make It Easier To Build Rooftop Greenhouses
Anchorage Wants To Make It Easier To Build Rooftop Greenhouses
February 12, 2018 | Author: Devin Kelly
Artist rendering: Baxter Senior Living, a planned senior housing project in East Anchorage, included rooftop greenhouses as part of its initial plans, but that piece is on hold until the city approves new regulations. (Provided by J.R. Wilcox / Baxter Senior Living)
As part of plans to build senior housing in East Anchorage, the development company Baxter Senior Living wanted to give residents a place to garden — and settled on rooftop greenhouses.
But the idea ran into trouble at the city's permitting office. The greenhouses would have made the building too tall.
It was a wrinkle for a new project — but it also fed into a larger conversation in Anchorage about making it easier for people to grow and even sell their own food. Now, a few years later, there's a proposal from the administration of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz to make rooftop greenhouses easier to build.
The proposal would allow developers to build rooftop greenhouses 10 feet above height limits. It's aimed at new construction for large apartment, commercial and industrial buildings, said city planner Ryan Yelle.
The measure, being introduced to the Anchorage Assembly Tuesday, is one of several efforts by the city to ease regulations farmers and food advocates have called burdensome. In the past two years, the city has adopted laws that cut fees for farmers markets, eased the sale of cottage foods like bread and jam, and allowed the markets to be located on parkland.
For the greenhouses, a land use permit and inspection would be required, because of how much a greenhouse weighs and holds water. The greenhouse also can't block sunlight for neighbors between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. in the winter.
Anchorage, like all other towns and villages in Alaska, is vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply network. The state imports nearly all of its food, mostly on container ships. A mechanical problem on a ship in Seattle can mean that milk, eggs or bananas don't make it to Anchorage shelves.
The rooftop greenhouse proposal isn't meant to fix Anchorage's supply shortage, Yelle said. He framed it as an extra way for developers to offer gardening to people who live and work in Anchorage.
City restrictions haven't entirely stopped rooftop greenhouses from sprouting up in Anchorage. But the current laws make it more difficult, Yelle said.
J.R. Wilcox is the president of Baxter Senior Living, a senior housing facility being built in East Anchorage. The plans call for 116 apartment units for seniors, including services for residents with Alzheimer's and dementia.
The company's architect came up with the idea of putting greenhouses on the roof, Wilcox said. Renderings of the project show transparent structures with slanted tops.
"This is something really nice in assisted living, for people to be able to garden," Wilcox said.
But the greenhouse would have exceeded the height limit for the building, Wilcox said. The developers would have had to remove an entire story to make it work. After talking to the city, it turned out that changing the law itself was easier than granting an exception to the rule, Wilcox said.
Rooftop gardens are ubiquitous in New York City and other cities around the U.S. and Canada. Yelle, the Anchorage planner, said he looked at regulations in New York and Montreal while drafting the city's proposal.
"It's a very popular thing throughout the north," Wilcox said.
More than a year ago, the Alaska Food Policy Council, a nonprofit coalition that advocates for more self-reliance in statewide food production, began floating the rooftop greenhouse idea to city planners and economic development officials.
Danny Consenstein, a board member of the council, said there's a business argument for changing regulations that otherwise make it difficult to garden on a small scale.
A few months ago, the Food Policy Council and the Berkowitz administration announced "mini-grants" for local food projects. Consenstein said he's been impressed while reading through the applications. Many came from schools and involve hydroponics, the process of growing plants indoors in water, Consenstein said.
Consenstein said rooftop gardening is another piece of that puzzle.
"There are exciting, good things going on at the school level, the apartment complex level, at the community garden level," Consenstein said.
When applying for its building permit, Baxter Senior Living excluded a greenhouse from the plans.
But Wilcox said the building is months from being finished, and it's been engineered so a greenhouse can be added if the Berkowitz administration's proposal becomes law.
The Anchorage Assembly is expected to hold a hearing on the proposal on Feb. 27.
About this Author
Devin Kelly covers Anchorage city government and general assignments.
Hong Kong Urban Farmers Find Bliss In Rooftop Gardens
Hong Kong Urban Farmers Find Bliss In Rooftop Gardens
Sustainable living proponents praise benefits but lament regulatory hurdles
PUBLISHED: Saturday, 25, 2017
Rooftops in densely populated Hong Kong are fast turning greener and more fertile as urban farmers seek to grow crops from their homes and offices and create a more livable community.
Kale, cherry tomatoes, radishes, and all kinds of herbs are blossoming atop commercial and residential buildings, with farmers believing that they can surmount space restrictions and make the city a more pleasant home for its urban dwellers.
Some 60 rooftop farms and 1,400 farmers have emerged locally over the past decade, and a handful of farms are added each year, according to Mathew Pryor, an associate professor and head of the landscape architecture division at the University of Hong Kong.
More than 7.38 million people now live in just 2,754 square km in the city, and only 24 per cent of the land is developable urban area. Hong Kong is likely to stay the world’s most densely populated city in 2025, according to a Bloomberg study.
Will a lack of open space damage generations of Hongkongers?
Sustainable living group Rooftop Republic is one of the city’s most active farming groups. It now manages 33 farms spanning 30,000 sq ft.
