Historic Portland Maps: 1866 Portland Map

The last in this particular era of maps, this survey map highlights the tracing of ‘disappeared streams’ throughout the urban area, which requires research and layering of a number of historical maps onto the modern urban form. One map that has some interesting waterways is a Map of the City of Portland, Surveyed and drawn by order of the Common Council, By C.W. Burrage, City Surveyor, 1866.



This map traces a detailed route of Tanner Creek, the waterway that meandered through modern-day Downtown and Pearl District, through the Northwest Industrial area that was occupied by Couch Lake. The ‘lake’ which was mostly a fen, or wetland, is located in a parcel (marked J.H. Couch), but the boundaries are not delineated. There are some other maps that exist showing the boundaries, which will be layered in as well.



Another interesting waterway is along the east bank, originating in at the intersection of B & C Streets, at 5th Street. The modern location of this would be around the outfall of Sullivan’s Gulch (around the I-84/I-5 connection)… the forked creek meanders through the Central Eastside area, outletting at the Water Street at ‘J’ Street (presently Water at Oak – along the Eastbank Esplanade).



The other interesting feature was the location of the Lunatic Asylum Grounds in Southeast Portland. The location of this facility is somewhere between Ladd’s Addition and the Central Eastside Industrial District… showing that SE has always been the locus of the ‘Keep Portland Wierd’ idea.

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Cadastral Maps

Probably the most detailed and broad ranging of these early maps are from the collection from the Public Land Survey System (or Cadastral Maps). These were generated throughout the 1850s in the Portland metro region, with the main portion of Portland encompassed in two maps, which were obviously the base material for the 1852 Survey Map, as it contains much of the same data.





Zooming in a bit on the area of current downtown Portland, we see the nascent grid forming along 'The Clearing', and see the edge of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) to the west, even a trail leading toward Beaverton through a slot in the Canyon where Highway 26 west (Sunset Highway) runs. On the east side of the river is the lowland marsh and streams that were subsequently filled to create the Central Eastside Industrial area. Within the Willamette River to the south, Ross Island is intact, well before the constant sand and gravel mining operations left it a ribbon of it's former self.



The detail is pretty awesome, as you really get a feel for some of the drainages that existed, still in visible dendritic forms making sub-watersheds. This section also shows the routing of a 'road' that connected to Milwaukie and Tualatin to the south.



The northern section captures the upper reaches of Downtown, as well as the current Pearl district and Northwest Industrial Zone. Closer to downtown, the original routing of Tanner Creek is made evident by it's headwaters at the 'Tannery' adjacent to the road to the Tualatin Plains. This fed Couch Lake, a wetland adjacent to the Willamette that is currently the location of Tanner Springs Park, a metaphorical daylighting of this lowland. Finally, in the pre-bridge era, the location of ferry crossings connecting east and west are shown



Another notable items on the upper west includes Guilds Lake, a significant water body that was the site of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted - which was later filled to create flat industrial land as it exists today.


:: image via Portland History

Taking a closer look at the northernmost section you see the level of detail shown in the marshy edge of the Columbia River called on the map 'Columbia Bayou' and some of the earliest low-density riverfront inhabitation.



I really love this map for many reasons, but the fact that it is referenced to the township, section, range mapping convention, making it easy to use as an underlayment for modern mapping to show a pre-development (or at least early development snapshot of Portland context). It also shows a relatively wide span of the region, making it useful beyond the boundaries of Portland.

I have created a few of these maps over the years which I will post when I get a chance). My ultimate goal is to reconcile these into a graphical layer in GIS that can be used for mapping analyses... any grad students out there want a project? (Find many of these maps from this post and the previous ones at the great City of Portland Publications and Maps Page)

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Downtown Survey

A focused companion in the same vintage as the 1852 Survey Map (which includes the entire city area) comes from the early Portland 1852 Downtown Survey, a more detailed account encompassing the downtown area adjacent to the Willamette River (oriented with north to the right). One interesting pattern is the street grid running right into the waterfront – as the river was the hub of commerce and building hung right over the water. As the city evolved this interface with the river lefts some interesting patterns which became a highway, and eventually the current Waterfront Park.



A couple of early creek corridors are shown on the south portion of downtown, originating at SW Jefferson Street and winding down SW Columbia to 3rd. There’s another stream originating from Mill Street and continuing southward. I've been mesmerized for years with the idea of these 'disappeared streams' that were later buried under the developed downtown grid.



