Sustainable Cities Event 2010 – Singapore

For hundreds of thousands of years man fought to make a place for himself in nature. For the first time in the history of our species, the situation is reversed and today it is imperative to make a space for nature in man’s world.”

Santiago Kovadloff (philosopher and writer, 1942)

Where to start? Should I begin with the huge population increases we are currently seeing:

In 2027 the world’s population is expected to have reached 10 billion double the population of 5 billion around 20 years ago and it’s not as though the increase will not stop there; it will carry on infinitely and exponentially thereafter. ¹

Or perhaps the unprecedented rate at which we are losing our forests:

About 15 million hectares of forest are destroyed every year. ²

Or maybe that it is predicted that in 50 years 80% of the Earth's population will live in cities. 80% of the land that can be used to grow crops is already in use, and 15% of that land has b een damaged by poor agricultural practices. ³

All of these issues and a lot more were covered at the Sustainable Cities Event 2010.

The speaking panel consisted of some of the world leaders in sustainable Planning and thinking. There were a lot of great ideas and even more to gain and learn from the event.

My presentation was on Vertical Farming and covered world crisis issues such as deforestation, population, pollution, global warming, urban heat island effect, floods, future weather patterns and the decrease in agricultural land. It is proposed that farming vertically will have a significant positive impact on all of these issues (and a lot more).

The presentation also covered a vertical farm design which was originally conceived many years ago but has more recently brought attention from various developers around the world, from the USA to China, wanting to build the design or utilize its various principles and ideas.

Dimond Architects has been able to recently put forward a proposal for a prototype version of the design for Taiwan (to later be incorporated into Eco-City projects in mainland China).

I would like to thank the organisers of the event IBC Asia for their hospitality and superbly executed event.

If you would like to know more about vertical farming or even general sustainable planning issues please contact us.

Kind Regards,

Oliver Foster

References:

1. Bartlett, Albert. Arithmetic, Population and Energy (Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis). s.l. : Univ Col Boulder Academic Media Services, March
2. Green Peace, Facts and Figures, www.greenpeace.org
3. www.verticalfarm.com, [Online] 2008