“Growing up in high-rise, high-density cities such as Hong Kong naturally disconnects us from nature,” says Andrew Tsui, co-founder of the two-year-old start-up.
“So I started thinking, as ordinary working city dwellers, how we could incorporate nature into our lifestyle.”
Working at a private equity fund until five years ago, Tsui has always been interested in sustainability in his projects. He grew curious to see whether it could take root in Hong Kong.
“[Urban farming] was still mainly in the US and Europe at that time, where people have bigger pieces of land and can build community farms around neighbourhoods,” he says.
The key product of urban farming is really happiness
MATHEW PRYOR, HKU
Tsui then started a part-time interest group and tested out rooftop farming. In 2015, he co-founded Rooftop Republic with Pol Fabrega, who had worked in the non-profit and education sectors, and Michelle Hong, whose expertise included marketing, communications and project management.
Now the social enterprise serves corporate clients such as local developer Swire Properties by turning their rooftop space into farms. The group also provides workshops and organises community activities.
All the city’s rooftop farming groups are formed spontaneously from the bottom up, Pryor claims.
His research shows that the farmers are usually either young professionals or early retirees concerned about the environment.
To them, rooftop farming is much more than just about producing food, Pryor says. In fact, none of the farms produces much food or even intends to.
“The key product of urban farming is really happiness,” he says.
“It’s the social cohesion and the community interaction.”
“Everybody I met in a rooftop farm, community farm, or weekend farm – they are blissfully happy,” he says.
“They grow a few tomatoes that you wouldn’t buy in the shops, and they are really, really happy, spending weeks posting images on Facebook of their two tomatoes.”
Pryor describes the potential for urban farming as enormous. He estimates that Hong Kong has more than 600 hectares of farmable rooftop area.
Demand for farming in the city is also high.
Some 1,500 people, for example, have entered a lucky draw for 55 planting plots in the community garden at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park in Sai Ying Pun this year, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which operates the space. The planting plots can be rented for four months at a time.
But Tsui and other urban farmers face significant regulatory hurdles.
To transform an idle rooftop into a farm or set up a garden for a new building, one must secure several approvals from the Buildings Department and other government offices.
Officials should recognise the positive impact of rooftop farming, Pryor contends, and clarify how to navigate regulatory issues, as many building owners are reluctant to transform their rooftops due to legal uncertainties.
“Once you do that, I think everybody will be doing it,” he says. “Hong Kong could be a huge model for citywide farming as a social activity.”
More Urban Farms, Rooftop Gardens in Singapore With Enhanced Greenery Scheme
More Urban Farms, Rooftop Gardens in Singapore With Enhanced Greenery Scheme
Urban farms, like this one at Raffles City, help to optimise under-utilised roof spaces. (Photo: Edible Garden City)
SINGAPORE: Urban farms and communal rooftop food gardens might soon be a more common sight in Singapore, with the enhancement of an urban greenery scheme.
This was announced by Second Minister for National Development Desmond Lee on Thursday (Nov 9), at the opening of greenery and landscape design event GreenUrbanScape Asia.
The Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) programme, which aims to replace greenery lost during a building’s development or redevelopment, will be enhanced to improve both the quality and quantity of urban greenery, Mr. Lee said.
This includes encouraging property developers to house urban gardens and communal rooftop gardens in their buildings and increase landscaping on walls and roofs - which can also help lower ambient temperature.
The Tree House condominium in Bukit Panjang has green walls that are designed to reduce ambient temperature. (Photo: Finbarr Fallon)
“Such features have been gaining popularity in our urban landscape, as many Singaporeans have a keen interest in farming and gardening,” said Mr Lee, who is also the Minister for Social and Family Development.
The enhanced LUSH programme will encourage more people to take up urban farming and gardening near their offices and homes, while allowing developers to better utilise rooftop space, he added.
First introduced in 2009, the scheme has contributed to more than 130 hectares of greenery so far, or the equivalent of about 210 football fields.
GREENERY DENSITY FRAMEWORK INTRODUCED
A framework to assess the volume of greenery will also be introduced under the LUSH scheme, with the green plot ratio standards to outline the density of greenery required in a development.
“In this way, developers will be encouraged to consider not just the amount of landscaped area provided in their projects, but also how lush the greenery will be,” Mr Lee said.
The announcement comes as Singapore ramps up efforts to inject more greenery in spaces across the island, with a target of 200 hectares of rooftop greenery by 2030 set out in the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint. Currently, there are around 100 hectares of skyrise greenery across the country, or the equivalent of more than 100 football fields.
The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum has planter boxes integrated into its facade. (Photo: Finbarr Fallon)
ROOF GARDENS HOME TO “DIVERSE RANGE OF WILDLIFE”
Mr Lee also highlighted a new study, which found 110 species of birds and butterflies on roof gardens across the island, representing 13 and 18 per cent of the total number of bird and butterfly species in Singapore.
Jointly conducted by the National Parks Board and National University of Singapore at 30 rooftop gardens over 20 months, the study also found 24 species of rare or uncommon birds and butterflies. Khoo Teck Puat hospital was found to have the highest number of species recorded, with 61 birds and 37 butterfly species.
“This joint study suggests that with careful design planning, urban roof gardens can play host to a diverse range of wildlife, and help complement the equally important work of natural habitat conservation and enhancement,” Mr Lee said.