And the form that continues through of the park blocks, in this form continuing from SW Clay to SW Stark. This is a pattern of park blocks that continues north and south as shown in the 1866 Map (look for this in an upcoming post). I’m curious where in the development pattern the North and South Park blocks were severed.

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Survey Map

Following up on the previous post, one of my all time favorite maps is the reproduction of the 1852 Survey Map offers not only development and trails, but information on soils, disappeared streams, topographic and other natural features. The map used to be available via a link to the BES website, but I can’t seem to place the source for it at the moment. The overall map covers what is considered the area of modern City of Portland (click to enlarge to a somewhat more readable scale).



A couple of details:

First, showing the area of current downtown, with natural features of Mt. Tabor and Ross Island. Note the curving depression of Sullivan’s Gulch still in full flow, replaced by what is the current routing of Interstate 84 connecting Portland from the east. There is interesting notations referring to 'Land gently rolling, soil 2nd rate, gravelly', denoting the floodplain of the original creek.

Second, focusing on North Portland, including Swan Island, the wetlands of Smith & Bybee Lakes (in proximity to what was used for Portland's landfill for many years), Forest Park, and the prominent eyebrow of the overlook ridge. The references to 'burnt timber' and trails show the marks of early habitation. The map is a great background for some of the current hydrology and ecology of modern Portland - at least to a certain level of detail.

Historic Portland Maps: 1845-1852

The discussions of Portland Urban Form (here, here) got me thinking about a series of posts I originally posted to Free Association Design of a collection of historic Portland maps that I thought worthy of reposting here. It's great to see the origins of the urban form begin to take shape, and it provides a context in which to see what happened over a century and a half previous and it's current ramifications. Starting off, this is one of the oldest maps I’ve been able to find 'The Clearing' shows the core of Portland in the early years. The large parcels on the right are owned by Francis Pettygrove and Benjamin Stark, both prominent place-names of early history. This is the first iteration, including the afforementioned 200' square blocks, which were laid out by the business-oriented duo to maximize valuable corner lots.



This map dates to the inital history of Portland – with the initial land claim by William Overton and Asa Lovejoy, and the subsequent ‘coin-toss’ by Lovejoy and Pettygrove, giving the City is current name. From City of Portland’s Historic Portland Timelines, 1843-1901:

“1945: Overton sells his share of the claim to Francis Pettygrove. Pettygrove and Lovejoy survey the land, deciding to build a city. Previously called The Clearing, Portland gets its name with the toss of a coin with Pettygrove’s home town in Maine winning over Lovejoy’s birthplace in Boston.”

While I'm much happier with the western iteration of Portland versus Boston, it's a interesting factoid to see that coin flips original history, but more telling that the City evolved from the man-made Clearing along the riverside. Tying a bit of this history to the mapping, this early settlement map shows the Lownsdale claim. Again from the City of Portland Historic Timeline 1843 to 1901:

“1850: Portland or “Stump Town”, consists of a steam sawmill, a log-cabin hotel and the weekly Oregonian. Sidewalks are rough planks and the streets are dirt turning to mud when it rains. Houses are small and simple, only 2 houses in town have a plaster interior.”

The map below shows the level of development – tied closely to the larger 1852 Portland map in amount of urbanization. You can also see on the right side where the grid shift will take place (along present day Burnside) as the blocks blend into Capt. Couch’s claim.



The inset of the western section shows the sparse development – including pastureland, orchards, and gardens. There was also some smaller gardens and potato fields along the creek (which is probably Tanner) to the NW.



The City of Portland was subsequently incorporated in on February 8th, 1851, using the established Lownsdale plan as a starting point. The inset shows the ‘developed’ downtown – expanded somewhat from the 1945 map of ‘The Clearing’. To the north was land claimed by Captain John Couch – and to the south was land claimed by James Terwilliger – place names that continue to define NW and SW areas to this day. The road shown on this map led to the Tualatin Plains, running along present-day Canyon Road, which at the time was a plank trail built in 1847 – heading towards present-day Beaverton.



To connect the maps to the level of development, an ’urban’ shot showing the City, circa 1852 – taken from the corner of First & Stark (photo via PDX History)

Suburban Still Life

Another upcoming highlight to our class will include a visit by Linda K. Johnson, a dancer and performance artist most known locally for both the work recently at South Waterfront and the ongoing series of dances that celebrate the local legacy of Anna and Lawrence Halprin and Portland fountains entitle "The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin" which is a regular annual performance in the city (more here from Portland Architecture as well).


