Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest

By BINA VENKATARAMAN
New York Times
Published: July 15, 2008

“The idea just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president.

“When Mr. Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a “food farm” addition to the New York City skyline. “Obviously we don’t have vast amounts of vacant land,” he said in a phone interview. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan.” Mr. Stringer’s office is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said.

“A smaller-scale design of a vertical farm for downtown Seattle won a regional green building contest in 2007 and has piqued the interest of officials in Portland, Ore. The building, a Center for Urban Agriculture designed by architects at Mithun, would supply about a third of the food needed for the 400 people who would live there.”

Link to article here. Be sure to see the slide show titled “Towers of Food”.