At the event, 26 developments were also recognized for their efforts in greening landscapes, 14 of which received the Skyrise Greenery Awards.
Launched in 2008, the biannual awards aim to recognize excellence in landscape architecture in Singapore.
Source: CNA/cy
Groundbreaking For Staten Island Office Building With Rooftop Garden, Bocce Courts, and Vineyard
Up above, a 40,000-square-foot rooftop garden will provide herbs and produce for the in-house restaurant, and grab-and-go greens from the rooftop will be for sale, too. Limited public transit options make ample surface parking a necessity, thought the structure is aiming for LEED Silver certification. CetraRuddy is collaborating with a local firm, Being Here Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design, on the rooftop and ground floor landscaping.
Groundbreaking For Staten Island Office Building With Rooftop Garden, Bocce Courts, and Vineyard
By AUDREY WACHS (@GRIDWACHS) • October 3, 2017
(Courtesy CetraRuddy)
Tomorrow elected officials are breaking ground on a Staten Island office building with a bocce court, giant rooftop farm, a nearby vineyard, and a social enterprise restaurant that will serve Italian food and donate all of its proceeds to charity.
Developed by The Nicotra Group and designed by CetraRuddy, the eight-story structure is part of Staten Island’s Teleport Campus in Bloomfield, not far from the Arthur Kill on the Island’s west shore.
Compared to the rest of New York City, “designing for Staten Island means there’s more space to work with,” said Eugene Flotteron, a partner at CetraRuddy and a borough native. Right now, there are two low-slung 1970s office buildings on the nine-acre campus, directly adjacent to the new structure, which will contain mostly office and medial facilities. Structually, there was room for the south side to slope sharply towards the ground, minimizing solar heat gain, and a north side that’s angled more gradually up to draw in the rays. On the ground floor, a white overhang will shade the main walkway and line the building on four sides.
Up above, a 40,000-square-foot rooftop garden will provide herbs and produce for the in-house restaurant, and grab-and-go greens from the rooftop will be for sale, too. Limited public transit options make ample surface parking a necessity, thought the structure is aiming for LEED Silver certification. CetraRuddy is collaborating with a local firm, Being Here Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design, on the rooftop and ground floor landscaping.
(Courtesy CetraRuddy)
The 336,000-square-foot office building’s program reflects the developer’s heritage as well as the heritage of more than a third of Staten Island residents with Italian ancestry. The restaurant, Pienza, Pizza, Pasta and Porchetta, is named for Pienza, a Tuscan town that The Nicotra Group founder Richard Nicotra and his wife visit every year. Among other amenities, visitors will have access to bocce courts outside and a vineyard that Nicotra is building with specialists from California’s Napa Valley. While the design doesn’t have a direct antecedent in Italian or Roman architecture, Flotteron said finishes and materials like the Italian marble in the double-height lobby, as well as a potential collaboration with an Italian curtain wall company, will reflect the country’s influence.
Foundation work is set to begin in the next few months, and the project should be complete in fall 2018.
Dutch Engineer Aims High With Latest Green Roof Design
Dutch Engineer Aims High With Latest Green Roof Design
Mike Corder, Associated Press
In this photo taken on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017, Joris Voeten inspects the rooftop garden he helped develop in Amsterdam. Voeten, an urban engineer in Amsterdam has unveiled a new kind of rooftop garden that he says can store more water than existing roofs and feed it to plants growing on shallow beds of soil
Photo: Michael C Corder, AP
September 10, 2017
AMSTERDAM (AP) — Standing between raised beds of plants on top of a former naval hospital, Joris Voeten can look across to the garden, cafe and terrace that decorate the sloping roof of Amsterdam's NEMO science museum.
Such productivity is part of the urban engineer's vision for cities worldwide, places where he sees the largely neglected flat tops of buildings doing more than keeping out weather and housing satellite dishes.
Voeten, of Dutch company Urban Roofscapes, says a rooftop garden system he unveiled Friday on the former hospital roof stores more rainwater than existing green roofs and requires less power by relying on a capillary irrigation system that uses insulation material instead of pumps to water plants.
"You can relax here, you can have meetings here. You could operate a restaurant on your rooftop garden to make it more economically beneficial," Voeten told The Associated Press ahead of the official presentation. "But most of all, we finally get to exploit the last unused square meterage in the urban environment."
Roofs that are adapted so plants can grow on them produce a cooling effect on buildings and the air immediately above them in two ways. The plants reflect heat instead of absorbing it the way traditional roofing sheets do. They also reduce heat by evaporating water.
Voeten said readings taken on a very hot day showed a temperature difference of up to 40 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit) between his hospital garden above the banks of a busy waterway compared with a roof covered in black bitumen.
Robbert Snep, a green roof expert from Wageningen University and Research in the central Netherlands, said the cooling effect is well known, but the new roof in Amsterdam is an improvement on existing designs because of the way it stores water and can feed it back to plants.
Sensors in the shallow layer of soil on top of the water storage elements monitor qualities such as temperature and moisture content. If the soil gets too dry, extra water can be added. If there is too much water, it can be released into the drains.
"The smart roof really ensures that there is evaporation during, for example, heatwaves and thereby they cool the surroundings," Snep, who is not involved in the project, said. "People can sleep well and people can work well in such an environment."