:: City Dance - image via Portland Architecture

Back in 1999, she was involved in a curated installation related to the UGB. From the ORLO site: "Spanning Boundaries” was a series of site-specific art works, performances and a one-night symposium into the exploration of Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). Growth issues are a provocative topic throughout the nation and each artist created installations along its edges. In this intriguing visual juxtaposition of site/non-site art, “Spanning Boundaries” created a broad civic dialogue about community identity, individual rights, historical antecedent and the future of Portland’s growing metropolis."


:: image via Orlo

Johnson's installation entitled 'The View From Here' included site specific performance work at Riverside/Clackamas, Bella Madrona/Sherwood, Broughton Beach/Marina Drive, Dabney State Park/Troutdale, Springwater Corridor/Powell Butte and Jackson Bottom Wetlands/Hillsboro.

A quote from the book Urban Sprawl, by Gregory Squires "The UGB has even attracted the attention of artists, surely a rarity for a land use regulation. Dancer and performance artist Linda K. Johnson set up camp for 36-hour stints at four different points on the UGB, living in a fence-like tent supplied with a TV set and Martha Stewart dishes and bedding. She quickly replaced her specialized choreography with straightforward chats with visitors, pulling opinions from yuppies, school kids, construction workers, and architects. Out of the resulting "suburban still life" came new, complex understandings of the way that the UGB has affected "every single solitary aspect of the way we livie... traffic, education, taxes, our desires and housing and architecture." For Johnson - and for many other Portlanders - the growth boundary has become "a different viewfinder to see the city through" (Gragg 1999).

Quest for the Livable City

For an upcoming seminar class that myself and my colleague Brett Milligan are teaching in the Winter Quarter at the University of Oregon Architecture Program here in Portland, I've been doing a good bit of research on our local planning. Look for some upcoming posts here and at Brett's blog FAD on the topic of Portland's Urban Edge.


:: Portlands Urban Growth Boundary

The class will investigate the phenomenon of the Portland Urban Edge in . One recent resource that I picked up from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is an hour-long documentary called 'Quest for the Livable City', part of their Making Sense of Place Series.


:: image via Northern Light Productions

I just finished watching the DVD and it's a great overview of some of the pros and cons of our unique system of land use planning, a passable primer for understanding the edge in a number of ways. Check out a quick trailer here:

Where the Revolution Began

The passing of Lawrence Halprin has close ties to an upcoming book that is being released this weekend celebrating his legacy in Portland. This Saturday is a chance to celebrate the legacy of Halprin in Portland, with the release of 'Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space'.



On Saturday, December 5th, at 2pm, join us for the release of a book celebrating the world-renowned Portland fountain plazas designed by Lawrence Halprin. The event will be located at the Ziba World Headquarters Auditorium (map) at 1044 9th Ave NW. A quick rundown of events:

Introduction by: Portland Parks Commissioner Nick Fish

Lecture performance by: Ron Blessinger, violinist, Third Angle Ensemble, with dancer/choreographers Linda K. Johnson, Tere Mathern, Cydney Wilkes, and Linda Austin.

Screening of: The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. A documentary about the September 2008 performance in Halprin’s Portland plazas.

::

About the Book:
Some additional information about the book, from a press release issued by the Halprin Landscape Conservancy:

"Between 1963 and 1970, Lawrence Halprin and Associates realized the Portland Open Space Sequence: a quartet of public plazas in Portland, Oregon, that redefined the city and set a bold new precedent for urban landscape architecture. Comprised of Lovejoy Fountain, Pettygrove Park, and Ira Keller Fountain), plus the lesser-known Source Fountain, the plazas are a collage of striking concrete forms, gushing water, and alpine flora that, in their seamless mix of nature and theater, created a playful metaphorical watershed coursing through the central city."


:: image via Halprin Landscape Conservancy

"Where the Revolution Began (Spacemaker Press, $29.95) is the story of how these plazas came to be. Born of the creative experimentation and collaboration between the late Halprin and his wife, pioneering choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin, the Portland Open Space Sequence came to life in the unlikely setting of the Portland’s first scrape-and-rebuild urban renewal project. But Halprin defied the conventions of both American urban renewal and midcentury modernism, designing the kind of inviting, exuberant public space not seen since Renaissance Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navona.

The book is an outgrowth of “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin,” a performance that took place in the plazas in September 2008 as part of PICA’s annual TBA Festival. The book’s release, the performance, and screening is a celebration of Halprin, who passed away October 25 at age 94.

