A vision of urban food in 2020
Via Green Futures:
By 2020, two-thirds of the world will live in cities, often sprawling megalopolises. Growing populations will put further pressure on land already degraded by over-farming and desertificaion. Given that we are always only a few meals away from anarchy, how will we feed these cities?
There is a strong possibility that – two and a half centuries after the start of the industrial revolution – we will all become farmers again.
Every one of us will own a ‘farm in a box’, which will sit on our balcony, roof or next to a window. Advances in aeroponics – growing in a mist of nutrients, rather like in a rainforest – will give us emissions-neutral food at the heart of our cities.
These boxes would be supplemented by neighbourhood vertical farms housed in the redundant high-rise office blocks we no longer commute to, and the multi-storey carparks we no longer need. They will employ closed-loop systems, generating their own energy and harvesting and recycling rainwater. Front gardens, flat roofs and patches of wasteland will also become mini-market gardens, helping to green, cool and feed the city. (MORE)