Voeten says his system can be laid on any flat roof with sufficient load-bearing capacity, Voeten said. Costs would likely be around 100-150 euros ($120-180) per square meter (10 square feet), he estimates.
Amsterdam, a city built around water and its World Heritage-listed canals, is keen to have its residents turn their rooftops into gardens where possible. To promote the practice, the city is offers subsidies to help meet the costs.
"We ask citizens of the city to create rooftops like this. We ask companies to create rooftops like this," Vice Mayor Eric van der Burg said. "Not only for water storage, not only for helping cooling down our city, but also to create extra gardens, extra green for our inhabitants."
Epic 25,000 Square Foot Garden Opens on Rooftop of Montreal Supermarket
Located in the Saint-Laurent borough of Montreal, IGA Extra Famille Duchemin plans to sell the food it grows on the supermarket’s roof, which will include a variety of 30 different fruits and vegetables including lettuce, peppers, herbs, and tomatoes. It will also support eight Alveole bee hives with the intention of producing an estimated 600 jars of honey to the shelves.
Epic 25,000 Square Foot Garden Opens on Rooftop of Montreal Supermarket
By: Leeron Hoory | September 7, 2017
Supermarkets across North America shelve fruits and vegetables that have been imported from thousands of miles away. Bananas from the Dominican Republic can be found next to avocados from Mexico. But last month, one supermarket in Montreal announced that it will begin importing produce from just a few feet away– from their own rooftop, in fact.
Located in the Saint-Laurent borough of Montreal, IGA Extra Famille Duchemin plans to sell the food it grows on the supermarket’s roof, which will include a variety of 30 different fruits and vegetables including lettuce, peppers, herbs, and tomatoes. It will also support eight Alveole bee hives with the intention of producing an estimated 600 jars of honey to the shelves. At 25,000 acres, it will be the largest organic rooftop garden in Canada in addition to being the first supermarket in the country to sell food grown on its own roof, according to the family-owned grocery.
“A green roof garden allows us to nourish our passion for food while reducing our environmental footprint, something that is particularly important to us,” Richard Duchemin, co-owner of IGA Extra Famille Duchemin. The supermarket is part of the International Grocers Alliance (IGA), which consists of around 5,000 supermarkets around the world. “We are happy to give life to this innovative project and hope it encourages other companies to follow suit,” Duchemin said.
The rooftop garden was created over the course of more than a year in collaboration with La Ligne Verte, or The Green Line: Green Roof, a company that works on green roofs and landscaping, in addition to Sobeys Quebec, the largest food retailer in Canada.
IGA Extra Famille Duchemin is far from the first supermarket to open a rooftop garden. While growing produce in cities is not new, the growing trend of urban farming for commercial purposes started less than a decade ago. Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a nonprofit organization based in Toronto that facilitates and promotes the development of urban rooftop gardens across North America, recently told Garden Collage that it first began teaching its garden rooftop training course in 2010.
Urban agriculture offers a solution to the rapid rate of population growth in urban cities. It is estimated that by 2050, sixty percent of the world will be living in cities, and more of them are turning to sustainable solutions for local food growth. For instance, one of the largest rooftop gardens across North America is the Brooklyn Grange, which is 2.5 acres (108,000 square feet) and spans across two New York City rooftops, growing over 50,000 pounds of organic produce per year. Chicago Botanic Garden turned a 20,000 square foot garden into a rooftop farm in 2013, becoming the largest rooftop farm in the Midwest. According to Green Roof for Healthy Cities’s most recent survey of its corporate members, Toronto, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Seattle are four of the leading cities with the highest square footage of green roofing.
However, not everyone is convinced that urban agriculture is a solution to food security, particularly given the challenges of scale. In an article for Ag Professional, Maurice Hladik, author of Demystifying Food from Farm to Fork, argued that while there may be a rising trend in urban farming, it cannot realistically contribute a significant portion of food. “I would be surprised if the food production potential of the available urban land would amount to even one percent of that available on conventional farms utilizing open fields, pastures, and rangeland,” Hladik wrote.
Still, this doesn’t change the fact that more than two-thirds of the nation’s food comes from crops grown outside of the country, according to one 2016 study. Urban rooftop gardens, like the one on top of IGA Extra Famille Duchemin, ensure that at least some of this produce comes from around the corner.
7 Ways Cities Are Transforming Urban Rooftops
According to Steven Peck of the Toronto-based non-profit Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, “The roofscapes of our cities are the last urban frontier—from 15 percent to 35 percent of the total land area.” And they can offer much more than just a pretty view. For example, rooftops can provide room to grow food, build affordable housing, and green our cities, to name a few.
7 Ways Cities Are Transforming Urban Rooftops
With street-level space at a premium, urban rooftops are underused spaces ripe with potential
BY MEGAN BARBER@MEGCBARBER SEP 5, 2017, 4:00PM EDT
The Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm grows fruits and vegetables in New York City.
Photo by Anastasia Cole Plakias
As a sweeping construction boom renders U.S. cities ever denser, there’s one type of urban space that’s still an untapped resource: rooftops.