For Lawrence Halprin, one of the 20th century’s most influential landscape architects, the Portland plazas were the first step in a career-long exploration of sequential works of landscape design, from the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem to the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Portland, Halprin’s work marked the beginning of a tradition of remaking the city around interactive public spaces, such as the famed Pioneer Courthouse Square. And for landscape architecture, the plazas laid the earliest foundations for the ecologically and socially responsive urbanism on the rise today.

Replete with historic photographs and Halprin’s notebook drawings, Where the Revolution Began is a historically complete document of how this pivotal moment in urban landscape history came to be, from concept to fruition.

All proceeds from sales benefit the Halprin Landscape Conservancy, a nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public and preserving the Portland Open Space Sequence."

Essays by:
John Beardsley is the director of garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks and is the author of Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape and Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists.

Janice Ross is a professor in the Drama Department and director of the Dance Division at Stanford University. She is the author of Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance and Moving Lessons: The Beginning of Dance in American Education.

Randy Gragg is editor in chief of Portland Monthly magazine and has written on art and architecture for Architectural Record, Metropolis, Preservation, the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and numerous other publications.

Contemporary photography by:
Susan Seubert regularly photographs for National Geographic Traveler, Geo Saison, and the New York Times, among other publications. She was a 1999 recipient of Life magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Award.

Funding generously provided by:
Oregon Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Portland Development Commission
Portland Parks & Recreation
Schnitzer Care Foundation
Russell Development Company
And many others.

Portland Grid, revisited

The question of the efficacy of the grid system is continually interesting, and there have been some interesting conversations about this with a range of folks locally. Another resource to throw some information into this discussion is the recently released background documents in support of the Portland Plan. One worth checking out for any Portland-phile is the segment on Urban Form (it's a large file, so this is a link to all of the background reports).

Scrolling through it, I found this interesting two page study on block typologies, which mentions the ubiquitous 200' square blocks:


:: image via Portland Plan

From page 37-38 of the Urban Form document: "A city’s structure of streets and blocks serves as its urban DNA, shaping its development long into the future. While Downtown Portland’s system of compact 200' by 200' blocks is sometimes seen as Portland’s fundamental pattern, it covers only a small part of the city. As will be summarized in this chapter, Portland includes a diverse and varied range of urban patterns. These examples highlight the wide range of block structures found in Portland (they are not intended to represent what is typical or most common)."

This couple of pages continues to outline a range of variations, also giving an average size and location that they commonly appear within the city. The grid obviously starts to stretch in some areas, turning into a rectangular grid with one elongated side and the inclusion of alleys in some areas. These are bisected by some of the anomalous items like diagonal streets. There is also a larger retangular block size as growth sprawls out into Northeast and East Portland.








:: image via Portland Plan

The square and rectangular blocks degrade in a number of ways, including some neighborhoods that have a more diagonal grid that creates triangular blocks and open spaces. Subsequent iterations include more curvilinear blocks are rectangular grid but with undulating curves, and some more organic layouts that may or may not have been influenced by topography.








:: image via Portland Plan

As you can see, there is definitely an evolution away from the small grid, which is mostly located in the City Center and inner eastside. It's also interesting to see the changes and experimentation that happened as the city moves outward from the center. But wait, there's more... another set of typologies to augment these patterns that offers some more typologies, including the very archetypal Ladd's Addition, an beautiful oddity for sure, as well as plain ol' curvy sprawl. It's a fascinating study.


:: click to enlarge - via Portland Plan

These patterns aren't necessarily the all-encompassing group, but it does outline a vocabulary of almost 20 varieties that range from the prototypical 200x200 block. I spent a couple of days in San Francisco this past week, working on a project, and it was interesting to contrast a small grid with a comparably large one, particularly at a pedestrian scale. It was a block-by-block decision whether this made one or the other more successful - but it wasn't a particular winner either way. Along that line, check out my colleague Brett Milligan and a couple of posts on his Free Association Design blog about the grid and a case study of vertical subterranean structure from Guanajuato.

More to come on the comparisons, for sure and definitely more on the Portland Plan and associated documentation. For those interested, check out the latest community involvement dates to see where the Plan is going...

