Over the years, I’ve become much more sensitive to and interested in the progress of energy sources and energy consumption. Maybe it’s from using, and loving, the city’s mass transit system. Except when I have to sit next to one of the "crazies".
Or maybe it’s because I lived in the East Village and saw the neverending mounds of garbage as a depiction of how wasteful the city is.
Or maybe I’ve been working in several Manhattan design studios that don’t recycle and have seen how we rip through reams of paper so casually and thoughtlessly.
Or maybe it’s seeing how our dependance on archaic energy sources is shaping our governmental policy in horrible ways.
However this interest developed, it’s always heartening to find out that some people are very commited to finding alternative energy sources (as noted in several past posts) or just diligently doing their part by recycling and conserving.
Last week’s New York Magazine caught my attention with an article about the possibilities of urban farming (or skyfarming) as a way to maintain a metropolitan society while also reversing the trend of environmental degradation.
Imagining greener and cleaner buildings that could produce farm crops, purify waste and generate energy sounds like a far off utopian dream, but it’s nice to hear some optimism for once.
There was speculation that this might be the next version of Biodomes that everyone of us heard about far too often in elementary school. That reference helped pierce the illustion of skyfarming a bit. So it could possibly amount to nothing more than a scientist’s wet dream. After all, the technology, time and resources it would take to make a building like this a reality seems too daunting for anyone to invest in.
But it all starts with an idea, right?
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