Urban Oases ~ Rooftop City Greenspots!

Time for another dose of urban greenspots...

Endless City ~ SURE's London Greenscraper...

Julian Robinson in the DailyMail spots SURE's Endless City...

"A giant skyscraper as tall as The Shard in London, built with its own complete ecosystem featuring offices, shops and 'huge' parks. London is the proposed city for the mixed-use tower, which would include interlinking ramps connecting different sections of the structure to create a 'vertical city' housing thousands. [...] different areas of the building would be linked by a series of bridges and walkways helping to 'increase exchanges, communications and interactions. It would include a raft of public spaces, entertainment zones and shopping areas to create a 'vertical city'. Residents would be able to walk up a series of interlinked ramps through vibrant streets, plazas, technological spaces and 'huge' parks in a 'complex and rich system like a real city'."

Jumbo-Gardeners ~ Elephants in the Rainforest

BBC's Power of Nature spotlights the role of elephants in gardening the rainforest, spreading seeds, boosting biodiversity, and more!

Garden Bridge ~ Proposed London Amenity...

CNN/Wired's Joseph Flaherty spots the Garden Bridge...

"If architect Thomas Heatherwick has his way, the River Thames will soon have a new plant-filled pedestrian crossing [spanning] the 1,204 foot-wide river and containing 2 million pounds of soil, giving root to 270 trees, as well as innumerable shrubs, bushes, and flowers. [...] As pedestrians proceed, stately oaks and manicured shrubs will dot the landscape. [...] Structural engineering firm Arup and landscape designer Dan Pearson helped give the concept form, while dealing with the unique technical challenges of a green bridge."

Urban Farming ~ Imagining Future Boston Food...

The Globe's Leon Neyfakh asks If urban farming took off, what would Boston look like?

"Not every farm looks like a farm any more. A new type of agriculture has been sprouting up in urban centers [...] and Boston’s new ordinance opens the city up to a whole range of ideas about how to integrate food production into city life. [...] On the more inventive side, entrepreneurs are trying to reimagine the traditional mechanics of agriculture so that it might be woven into the built landscape of a dense and busy city. Now that Boston has officially signaled its interest, the possibilities are vast -- maybe Boston can even become home to North America’s first skyscraper farm"

Neyfakh goes on to spotlight several specific ideas...

• A-Frame Conveyors ~ Ferris wheels for plants
• High-Rise Farming ~ Greenhouse skyscrapers
• Rooftop Greenhouses ~ Available empty acres
• Hydroponic Trays ~ Stacked veggie growing
• Shipping Container Mini-Farms ~ LED-litups
• Tilapia Ecosystems ~ Fish-fertilized gardens
• Shopping Cart Gardens ~ Guerrilla agriculture
• Corner Fields ~ Using vacant land parcels
• Undersea Edibles ~ Shellfish and seaweed
• Green Basements ~ LED-lit underused areas
• Bees ~ Urban healthy insect husbandry
• Chickens ~ Non-rooster urban coops

More Namba Parks ~ Urban Oasis in Osaka!

Namba Parks is an urban oasis in Osaka, Japan. Built on the old Osaka baseball stadium site and designed by Jon Jerde, NP is an eight level rooftop garden with waterfalls, terraces, etc!

Biophilic Singapore ~ Beatley & Newman Spotlight

Biophilic Cities project spotlights city-in-a-garden Singapore... Especially check out their Park Connector Network... I'm also impressed with the dual park+infrastructure waterway greening of Kallang River at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park... This reminds me of efforts in Los Angeles to revitalize and restore the LA River, Madrid's opening of their Rio, the Room for the River efforts in Netherlands and Europe, and most especially the Daylighting of Seoul's Cheonggyecheon.

Sky Greens ~ Singapore's Vertical Farm on PBS

Singapore Looks Skyward to Take Farming in New Directions on PBS!

Sky Gardens ~ High Parks, Streets, Bridges...

BBC series on Reaching for the Sky explores Skyscraper Gardens in greencity Singapore...

"With a growing number of people living and working in tall buildings, architects have become increasingly concerned with finding ways to introduce horizontal spaces -- providing a place for residents to socialise, exercise and get some fresh air. Sharanjit Leyl visited The Pinnacle@Duxton building in Singapore, a public housing complex of seven buildings linked with "sky bridges"

Tasty Greenroofs ~ Celebrating More Flora Up Top

Just a little dose of design delights -- tasty greenroofs!

Orchid Show ~ Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens!

New York Botanical Gardens feature The Orchid Show: Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens till this Sunday 22 April 2012!

Sodabottle SIP ~ Sub-Irrigated Planter Gardening!

Green Roof Growers shows how to make a Sodabottle SIP -- Sub-Irrigated Planters -- which lets kids of all ages become urban agriculturalists! Thanks to Inside Urban Green for spotting this!

Local Food Growing ~ Kibera Sack Gardens...

