Urban Rooftop Garden Innovations – Urban Farms at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) operates two rooftop farms on campus to provide food, facilitate research and inspire communities through ecological rooftop farming and food justice. With more than 80 crops in production, the Urban Farm harvests more than 3,000 kilograms (6,631 pounds) of organic produce each season, which is distributed to the community through sales and donations.
City workers are harvesting fields on the former rooftops of the George Vari Engineering & Computing Center. Photo: Urban Land at TMU
Urban Rooftop Garden Innovations
Canada’s largest city has more than 800 green roofs, but only a handful of rooftops are used for food delivery in Toronto. Urban City at TMU wants to increase that number significantly.
Modern Roof Garden Design. In The Ever Evolving Landscape Of Urban…
The first Urban Garden is a large green terrace built in 2004 and is solar powered. It was converted into a top farm ten years later, continuing the gathering of green and growing media. This twenty-year-old green roof has a quarter-hectare garden with dedicated land for traditional roads, floriculture, mushroom cultivation, natural dyes and herbs.
Urban Farm’s second location is a 5,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse for indigenous foods and black food integrity, where cultural crops and herbs are cultivated using a variety of growing methods. The roof contains space for storage of materials and post-harvest processing, a 400 square meter park and a meeting place for up to 140 people. This place is officially opened in 2022 and is currently the only green building for food processing under The City of Toronto’s Green Roof Bylaw requires green roofs on newly constructed multi-unit buildings, commercial buildings and institutions.
With a vision and mandate to find green roofs in Toronto and beyond, Urban City acts as a Living Laboratory, connecting interdisciplinary research collaborations to the daily operations of the field. Urban City aims to build resources for the best practices of high-tech agriculture, addressing the research and development needs of high-tech agriculture.
A new rooftop garden at the Daphne Cockwell Health Center is dedicated to Black and Indigenous food sovereignty programs. It’s a Garden of Learning Circle as part of a free private practice. Photo: Urban Land at TMU
Innovative And Practical Vegetable Garden Ideas For The Modern Gardener
In 2019, the Urban Institute used a symposium to identify research priorities for the Laboratory in collaboration with the Center for Food Security Research. With the support of Andrew and Valerie Pringle, more than 200 stakeholders have been advised on the environmental, social and economic aspects of advanced agriculture using green technologies. Since then, Urban City has hosted three annual conferences to bring together urban farmers, academics, policy makers, developers and experts from all sectors to encourage and inform research in high-tech agriculture.
Applications for research fellowships are accepted at the beginning of each semester and a panel of advisors reviews the proposals. The Urban City uses the Living Lab model because it promotes creativity, innovation and user-participation, with the main goal of creating practical solutions for the development of high-tech agriculture tested in real life. Urban City actively participates in collaborative research and promotes diverse, multidisciplinary and community-based programs.
Fashion students harvest marigold flowers at Urban Farms to use in colorful projects as part of their course. Photo: Urban Land at TMU
A recent Living Lab study on the Hydrologic and Thermal Performance of a Full-Scale Farmed Blue-Green Roof, published by Academic Open Access Publishing at mdpi.com in May 2022, found that 85-88% of rainwater was retained by Green Farm’s green roof, resulting in a delay of 7.7 to 8 hours, significantly reducing the municipal infrastructure. Research conducted by Tamer Almaaitah (MSc) and Dr. Darko Joksimovic (PhD) from August 2020 to December 2021 in order to compare the environmental services of rooftop fields, such as the ability to reduce the urban heat island and the ability to manage rainwater, for green roofs and conventional roofs. Research and showed that the greatest and mildest effects of air conditioning were observed in the afternoon and evening, when cooling is most needed.
San Francisco’s Rooftop Gardens
Photo Caption: Laboratory research partner, Afsana Alam Akhie (PhD candidate Department of Civil Engineering TMU), monitors the hydrological performance of the upper field and the temperature of different crops. Photo: Urban land at TMU
Despite the profound environmental, social and economic benefits of rooftop farming, designing and operating a rooftop garden requires a significant investment compared to a green roof or ground floor garden. For example, because high-altitude farms are rich in organic matter and produce high biomass, they have a high capacity to sequester carbon, reduce the urban heat island, divert rainwater, enhance ecosystems and support landfills. These factors play an important role in mitigating the effects of climate change, however the additional biodiversity and water requirements will incur design costs, such as increased transport capacity. Similarly, top farms have a strong social impact, such as providing a biological environment for visitors, while supporting food justice by connecting people to cultural food, to nature and to each other. And while high-end agriculture can strengthen local economies by creating jobs and supporting local food systems, it requires additional operational costs, particularly in terms of labor. Understanding the benefits and costs of measuring environmental services, and developing tools and strategies for better planning and use of rooftops, is one of the ways the Laboratory exists to support the development of the high-tech agricultural industry.
In addition to research collaborations, Urban City conducts farmer-led research by collecting data on daily activities. This enabled the urban farm to monitor phenology parameters, insect activity and soil health, and collect plant-specific information on yields and inputs. Through this data collection, Urban Farms has developed standard operating procedures, plant planning tools, strategic charts and top soil regeneration strategies, all accessible to the public through online resources, workshops and conferences. . In 2020, The Urban Factory hosted a two-part online series on growing better rooftops. This panel brings together greengrocers, urban farmers and soil experts in discussions about strategies to improve soil health in green media for productivity. These are available for viewing on the Urban Farm website, along with other materials created through the Urban Farm Lab.
Are you interested in research related to advanced agriculture? Explore Urban Farm research and learn more about Live Lab resources online by visiting their website. If you have any questions about urban farming, please contact [email protected]. Listen to the latest podcast episode of Sustainable Futures on Food, Social Justice, and Community Healing featuring Arlene Throness.
A Garden In The Sky: Chicago’s Green Rooftop Revolution
(TMU) where he oversees two of the university’s top fields. She holds a BA in Political Science from Concordia University and a BA in Environmental Horticulture from Linnaea Farms on Cortes Island, BC. Prior to TMU, Arlene was the Coordinator of Concordia University’s Rooftop Greenhouse and co-founded its City Farm School. Arlene was the recipient of the Toronto Botanical Garden’s 2015 Aster Awards, given to individuals with a mission to transform our city by connecting people, plants and the world. Arlene has more than ten years of experience growing food and eight additional years in horticulture, horticulture and horticulture.
Over the past 20 years, many economic, social and environmental benefits have come from combining agriculture and construction in new and existing projects. Here’s a quick review of eight key benefits of these projects with examples from North America and around the world.
Rooftop agrivoltaics is a cutting-edge technology that combines rooftop agriculture with solar panels. About 1.2 million acres of farmland in the U.S. are suitable for solar power, learn about the latest research on agrivoltaics.
Find out more details and lessons learned from the Awards of Excellence Winning IGA Rooftop Farm in Montreal, Quebec, which sells over 7 tons of fresh produce in store below!
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With slopes all around and city streets below, sky farming represents a new trend in any city. Architectural innovations—such as the massive Thomas Heatherwick-inspired pergola in Tokyo, the ACROS pyramid building in Fukuoka, Japan, and the much-loved High Line in New York City—have allowed rooftop gardens to look up and into the distance.
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