HEADLINE PARTNER
Currently there are people in Zurich who would like to take part in gardening/farming but are unable to because of limited available space. Our idea called Edible Roofs would setup rooftops for gardening and create an online platform where people can go to rent out parcels on roofs around the city.
Imagine: everyone could be a farmer and a farm could be anywhere. Create a system for citizens and groups to use urban space for food production. Avoid conflicts between production and other claims and build a reliable, long lasting community-run system.
Read more about Urban farming to enliven urban spaces!The population of the city of Zurich is growing and space in family and community gardens is becoming increasingly scarce. Currently there are already waiting lists for family gardens with expected waiting times of one to two years. The situation is expected to deteriorate further due to the increasing density of land usage, which will minimize the land available for gardening. In addition, current family garden parcels are usually not centrally located and often too large for one person to maintain. However, there is about 5 square kilometers of flat roof area in the city of Zurich, which remains largely unused. The city has put forth policy that all flat roofs must be “greened” within technical and economic limits. Transforming these rooftops into rooftop gardens would allow more citizens to start growing their own food thereby better connecting the urban population with the food system, while supporting the city of Zurich in reaching their policy goal. In addition, increased greening has numerous benefits including better temperature regulation, increased carbon sequestration, and higher biodiversity.
Edible Roofs provides an online platform where people can find available garden parcels on public roofs close to their home or work to grow their own food. Garden parcels are available with several options in terms of size and provided infrastructure to add flexibility and customization to different gardening needs. Edible Roofs identifies suitable rooftops in collaboration with the city of Zurich, organizes basic infrastructure setup and upkeep, and manages matching and managing of urban gardeners. In addition, Edible Roofs will provide information about gardening including optimal plants for rooftops, how-to’s, and workshops. Edible Roofs will help connect more people to their food, making gardening/farming accessible to more people in Zurich, while greening the city and building community.
* Climate-KIC publishes the proposed solutions developed during the Climathon event solely for the purposes of facilitating public access to the information concerning ideas and shall not be liable regarding any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use any of the proposed solutions shared on its website neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Climate-KIC cannot guarantee that the text of the proposed solution is an exact reproduction of the proposed solution. This database is general in character and where you want to use and develop a proposed solution further, this is permitted. We recommend getting in touch with the relevant team or give credit by referencing this solution subpage as the original source.
