Urban rooftop gardens have been only a proposed theory of futurists until recently. More and more real greenhouses are sprouting up in cities across the country showing that sustainable high tech urban agriculture is becoming increasing viable as energy costs of transporting food to cities will only be going up in the future.
Three New York City entrepreneurs, calling their business Gotham Greens, will start construction later this year on a 1,4 million dollar, 12,000 square foot greenhouse that will grow crops hydroponically on top of an old industrial building once used as a church in the Jamaica neighborhood. They hope to start delivering produce to restaurants and markets by spring of next year.
The rooftop farm will combine technically sophisticated controlled environment agriculture techniques with unique energy saving innovations. They feel it is an emerging trend to utilize unused space in cities to produce food and they are going to be the first in New York City to capitalize on it.
Graphic credit: Gotham Greens
Gotham Greens Presentation | Green Business Competition NYC from coreindustries on Vimeo.
Hydroponics Dictionary
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This type of venture has good business potential as these creating value out of unused space and if carried out on a very big scale could end up in a big enterprise. For a future world three dimensional farming will be also necessary which would make today’s deserts into tomorrow’s green belts. I have written a science fiction novel MEGALOPOLIS ONE 2080 A.D. where a complete chapter is dedicated to this type of technologies. Please visit the website http://www.eloquentbooks.com/MegalopolisOne2080AD.html
When someone is looking for pathbreaking ideas all types of possibilities are to be looked into.
I’d love to see the financial feasibility study for this project. What crops and volumes are they anticipating in order to get a decent return on that $1.4 million investment for 12,000 square feet of growing space?