the story, the plan, the start


story:
once upon a time, in a city not at all far away, there were cars instead of bicycles, suburbs instead of cross-walks, and tall, tall towers instead of trees. certainly there was also giving and thinking, and sometimes even doing; but mostly there was taking and using. this is what the people had worked toward for so very many years, and the majority of the people were happy with all that they had achieved. so, on their way to work in the early morning rush hour they would roll up their car windows against the fumes from outside and hum along with the radio while they idled.


this is how it was for a very, very long time.


but as more and more time passed, more and more people began to notice things that that were becoming unpleasant. for every new multiplex or even for every new days` drive to work, it seemed, some new problem arose. now when it rained the water that dropped from the sky was mixed with chemicals with long and unfamilar names. cars were starting to rust much faster than they ever had before. the children of the city made sure to pack their asthma inhalers in their backpacks before they buckled into the minivan each school morning.


after much worrying about the summer time skies that had taken on the brownish tones of dried poppy stalks, some of the city folk began to think fresh. some decided to ride the subway, while others decided to introduce themselves to the people who grew the food they ate by shopping at the farmers' market instead of at the large parking lot which happened to have an ultrabulkmegavalue food complex in the middle of it. some of those city folk even decided that they liked this new way of living. gardening gained in popularity, even amongst the people who lived in those tall towers. and as the impatiens, marigolds, and ferns that grew on the lofty balconies were tended, and the potted shrubs and trees that thrived on the tops of even the highest towers cast their own leafy shadows, the people who loved their city began to imagine it under green instead of brown.




plan:

This UWO MIT026b course blog, siftr [!], is/will be a compilation of research leads and information pertaining to rooftop gardening as a response to the urban heat island (UHI) effect.




start:

The problem of urban pollution (air, soil, water, psychic) extends beyond the "special interest concerns" of a couple of hundred environmentalists out of touch with the "real issues". The environmentalists are concerned with ecology while the others are worried about economy. But special interest concerns are real issues, just as ecology is economy. A great way of exploring that connection between ecology and economy is to go small scale, and rooftop gardens, as a response to the ecological and economic threat posed by the urban heat island phenomenon, fit that bill rather nicely. What better way to explore the relationship between ecology and economy than by looking toward the urban centres that so strongly influence the destiny of both systems? While the rooftop garden industry might not yet be described as particularily money moving in any direct sense, the indirect results will be. In the next few decades, money that changes hands in business transactions originating in, for instance, the tourism, real estate, or educational sectors will have been encouraged by the social, cultural, political (the -als go on) atmosphere that simple and small scale ideas like urban rooftop green space have helped to foster. At the very least, it's a start.



TONIGHT'S LINK: online version of the book Eco-Economy, written by Lester R. Brown. Take a look, it's really good (but even better in actual book form). As you'll take from the title, the book is about the relationship between ecology and economy. I first heard of Brown's book on CityTV's show MediaTelevision which has put out some good episodes in its day. If anybody is actually going to follow any of the links on other people's pages, then you should read a bit of chapters one and twelve, page 259. As the book is more of a macro look at things, it doesn't talk about rooftop gardening or even the urban heat island effect, but it does give you a primer to start thinking about the need for such projects and the effect of such problems.