Choose from one of the following options: Embodied Avatars, Fabric-embedded screens, Computational Photography, Artificial Photosynthesis, Vertical Farming, Programmable Matter, Archologies, Telepresence, Exocortex, Nanomedicine, Machine-augmented Cognition.
The impact of vertical farming on member of society around the world and on the economy or investigate an emerging technology.
WHAT IS VERTICAL FARMING ?
A valuable investigation would be to determine other ways to supply food to cities alongside current agricultural practices in a sustainable manner. One idea is the concept of vertical farming. Vertical farming can be defined as farming fruits, vegetables, grains, etc. in the middle of a city inside of a building where different floors have different purposes (one floor for a certain crop, another floor for a vegetable, etc.) using hydroponics(water with nutrients). The concept of supplying food in cities is not a new one as the history of urban agriculture goes back to many ancient civilizations, including the Mayans, the city of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City today), etc. There are many developments taking place today that apply the concept of urban agriculture, and the concept of vertical farming is a large scale extension of urban agriculture. It is becoming increasingly understood that both our forms of settlement and methods of sustenance are functionally incompatible with a planet of limited natural resources. Modern cities exhibit decisively ―linear‖ resource metabolisms where food, fresh water, energy, and other resource demands are imported from great distances, consumed, and then swiftly dispensed as sewage or rubbish that the natural world cannot easily process. Likewise, the high-yield farming methods that support our immense population are characterized by their insatiable consumption of our limited reserves of freshwater, fossil-fuel energy, and soil. A glimpse of humanity‘s predictable future indicates that the way cities and agriculture consume the Earth‘s precious natural capital will only worsen with the passage of time.
CHALLENGES ON VERTICAL FARMING
Building urban vertical farms will initially need large amounts of resources for building and construction. Unless a new method of solar-powered lighting is developed, light to grow crops will be very expensive- resulting in a non-sustainable business mode. That's just lighting: no inputs, interest, rates, rents or labor. Somehow this minor consideration – that plants need light to grow and that they aren't going to get it except on the top story – has been overlooked by the scheme's supporters.
GOALS
IMPACT OF VERTICAL FARMING
ADVANTAGES OF VERTICAL FARMING
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS
Imagining a future where urban vertical farming becomes an important driver of the food production industry, the consequences on a social and political level would be difficult to predict, but they would be substantial. Major shifts in food distribution networks would ensue and therefore changes in political trade balances between nations and regions. Urban farms would compete and most likely gain the upper hand in the production of the majority of food in urban regions, leaving agricultural land to be used for more specialized uses, or to be returned to a natural state. Of course the production of food crops on land will quite likely remain financially beneficial as its primary investments are low, but as oil and energy prices rise, the transportation of these crops will gain an increasing share in the cost of traditionally cultivated food. On a sociological level people in dense urban environments would be partially reconnected with the cycle of resources that exists in the natural world. Waste would be locally treated and used to grow nutrients that are then consumed locally. The requirements of the vertical farms in terms of labor and maintenance would mingle a modern agrarian work force with that of more typical urban dwellers, which might prove for an interesting cultural interchange. It might serve to re-establish a certain respect and understanding for natural processes in the educational system as farms and schools can be co-located and other functions are integrated as well. It would not be a large stretch of the imagination to envision the merger of public places and food production, after all if Chinese gardens did it in ways we admire now, why not apply it to a new urban development? For developing worlds the farms could be a center for development, and substituting some high technology solutions with labor intensive solutions provide for employment for a substantial number of people. For developing areas it would mean a more reliable source of food, a more solid infrastructural foundation to build a society upon and a basis for a more solid economy. In addition it would likely reduce the amount of food related traffic within the city, although that is difficult to quantify. The quality of food could be regulated better and the water filtration properties of a vertical farm are paramount to healthy future development, this being a major issue in many developing areas. It could assist in providing employment for women in countries where women have lower (agricultural) social status and provide for a framework of reintegration of these classes and an emancipation of this status.
CONCLUSION
The implications of vertical farming in an urban ecology This dissertation will conclude by examining how vertical farming can encourage a more resilient, cyclical resource metabolism to emerge in the microcosm of human society, the city. Large scale urban farming, in the shape of vertical farms, can thoroughly affect the way we provide for our daily necessities. Its potential is enormous, positively affecting transportation, food quality, the economy of cities, skyline and the sociological landscape of urban areas. However, it depends on its level of implementation how influential it can be. Also as a long vision future is urban totally. And here the vertical farming concepts can really act as an emerging trend for resource (oil, land, water etc.) management. The impact of urban agriculture, vertical or not, could range from large to small. The range spans from a nice and functional addition to the agricultural services providing some places with a percentage of their food contribution in highly developed countries, to revolutionary development in food production that shifts the balance from rural to urban and empowers developing countries in economic, political and social ways as not seen before. In the case of architecture it really helps the city to shape its skyline and sociological landscape of urban areas .As architects it is necessary to continue to push for experimentation and exploration of this realm. The challenge of architects for this vertical farm is to maximize sunlight penetration and provide facilities for the public and commercial sectors. The crops areas should place on top and envisaged to the south, to take advantage of the southern sun. Scaffold framed structures and meshes can be used to keep farm area light. The technologies are known, but they've hardly been used in such a way before. Also, the economical characteristics are not entirely known. Without test sites and further research into the implementation of vertical farms into the fabric of the city it will remain guess work. What is certain is that vertical farms provide an enormous potential for changing the functional operations of cities the world over, and that whoever manages to harness them in an economically and ecologically sound way has a bright future ahead of them. International cooperation to achieve the first few plants would be a good start, and a number of experimental vertical farms the next step. Nomatter how it will be done, large scale urban farming is a viable opportunity in architecture that can play a very important role in the next century, if executed correctly. To effectively explain vertical farming‘s impact on urban resource metabolism it is important to address the underlying systematic behavior of cities in relation to that of their sustaining natural ecosystems. Like ecosystems, cities are classified a ―complex adaptive systems‖; complex in that they are diverse and composed of multiple interconnected agents, and adaptive in their capacity to evolve in response to stimulus. Both can be described as emergent phenomena wherein their overall form and behavior are determined not by the sum of their constituent parts, but rather the patterns that emerge from the interactions of their constituent parts. Both are also strongly influenced by their contextual forces: the hydrological and thermodynamic signature of a region for ecosystems and the regional economic, demographic, and environmental forces for cities. Urban systems will expand or contract, evolve or become stagnant over time, just like ecological communities. The evident behavioral distinctions between cities and ecosystems can be explained primarily by the differing levels of diversity among their respective constituent agents. It is widely understood that ecosystems exhibit a complex cyclical metabolism. This is enabled by the heterogeneous array of organisms that compose ecosystems, where the waste material discharged by one organism can become the nourishment for another. This metabolic structure is astonishingly self-reliant, requiring few inputs beyond sunlight and externalizing no material output waste.On the other hand, modern cities have overwhelmingly linear metabolisms distinguished by their insatiable appetite for natural resource inputs and substantial production of waste outputs. This simplistic resource usage pattern is a product of the homogeneity of a city‘s composition. In contrast to the internal diversity of ecosystems, cities are largely composed of entities fulfilling the role of heterotrophic consumption. Urban citizens consume food, water, and other commodities, their buildings and appliances consume electricity, and their vehicles consume fuel – the latter two also involving the consumption of raw materials in their manufacture. Without the complimentary metabolic functions of producers or decomposers urban agents must obtain these resources from sources found outside the community, while also creating wastes of little use to the community, forming the traditional input and output externalities of urban life.
Explain the impact of one emerging technology on members of society around the world, and on...