Sure, every city lover can name a handful of rooftop patios with great views or a favorite rooftop hotel pool. But for the most part, roofs remain in the domain of the squarely utilitarian, home to chimneys, air ducts, and satellite dishes. That can change.
According to Steven Peck of the Toronto-based non-profit Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, “The roofscapes of our cities are the last urban frontier—from 15 percent to 35 percent of the total land area.” And they can offer much more than just a pretty view. For example, rooftops can provide room to grow food, build affordable housing, and green our cities, to name a few.
Below, check out seven ways urbanites are transforming roofs from empty dead spots into spaces for innovation.
Green roofs
A green roof on a 900-square-foot historic building in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Courtesy of Brooklyn Greenroof
A common way to transform an unsightly rooftop is to add greenery. But vegetation can do far more than create an urban oasis. Green roofs covered in plants can reduce stormwater run-off, lower cooling costs, and combat the urban heat island effect.
One compelling example comes from Vietnamese architect Hung Nguyen, who designed a roof pavilioncovered in plants with air-purifying properties. Other homeowners use drought tolerant, low-maintenanceboth plants like sedum to create a green roof that can withstand even harsh winter climates.
Rooftop farms
The world’s largest rooftop farm, Gotham Greens in Chicago.
Photo by Debbie Carlos
Larger rooftop gardens can also become farms. In New York City, Brooklyn Grange runs rooftop farms in Long Island City, Queens and The Navy Yard in Brooklyn, producing tens of thousands of vegetables a year that are sold directly to urban restaurants and greengrocers. Chicago boasts the world’s largest rooftop greenhouse, a 75,000-square-foot facility set atop an old factory. Operated by Gotham Greens, the farm uses a state-of-the-art hydroponic system with a yield that rivals that of a 50-acre farm.
Beyond transforming unused space into eco-friendly agriculture, rooftop farms also reduce transport costs by growing products in close proximity to metropolitan areas. These farm create a more bio-diverse ecosystem in cities, as well, attracting birds, insects, and butterflies.
Gwen Schantz, founding partner and COO of Brooklyn Grange, told Curbed, "I feel like what we’re doing is part of the food movement," she observes. "But it’s also part of the movement to bring green space back into the city and to improve the health of the plants and the animals, but mostly the health of the people here." Head over here for more on rooftop farming.
Affordable housing
H-VAC, a London tiny home designed to look like an air duct.
Jim Stephenson via PUP
In dense cities with high-priced real estate, rooftops could be the final frontier of affordable housing. Berlin-based architects Simon Becker and Andreas Rauch launched Cabin Spacey to help solve the urban space crunch by building tiny homes on some of Berlin’s 55,000 unused roofs. Becker and Rauch’s cabins—still in the concept stage—can house up to two people in 250 square feet, and can run fully off the grid thanks to solar panels attached to the roofs.
In London, PUP Architects created a tiny dwelling that looks like an air duct as a playful nod to the planning rules that allow rooftop mechanical equipment to be installed without permission. Called H-VAC, the design was the winning entry in the inaugural Antepavilion competition, which explores innovative and alternative ways of living in the city—especially on rooftops.
Recreation areas
A rooftop soccer stadium on the Shibuya Hikarie skyscraper amidst the skyline of Tokyo, Japan.
Photo by Keith Tsuji/Getty Images
Another way cities are trying to take advantage of wasted roof space is to use them as recreational areas. Rooftop pools have long been a staple of high-end hotels and condos, but larger gyms, soccer stadiums, playgrounds, jogging paths, and even open-air cinemas are becoming more common. In Miami, a new apartment complex has rooftop tennis courts and a track, while the 30-acre Paramount Miami Worldcenter—set to be completed in 2019—will have a soccer field over an office building.
In Tokyo, Japan, people can play soccer on the roof of the Shibuya Hikarie skyscraper, while in Osaka, a 1000-foot astroturf track stretches across multiple roofs at Morinomiya Q’s Mall Base shopping complex.
Chicken coops and apiaries
A natural progression from gardens and farms, chicken coops and beehives are another innovative addition to city rooftops. Chickens can be raised in relatively small spaces—each hen only needs about four square feet—and can provide a whole apartment building with fresh eggs. Rooftop chicken coops have already made it onto some Seattle apartment buildings and New York City hotels.
Likewise, beehives on hotels and skyscrapers can provide businesses with honey for cocktails, food, and spa treatments.
Rainwater collection systems
BMDesign Studios design called Concave Roof, a bowl-like double-roof system to collect rainwater in arid climates.
As the first point of contact—known as the catchment area—for rainfall, roofs can be an optimal way to harvest rainwater. This age-old method of collecting water may not be as common in the United States as it is in developing countries, but it’s becoming more popular. Especially in drought-afflicted states, harvesting rainwater can be an excellent way to retain stormwater runoff, reduce pollution, and reuse hundreds of millions of gallons of rainfall every year. While not fit for drinking water, harvested rainwater can be used for non-potable purposes like yard watering and toilet flushing.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has incentivized rain collection by imposing “stormwater charge” on properties based on the size of impervious space on the property; homeowners can lower their stormwater charge by adding more green space.
Solar power
A peek at the first installed Tesla solar roof tiles.
