Urban Orchard

By Andrew Maynard Architects, a young Melbourne, Australian firm

Premise

A cities gardens can be more than a decorated landscape. Like the built environment, green spaces can work with us to make an integrated urban environment rather than isolated pockets of manicured greenery.
We propose a garden that contributes a SOCIAL space, creates a low impact and sustainable ECONOMIC model, beautifies the URBAN landscape and improves our urban areas impact on the ENVIRONMENT.

We propose that rather than only producing a beautiful, green rooftop space, we also create a greater, and achievable urban gesture. We propose a working garden that is wonderful to visit, great to have events at, while also producing food much like Cuba’s Market Gardens.

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The suburban farm project dovetails with other steps introduced by Cuban president Raul Castro. Photograph: Ismael Francisco/AFP/Getty images

Project launched to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in bid to reverse agricultural decline

By Marc Frank in Camaguey
The Guardian
7 February 2010

Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country’s agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.

The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba’s cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.

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Urban Roots – The industrial powerhouse of a lost American era has died, and the skeleton left behind is present-day Detroit.

URBAN ROOTS, directed by Detroit-native Mark McInnis is a documentary that tells the powerful story of a small group of unique individuals involved in Detroit’s urban agricultural movement.

But now, against all odds in the empty lots, in the old factory yards, and in-between the sad, sagging blocks of company housing, seeds of change are taking root. A small group of dedicated citizens, allied with environmental and academic groups, have started an urban environmental movement with the potential to transform not just a city after its collapse, but also a country after the end of its industrial age.

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