Elements of Urban Agriculture

I had the opportunity today to see a presentation by local urban agriculture guru Marc Boucher-Colbert (the man behind the Rocket Restaurant rooftop garden here in Portland). Instead of focusing directly on rooftops, he outlined a broad version of urban agriculture through an investigation of a range of possible strategies for our cities. This is all information investigated at length at times here on L+U and Veg.itecture, but I thought it apt to summarize the ideas from the lecture, as they provide a great overview and were a really inspiring collection of ideas woven together into a strategy.

1. Guerilla Gardening
The starting point of the discussion took a look at the thriving guerrilla gardening movement worldwide as a quick response to the bland and life-less environment we exist within in our urban areas. Both safe anarchy and also, via Wikipedia... "political gardening, a form of direct action, primarily practiced by environmentalists. It is related to land rights, land reform, and permaculture. Activists take over ("squat") an abandoned piece of land which they do not own to grow crops or plants. Guerrilla gardeners believe in re-considering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it."


:: image via Wikipedia


:: seed bombs - image via itwasme

A side-note of the discussion dealt with the production of seed bombs (or the less provocative 'seed balls') as a way of simply and efficiently distributing plant life to our streets, vacant lots, and other left-over spaces. Again via Wikipedia: "A seed bomb is a compressed clod of soil containing live vegetation that may be thrown or dropped onto a terrain to be modified. The term "seed grenade" was first used by Liz Christy in 1973 when she started the "Green Guerillas". The first seed grenades were made from condoms filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer." As a fledgling guerrilla gardener myself, it's pretty damn cool and quite liberating. Give it a try.

2. Front & Backyard Gardening
The idea of front and backyard gardens isn't a new idea (don't tell Fritz Haeg) but have become a cause celebre for re-occupation of our urban and suburban spaces. Call them Victory Gardens, or Edible Estates, or hell, call them 'this is the only place I can find good sun in my yard' - this isn't a new idea come back, but rather something that has always existed and has now re-emerged as a vibrant movement. Growing vegetables at your home is the ultimate in local food, and also engages people in exercise, meditation, and a range of other benefits - making it both a productive activity and a hobby worthy of your time.


:: image via The Blue Marble

Marc explained that while the idea of taking back the lawn is laudable, there is a grim reality to the concept of agri-buisiness, summed up in the following fact: of 'food' grown in the US, 1.5% is fruits and vegetables, while the other 98.5% consists of grain and oilseed, which any reader of Michael Pollan will know goes to meat production, biofuels, various corn products and other detached food we consume in many ways. This led to another new figure in the story - of Stan Cox, who works with one of my heroes, Wes Jackson at The Land Institute, reinventing corporate agriculture through a new model of perennial production based on the tallgrass prairie ecosystems.


:: Perennial Agriculture - image via The Land Institute

The other models beyond reoccupying the land you have is the sub-economy that include yard sharing or other means that leverage open land with the energy and desire of those to garden. By taking the land of folks that have surplus, or don't have the time to garden places like Your Backyard Farmer or Hyperlocavore offer a range of options to use land in cities for productive uses. Again this trend can also go beyond just gardening to include other trends such as backyard chickens, pygmy goats (great for blackberries) or other trends suitable for urban locales.


:: Backyard Chickens - image via Flicker (zbar)

3. Community Gardens
Another vital aspect of both food production and urban life is the community garden, where the interactions between people are just as important as the growing of vegetables. The idea of a range of programs, including those run by the city (such as in Portland), cooperatives, and other models. While a large part of the eventual urban agriculture puzzle, many communities are currently dealing with huge demand and a lack of funding to provide more supply. While the need to fund these programs will continue, there is also a need to look beyond the plots to a larger picture of gardening in cities.


:: image via The Daily Green

The overall conceptual framework of community gardening can be found at the resource-rich site for the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) which provides information on starting and maintaining community gardens throughout the country. As Marc pointed out, much of the training and education for the ACGA is focuses on engaging community resources and partnerships - taking the tack that is you build community, this is lead to a thriving garden - and you can figure out the training of food production and other added services later.


:: food preservation - image via Eat. Drink. Better

Finally, the idea of subsistence and market farms, or a combination of the two, offers a range of opportunities to offer gardening, community, and the ability to make money through the use of these sites in cities - offering for green job creation. Also, included in the idea of community gardening and education is the value-added ideas of food preservation, chickens raising, small animals, beekeeping, and other more agriculturally related ideas to round out the potential for urban ag.

4. School Gardens
While encompassing a range of institutional gardens such as hospitals, prisons, and other urban uses, school gardens provide a unique opportunity to provide food and education, as well as utilizing large amounts of available land. Modeled after the ground-breaking Edible Schoolyards" program in Berkeley started by chef Alice Waters "...to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape that is wholly integrated into the school’s curriculum, culture, and food program." which has been copied around the country in many locations.