Tesla
The most obvious and common use of rooftops is still for solar power. It makes sense: Unlike many city streets, rooftops have unobstructed access to sunlight and enough space to make larger-scale solar panel installations feasible. And while the idea of solar panels on roofs may not seem innovative, the industry is going through big changes.
For one, new rooftop solar tiles from Tesla look nothing like the solar panels of yore. The Tuscan glass tile tiles and textured glass tiles look just like conventional roof tiling, which could mark a new age of rooftop aesthetics. Other startups are chasing similar concepts.
Elsewhere, the solar industry is trying to make rooftop energy a community endeavor. Around 10,000 Australian homeowners are participating in a pilot program testing the world’s first open market for monetizing rooftop renewable energy and storage. And in Brooklyn, a new energy startup links up neighbors who have solar panels with those who want to buy clean energy, creating the Brooklyn Microgrid.
Hippie Amenities With a High-End Twist
Hippie Amenities With a High-End Twist
By KIM VELSEYAUG. 18, 2017
Garden construction in progress on the eighth floor deck of 550 Vanderbilt in Brooklyn. CreditEmon Hassan for The New York Times
As dusk fell over Staten Island on a recent evening, about 10 people sat around a large wooden table in a communal kitchen, listening to Van Morrison and painting terra-cotta flowerpots. Houseplants were suspended from the room’s high wood-beamed ceilings, and the smell of freshly baked bread hung in the air.
A hippie house share? Not quite. It was crafts and cocktails night at Urby Staten Island, an upscale rental complex where the demographic skews more young professional than drum-circle enthusiast. Nonetheless, the complex has features that might make that crowd feel right at home: In addition to the communal kitchen, there’s a 5,000-square-foot urban farm, a 20-hive apiary — both tended by live-in farmers/beekeepers — and a kombucha workshop planned for later this summer.
“Live cultures are really something people are responding to,” said Brendan Costello, the complex’s in-residence chef, as he wiped the last of the bread crumbs and black maple butter from the countertops. He has already taught well-attended workshops on making sauerkraut and kimchi.
Just as Birkenstocks and bee pollen have come back in style, so have crunchy lifestyle concepts, from yoga and meditation to composting and home fermentation. And with veganism, Waldorf schools, doulas and healing crystals shifting from far out to very much in fashion, a growing number of New York luxury buildings have embraced the hallmarks of 1970s hippiedom with a high-end twist. Look for amenities like rooftop gardens, kitchen composters, art and meditation studios, bike shares, infrared saunas, even an adult treehouse.
“Especially in Brooklyn, the concrete jungle is not the atmosphere people are aiming for,” said Ashley Cotton, an executive vice president of Forest City New York, whose recently opened condo in Prospect Heights, 550 Vanderbilt, developed in partnership with Greenland USA, has window planters for units on lower floors and a communal garden terrace with individual plots on the eighth floor. Two of the terrace’s six large planters will be tended by a nearby farm-to-table restaurant, Olmsted, which will also offer gardening lessons to residents.
At Pierhouse, the Toll Brothers City Living condo in Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, every kitchen has an in-unit composter, a first for a Toll Brothers development.
Residents of URBY in Staten Island visit a farmstand set up by Empress Green in Urby’s communal kitchen. CreditEmon Hassan for The New York Times
“If we were deciding between a compost unit and a wine chiller, we’d probably go with the wine chiller since more people would be interested,” said David von Spreckelsen, the president of Toll Brothers City Living division. “But here we had large kitchens and a lot of the units have outdoor space, so we thought people could compost in their kitchen and go right out to their garden.”
While such amenities might be aspirational for some, others are yearning to get their hands dirty. Christine Blackburn, an associate broker at Compass real estate, said that for a woman to whom she recently sold a condo at 144 North Eighth Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the roof garden was the most important amenity.
“She didn’t care about the gym, she didn’t care about the garage,” Ms. Blackburn said. “They live in a $2 million condo, but for her to be able to grow tomatoes with her son, that was it.
“The garden plots in that building are tiny,” she added, “but it makes some people feel like they’re not living in a high-rise.”
Public green space has always been a priority, of course, and let’s not forget that large swaths of all five boroughs were once farmland.
Green rooftops have some historical antecedents in the city: The Ansonia, on the Upper West Side, kept 500 chickens on its rooftop farm in the early 20th century, with eggs delivered daily to the tenants, according to “The Sky’s the Limit,” a book by Steven Gaines. But the roof was shut down by the Department of Health after just a few years, in 1907. And for the past century, it was accepted that living in New York meant leaving nature, and local honey, behind.
“It definitely used to be an either/or mentality,” said Rick Cook, a founder of the architecture firm CookFox and a designer of 550 Vanderbilt, who moved to New York from a small town upstate in 1983. But after studying abroad in Florence, Italy, he said, “I understand you could have both. That, in fact, the highest quality of life is to have both.”
Indeed, the explosion of the wellness industry has left many craving a different kind of New York lifestyle.
For a younger generation, practices like organic gardening and meditation may not carry any whiff of the counterculture.
“Being green is modern, being organic is modern,” said Jordan Horowitz, 26, an assistant manager of Enterprise Rent-a-Car who grew up gardening in suburban New Jersey and was excited to get a studio at Urby, where residents have an entire city block of gardens. But he is equally enthusiastic about the pool, the giant bean bags strewn across the grounds and learning to make Vietnamese cuisine from scratch in Mr. Costello’s cooking classes.
