Green shoots: Rooftop farming takes off in Singapore:
On the rooftop of a Singapore shopping mall, a sprawling patch of eggplants, rosemary, bananas and papayas stand in colourful contrast to the grey skyscrapers of the city-state's business district.
[...] In the past few years, however, the city of 5.7 million has seen food plots sprouting on more and more rooftops.
Authorities last year said they were aiming to source 30 percent of the population's "nutritional needs" locally by 2030, and want to increase production of fish and eggs as well as vegetables.
With coronavirus increasing fears about supply-chain disruption, the government has accelerated its efforts, announcing the rooftops of nine car parks would become urban farms and releasing Sg$30 million ($22 million) to boost local food production.
Urban farming has been a novelty over the past decade; will it become commonplace, a standard feature of urban living and design?
Previously:
World's Biggest Rooftop Greenhouse Opens in Montreal
Related Stories
World's biggest rooftop greenhouse opens in Montreal:
Building on a new hanging garden trend, a greenhouse [built] atop a Montreal warehouse growing eggplants and tomatoes to meet demand for locally sourced foods has set a record as the largest in the world.
It's not an obvious choice of location to cultivate organic vegetables—in the heart of Canada's second-largest city—but Lufa Farms on Wednesday inaugurates the facility that spans 160,000 square feet (15,000 square meters), or about the size of three football fields.
[...] It is the fourth rooftop greenhouse the company has erected in the city. The first, built in 2011 at a cost of more than Can$2 million (US$1.5 million), broke new ground.
Since then, competitors picked up and ran with the novel idea, including American Gotham Greens, which constructed eight greenhouses on roofs in New York, Chicago and Denver, and French Urban Nature, which is planning one in Paris in 2022.
A local Montreal supermarket has also offered since 2017 an assortment of vegetables grown on its roof, which was "greened" in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.
The company estimates its rooftop gardens can feed 2% of Montreal's population now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Billy the Mountain on Thursday October 01 2020, @04:09AM
I think rooftop production, whether it be solar electricity generation or in this case food production, is great and in a hot climate it serves two purposes. First it utilizes surface area that would not otherwise be productive and second, it serves to cool the underlying structure.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by fakefuck39 on Thursday October 01 2020, @05:32AM (7 children)
if you can go higher in a city, build more housing units, not banana trees. the amount of effort to farm on a rooftop is insane to a place like oh, a meadow, and you need walls to make sure it doesn't drop n kill with wind, and it destroys the roof more frequently, and iy needs dirt up there. farm on farms. put solar on a roof if you don't want to waste space. up next: farming on your rooftop. your car rooftop. it's technically viable. let's also install lights and farm in the sewer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2020, @10:49AM
They could use hydroponics instead of dirt. Or maybe human shit.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2020, @11:48AM (5 children)
In general, there's several advantages to rooftop vegetation:
1. A lot of cities and urban areas have problems with rain water management and flooding. When most of the land is covered in stone, tiles, concrete and asphalt, then rain water will flow away quickly into the sewers or storm drains in a very short period, possibly overwhelming those systems after short periods of very intense downpour, and the rest of the time the area will be very dry. Vegetation and soil help to absorb and slowly release water over time. This could mean significant cost savings for sewer/storm-drain infrastructure departments.
2. Allowing residents to grow their own veggies on the roof reduces load on nearby agriculture, foreign imports, distribution networks and local transportation infrastructure, reducing costs and risks in those areas.
3. Vegetation improves air quality for residents.
4. Publicly accessible vegetation like parks significantly improves residents quality of life. Land at surface level might be unavailable nearby or too expensive for something like a park so that park might just not exist otherwise.
Your concerns are noted and rebutted:
1. Growing a simple vegetable patch requires smaller plants and much lower mass of soil or substrate than growing full blown fruit trees. Obviously some crops will be more suitable than others for this location. Nice straw man though.
2. High-rise buildings already have systems to pump upwards to provide sufficient water pressure in toilets/showers/kitchens at the top floors. Those extra meters upwards would not make much difference. That's before even considering collecting rainwater on-site for irrigation.
3. Buildings with publicly accessible rooftops around the world already have chest-high walls or high fences. Simply not an issue at all.
4. You can make always make buildings taller to fit more people, but no matter how tall you make them, there will always be a rooftop at the end. So better use that rooftop for something useful.
5. Building a strong enough rooftop to carry the weight might be inpractical for existing buildings. Put solar panels on those. For newly constructed buildings, rooftop vegetation is simply a one-time investment that will pay itself back in building enjoyment and in cost reductions over time in other city systems, as I mentioned earlier in this post.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2020, @01:38PM (2 children)
So much silliness in your post that I will only address your point #1:
Rooftop gardens can barely absorb any real quantity of water. It's ridiculous. A real solution to alleviate volume of water instantly released as a result of a storm is the stormwater retention pond. These are very widely used because they work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retention_basin [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2020, @04:40PM
#5 as well. Many buildings do not get randomly rebuilt every few years. In the city I live in currently I would say a good 80% of the existing buildings were built in the 1940s. People are not going to tear them down so they can put a garden on top. Getting drainage is important so add to the cost of the building. Also keeping soil at the right levels of moisture is harder so you now need to plan for even more cost. Oh and dirt+water is heavy so yet more cost in the load bearing members of the building and some designs no longer work at all.
The idea sounds simple and 'easy' but there are a few things you have to do to make it work right. In the US a 'small' farm might be 300+ acres. A building rooftop *might* be 1 total excluding area to work in and other building related items.
For small one off gardens it might work OK. But to think you can industrial farm and compete with the 5000+ acre guys? Forget it. They will out compete you easily on cost, quality, and quantity. They are probably even 2nd or 3rd generation and have been taught since they were a kid and know how to do it. They have a pretty good idea what works and what doesnt.
Things like this are 'idea guy bar talk' things. They sound good until you look at a few details. Ideas are easy to come by. Execution is hard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 03 2020, @09:21AM
Retention and detension basins are better for lower density areas. In a high density area if every building collected rainwater there would be a lot less runoff.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday October 01 2020, @08:06PM (1 child)
"Growing a simple vegetable patch requires smaller plants" "nice strawman"
did you bother to even read the article? these are not community gardens. this is literal industrial farms on the rooftop. they are planting fucking banana trees. yeah, a community garden of hydroponic banana trees. the strawman is yours.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday October 01 2020, @10:01PM
Is it the strawberry-man?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday October 01 2020, @01:46PM
I have not seen a lot of roof-gardening yet, but there has been, and I noted, an increase in roof-parks. If they can do one I guess they can do the other one to. But they have started to create little park and resting areas on the roofs of buildings around town. Certainly so in the newer buildings you see it. In a few places they have even put a house on top of the building so you have more of the classic house-garden combo with a fantastic view, I imagine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2020, @06:58PM
hihihi... profit from selling food is minimal.
selling electricity is another matter entirely so count on some singapore strict-like laws on putting up ... solarpanels.