:: image via Edible Schoolyard

A local project that provides a bridge for schools and food in Portland has been taken on by the fantastic local non-profit Ecotrust called the Farm to School program, which: "...enable schools to feature healthy, locally sourced products in their cafeterias, incorporate nutrition-based curriculum in all academic disciplines, and provide students with experiential agriculture and food-based learning opportunities, from farm visits to gardening, cooking, composting, and recycling." These connections between food and school continue to offer many possibilities in cities throughout the world.

5. Rooftop Gardens
Covered in detail on the web, the idea of rooftop gardens is definitely a love of Boucher-Colbert, who installed the project on the Rocket (now the Noble Rot) which has become a model project that gets a lot of comments for the kiddie-pool planters, (an inspiration from Joe Ebenezer from Chicago - read about him here) as a low-cost planter alternative and using it as a test for production techniques which are used in the restaurant one floor below.


:: Boucher-Colbert atop the Noble Rot - image via City Farmer

Obviously there are some limitations to rooftops, and difficulties with gardening due to wind, temperatures and other issues. As we provide incentives for more eco- and green roofs atop buildings, growing vegetables will become a continually growing trend as urban land costs make terrestrial farming a less financially viable proposition.

6. Vacant Lands
The use of vacant lands for farming is definitely a hot topic in areas like Detroit, but even in a number of locations like Oakland, which recently identified 1200 sites available for farming - or Montreal, which has implemented permanent agricultural zones that are protected from development - consisting of almost 4% of the Cities total land.

The focus in Portland is on the much discussed and somewhat disappointing implementation of the Diggable City project in 2004-05 which looked at city-owned lands as possible opportunities for establishing: "... an inventory of vacant, publicly-owned land in the Portland area, and to start a conversation about how that land might be used to support urban agricultural activities." The large number of sites have over time been whittled down to a few - and little has been done on any of this pilot projects - even though hundreds of brownfields, vacant lands, and other opportunities still exist.


:: Portland Vacant Land - image via Diggable City

7. Green Building
The integration of agriculture in green building is definitely making strides, as certain points for LEED ND, and potentially other systems can be achieved through the addition of garden plots of agricultural land. This allows for more multi-functional landscaping that includes productivity and use, which was difficult at times to reconcile with green buildings due to added water use and lack of totally native and adapted plantings. Our next task is to develop more year-round, lower maintenance permaculture-based planting that meet aesthetic and functional goals long-term.

Another aspect which spans this category and the next is the concept of Building Integrated Sustainable Agriculture (BISA), which begins to work with walls, rooftops, and other spaces to integrate food production in buildings. This also begins to expand beyond this to using waste heat and water from buildings to heat greenhouses and extend growing seasons to increase productivity. Examples abound, including Mithun's concept urban agriculture project (using the Living Building principles) as well as older examples like Eli Zabar's rooftop garden in Manhattan, to name a few.


:: Mithun's Vertical Farm - image via Treehugger


:: Zabars Vinegar Factory - image via Vison for our Cities

The concept also begins to looks at other agriculture products like chickens, bees, aqua- and hydroponics to maximize space and maintenance as well as blend systems together into closed-loop systems that treat waste as food for other phases of the system.

8. Vertical Farming
Picking up on the threads popularized by Dickson Despommier et.al, the idea of the BISA mentioned in green building is now blown up into the full-fledged phenomenon of vertical farming, which is exciting but needs some serious thought as to the viability of how this actually works and what the economic and social implications are. Boucher-Colbert was interested but skeptical, as there seem much more obvious low-hanging fruit (pardon the pun) to look at first - but as density and food security become more important, all the options must be on the table.


:: Vertical Farming - image via Vertical Farm

In closing, the eight concepts here span a wide range of possible agricultural interventions in our urban environment for getting to the root of food in our cities. It goes beyond production to include community, interaction, and a range of benefits such as habitat, beauty, and cooling - making the mix as important as the individual ideas. Peak Oil will warrant a close look at cities and a re-thinking of what we eat, where it comes from, and how much transportation is used to get it from farm to fork. So, as we transform from city-dwellers that keep nature and farming outside of the city to those that integrating food production into our spaces and daily lives - these tools provide a valuable arsenal for making the 21st century city a vibrant, healthy, and productive environment for all.