That many such offerings tend to be far more upscale than their 1970s counterparts no doubt helps to remove any lingering hippie vibe. Rather than a stable of rusty Schwinns, for example, 50 West, in the financial district, allows residents to pedal out on Porsche bikes that cost $3,700 a pop.
“Yes, it’s sharing, but in a luxury manner,” said Javier Lattanzio, the sales manager at the condo.
Javier and Irina Lattanzio, residents and brokers of 50 West in Lower Manhattan, take a spin on Porsche bikes provided by the building.CreditSasha Maslov for The New York Times
The adult treehouse at One Manhattan Square on the Lower East Side, likewise, is hardly primitive, with Wi-Fi and a staircase. As for all those rooftop herb gardens, asked if they are actually used, one broker replied that they definitely were, though not necessarily for a Moosewood recipe: On a recent trip to 338 Berry in Williamsburg, she saw people with Aperol spritzes clipping herbs to put in their cocktails.
Frank Monterisi, a senior vice president of the Related Companies, emphasized that the new generation of renters and buyers “like to see sustainability, they like to see rooftop gardens.”
At Hunter’s Point South, Related’s massive affordable housing complex in Long Island City, Queens, residents can receive deliveries of fresh vegetables from a C.S.A. — community-supported agriculture. There are also an apiary, about 2,300 square feet of rooftop gardens and a waiting list for the gardening club.
“Everyone wants to garden now. I think New Yorkers have gotten comfortable with the amount of concrete we have, but they also want to see green,” said Joyce Artis, a retired Port Authority worker who helps organize the gardening program at the complex and grows microgreens and lemon trees in her apartment.
Ms. Artis said that when she was growing up in Brooklyn, she was sent to visit relatives in North Carolina in the summer, and hated having to get up early to weed. “But then as I got older, I started missing it,” she said. “And I started growing things in my apartment. No matter how small your space I always say: ‘You can grow one thing.’”
Ms. Blackburn, the Compass broker, said that gardening, for some, is a version of meditation. “Maybe they’re not sitting there with a meditation app, but sticking their hands in the soil — it doesn’t matter if someone’s making $10 million a year — it can be very therapeutic.”
She expects the enthusiasm to continue and intensify. “I wouldn’t be surprised in a year if a luxury building had a chicken coop,” she said.
New Buildings ‘Should Have’ More Green Spaces
“We tend to take our country’s climate for granted. We have the perfect conditions for tropical plants to grow easily and we have access to a wide variety of trees and plants suited for our weather,” he told the newspaper. “In countries like Japan, they have to cover the trees during winter to protect them from the cold, and this shows how much they value greenery.”
New Buildings ‘Should Have’ More Green Spaces
Greening a building can make a world of difference. Photo Credit: Max Pixel
The government mandates a minimum of 10% for green spaces in new commercial and housing developments around Malaysian cities. But that amount is precious little.
So says an architect, Alan Teh. “The design of many high-rise buildings tend to alienate people, meaning they don’t get to interact with others as how people in villages do,” he elucidated in an interview with FMT News.
We agree. Rather than just add a touch of greenery here and there, all new developments should embrace green spaces as integral parts of their designs. Because of its tropical climate, the architect explains, Malaysia is ideally suited to incorporate lush green spaces into building designs, if only as cascades of plants on walls or as part of roof gardens.
“We tend to take our country’s climate for granted. We have the perfect conditions for tropical plants to grow easily and we have access to a wide variety of trees and plants suited for our weather,” he told the newspaper. “In countries like Japan, they have to cover the trees during winter to protect them from the cold, and this shows how much they value greenery.”
Albeit plenty more needs to be done, Malaysia has made some progress in spreading the idea of green buildings. The country’s Green Building Index (GBI) provides guidelines for developers, construction companies and investors to design and build new constructions in the most environmentally sustainable ways possible. Green buildings are geared towards much more efficient uses of resources from energy to water. Through their construction and energy-saving operation, GBI-approved buildings are designed to reduce their impacts on the surrounding environment throughout their entire lifecycle.
Ideally, a true eco-building’s energy savings should be net zero, which means that a building should use only as much energy as it can itself save or produce on site by help of renewables. That can still be a tall order for most home owners, largely because of the extra expenses involved. Encouragingly, however, the idea of energy-efficient buildings is catching on in Malaysia.
Yet even if a building is not wholly eco-friendly, it can still be equipped with more green spaces. A mere 10% is indeed too paltry a ratio. For starters, rooftop gardens, walls covered in vegetation and other simple add-ons can make a big difference in turning a new building a whole lot greener, both literally and figuratively.
Roof Gardens Plant Seeds of Recovery For Pollinating Insects
Roof Gardens Plant Seeds of Recovery For Pollinating Insects
The Scottish government’s pollinator strategy encourages owners of flats and offices to create rooftop, balcony and window-ledge gardens for insects GETTY IMAGES
Gabriella Bennett | July 27 2017, 12:01am, The Times
Homeowners are being urged to create rooftop gardens to help reverse a devastating decline in the insects that pollinate plants.
The number of pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies has halved since the 1980s because of climate change and a loss of habitat.
