Maybe I'm a little strange but I've often wondered, while driving past vacant lots or large, grassy traffic islands, why someone doesn't start a community vegetable garden there. I reasoned that it must be due to (in the case of traffic islands) the danger of people getting run over, or unscrupulous (and lazy) characters stealing produce from the vine, etc.
So I was very pleased to read this article in TIME about actual examples of urban farming, from the conversion of former paved parking lots in Brooklyn to utilizing the tops of buildings in Boston, to vertical "farmscrapers" in cities. Just think of all the building roofs in Manhattan that could be sprouting vegetables and flowers for their inhabitants and/or for the needy!
As the article points out, this idea addresses a number of issues affecting us today--food costs, food safety and pesticide concerns, obesity/poor diets, the ozone... What's not to like?
TIME article: Inner-City Farms
