city of the future

There are over ten billion people worldwide will be straining for limited resources of water, land, and food. More than 80 percent of the world's population will be living in dense urban centers, and one of the main issues that will have to be solved is how they will be fed. Today's agricultural model has no answer: 80 percent of land suitable for raising crops already in use.

Using this research of the Vertical Farm Project by Dickson Despommier, the projects aim was to envision San Francisco as a model sustainable city, with agriculture woven directly into its urban framework. There would be deployed vertical agricultural systems, fed by reclaimed water and powered through renewable energy technologies, throughout the Bay Area region.

By re-appropriating existing structures and developing new agricultural centers along key nodes of the regional transportation network, this model cultivates an urban environment that is directly linked to its food supply and is agriculturally self-sufficient.

Food can be produced and distributed with high efficiency, and gone are the costly environmental effects of the outmoded industrial agricultural model. A new base of industry, producing a safe, varied food supply, takes its place in an increasingly dense, stratified city.

Publications

2009/07 Spur

Awards

2008 Infinity Design Excellence Award by history.com