The Scottish government’s new “pollinator strategy” encourages owners of flats and offices to create rooftop, balcony and window-ledge gardens to help the insects thrive.
Food crops rely on pollinating insects and research has shown that fewer bees and butterflies mean stable production of fruits and vegetables cannot be guaranteed.
Insects pollinate about a third of the world’s agricultural crops, and the cost of losing all UK pollinators has been estimated at up to £440 million per year. The economic value of honey bees and bumble bees to commercially-grown crops alone has been estimated at more than £200 million a year.
Pesticides, pollution, disease and climate change are all thought to be contributing factors in the decline of pollinating insects.
As well as targeting city dwellers, the government scheme will call for more flower-rich habitats to be restored around Scotland. New insect-friendly pesticides will also be developed, and more research will be done on climate change.
Dougal Philip, a judge at the Royal Horticultural Society’s shows at Chelsea and Hampton Court, also runs New Hopetoun Garden Centre in West Lothian with his wife Lesley Watson, a former presenter of The Beechgrove Garden. He said: “Lesley and I have been championing this cause for the past 20 years. We have been challenging myths of wildlife gardens, such as [that] they need to be a bit of a mess, they need to be in the country, and they have to have native plants. They can just as easily be in the suburbs or cities.”
Housebuilders are also contributing to environmental improvements by putting in rooftop gardens as part of new developments.
At the New Lanark world heritage site, a former 18th-century cotton spinning mill village, a 9,000 sq ft green space has been created on the roof of an A-listed mill building, around which seven restored townhouses will go on the market later this year.
Roseanna Cunningham, the Scottish government’s environment secretary, called the country’s biodiversity one of its “key assets” and highlighted a commitment to ensuring it becomes a more “pollinator-friendly place”.
“Pressures such as pesticides, pollution, disease and climate change are threatening these life-giving insects, so we must act now to protect the pollinators and in turn safeguard our environment, our food and our health,” she said. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), the body responsible for preserving and promoting the country’s landscape, led the development of the new strategy with environmental and land management organisations.
Mike Cantlay, chairman of SNH, said there was evidence proving that Scotland’s native bees and insects were facing “tough times”.
“This strategy, a key part of the Scottish Biodiversity 2020 route map, sets out what needs to be done to ensure these bees and insects survive and thrive for generations to come,” he said.
Selected Kaufland Romania Shops To Turn Roofs, Parking Lots Into Urban Gardens
Selected Kaufland Romania Shops To Turn Roofs, Parking Lots Into Urban Gardens
By Georgeta Gheorghe News July 18, 2017 16:50
Kaufland Romania will turn its roofs, parking lots and the outer walls of in urban gardens, the food retailer announced. The vegetables, fruit, flowers will be used by the community.
The project, “Gradinescu,” developed through a partnership with the Association of the research Institute for Permaculture in Romania, is a first in Romania and promotes care towards nature, community spirit and supports the development of urban agriculture, company representatives say.
Moreover, the project is designed to introduce children and adults to gardening and the possibility to have a healthy diet even in an urban environment. “The project consists of a network of nine urban community gardens, three of them located on the roofs of three Kaufland shops, four in the parking lots or behind the shops and two in schools” company representatives said.
The first Kaufland store with the roof and outer walls transformed in urban gardens is that on Bucurestii Noi Blvd., and by the end of summer those on Barbu Vacarescu, Tudor Vladimirescu, Aparatorii Patriei, and in schools.
The first urban garden set up as part of the Kaufland store in Bucurestii Noi has 2,300 square meters and is designed to be used by the community. The garden will serve as a teaching space for schools and gardens in the area.
The company presented the results of the first study on the presence of urban gardening in Romania. According to the survey,7 out of 10 Romanians are involved in urban gardening, by cultivating at their home vegetables, greens or fruit, in order to enjoy natural produce. While the balcony is the preferred spot for urban gardening for almost 50 percent of Romanians, 14 grow their produce in front of their block of flats, 8 percent in the suburbs and the rest headed for areas outside of the cities.
A Stunning New Smog-Eating ‘Vertical Forest Tower’ Will Feature Luxury Apartments And 300 Species of Plants
A Stunning New Smog-Eating ‘Vertical Forest Tower’ Will Feature Luxury Apartments And 300 Species of Plants
By Business Insider | July 22, 2017 10:00AM
Stefano Boeri Architetti
A smog-eating tower will soon go up in the Netherlands city of Utrecht.
On the outside, 10,000 trees and shrubs — nearly half the amount found in New York’s Central Park — will fill the skyscraper’s facade, roof, and balconies. Inside, it will feature 200 luxury apartment units, restaurants, a fitness center, and offices.
Stefano Boeri Architetti
Called the Utrecht Vertical Forest, the 300-foot-tall tower will host around 30 different plant species. The plants will absorb 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year — the equivalent of about one car, according to designers from Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti. In addition, the company said the tower will produce about 41,400 tons of oxygen annually, roughly the same as what 2.5 acres of forest generates.
Stefano Boeri Architetti
The mixed-use building is being billed as the “new healthy center of Utrecht,” since the plan calls for healthy eateries, a gym with yoga studios, bike parking, and a small public park. The Vertical Forest Hub, a new research center on urban forestation, will also have offices on the ground floor.