The French NGO Solidarités works in Nairobi's Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru with its garden in a sack project...

Beirut Wonder Forest ~ Greenroofs Superproject!

Wow, thanks to Lori Zimmer from Inhabitat for spotting the Beirut Wonder Forest [Which] Would Cover the Lebanese Capitol With Hanging Gardens by Studio Invisible! Say they...

"The advantages of having this done on a large scale are many. Better oxygen levels and a healthy environment is the first that comes to mind, but also a layer of trees will provide shade and accordingly soften the increasingly hot and arid climate, which in turn would lead to a lower level of energy consumption. Moreover, semi public green spaces will be created for the respective residents of each building, increasing even further the quality of living within the city itself. On the other hand, depending on the choice of trees and plants, these gardens can evolve into a sort of urban farming, yielding a small but valuable agricultural output. Ultimately, If the plan works out, Beirut could become a rooftop wonder forest, the whole city as a Landmark: Beirutopia."

P.S. Be sure to check out other Greenroof Cities visualizations and proposals and Greenscrapers generally!

Green Man ~ WSJ Spots Blanc's Garden Walls!

He's The Green Man Whose Gardens Defy Gravity writes WSJ's Julia Flynn Siler about French botanist-designer Patrick Blanc...

"...the inventor of the vertical garden, also known as the living (or green) wall. [...] Among the more than 250 [garden walls] he has installed around the world, his most famous are at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the Caixa Forum Museum in Madrid and the French embassy in New Delhi. [...] "My inspiration is nature," he said. Mr. Blanc himself resembles a tropical wood sprite. Nicknamed "The Green Man," he favors green shirts with bold botanical prints, green shoes and for the past 25 years has dyed his hair green because he likes the color. [...] In 1986, he created his first public vertical garden. His big breakthrough came eight years later, with his installation at France's prestigious Chaumont-Sur-Loire garden festival -- he had trekked to Chile to find plants there that might adapt to the Chaumont's climate."

Flower Towers ~ FT on Forests in the Urban Sky!

Christopher Woodward, director of London’s Garden Museum, writes in the FT about The age of flower towers...

"Architects are tackling the problems of the concrete jungle with ambitious schemes using green technology to grow forests in the sky. [...] The most exciting new tower in the world is under construction in Milan. At 27 storeys high, Bosco Verticale is a splinter beside the Shard, the 87-storey skyscraper under construction in London. What sets the Milan tower apart is that it will be the world’s first vertical forest, with each apartment having a balcony planted with trees. In summer, oaks and amelanchiers will shade the windows and filter the city’s dust; in winter, sunlight will shrine through the bare branches. Bosco Verticale is the vision of Stefano Boeri..."

Fantastic stuff! Read the rest of the FT article and check out the Garden Museum's From Garden City to Green City exhibition link too!

Macro Parasites ~ Growing Garden Thievery...

Robin Finn writes in the NYTimes of a growing garden menace -- a truly immoral and sordid under-class of culinary criminals -- in her piece Pilfered Peppers in City Gardens; Tomatoes, Too...

"...the first commandment should be obvious: Thou shalt not covet, much less steal, thy neighbor’s tomatoes, cucumbers or peppers. But people do. [...] By midsummer, the urban irritant of garden pilferage was in full bloom, right in sync with the crops, the heat and the mosquitoes. On a recent evening, Jackie Bukowski, president of the West Side garden, was batting away biting insects while talking about the thefts from the garden, which has 87 vegetable plots under cultivation. She recalled her disbelief last summer when hundreds of ripe figs were looted overnight. “Every single one of them, gone,” [...] “I know that people who garden in the country have trouble with squirrels and deer and turkeys; here in our neighborhood, we have old ladies,” he said. “They’re the culprit.” [...] Theft was a given. This summer the pepper crop is under tight surveillance. “Last August someone stole every pepper in the garden,” Ms. Freedom recounted. “We’ve lost not only ripe veggies but whole plants and garden ornaments to these folks who want to take an easy way around growing their own. I caught a woman taking all of our honeysuckle blossoms because it was cheaper than buying them in Chinatown.”

What a bunch of verminous vegans! They're really rather worse than looting locusts and ravenous rats combined -- they're plundering macro parasites, all of them!

Vibrant Monrovia ~ Clean & Green Future City...

After taking a historical view and posting about Vintage Monrovia, I followed Matt's Moved 2 Monrovia advice and links to try and learn a bit more about the Liberian capital today. The Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) is playing an essential role in building towards a vibrant future city, running clean-up campaigns, making sanitation investments, planting trees, and placing other key clean & green infrastructure commitments. All important prosperity policies and practices. See for yourself via their first two MCC TV episodes with host Archel Bernard...

The Vertical Garden ~ Blanc on Nature in Cities...

Cityscape pioneer Patrick Blanc on The Vertical Garden: From Nature to Cities at the California Academy of Sciences via Fora.tv...