the Rural Skyscraper
The growth of cities increases. It is estimated, that by the year 2050, almost 70% of world's population will live in urban areas and cities. While this parameter of global lifestyle extends, the amount of arable land is shrinking over the world. Where does our food come from? Living in urban landscape, citizens tend to forget how food is produced, how much energy, land and work we need to feed the city. Farmers feed the cities!
How much food do we eat? What amount of food is consumed by the city of Tokyo, or New York, or for instance Shanghai? Where is all the land we need for the amount of food we eat day by day? The space we need to produce our daily food needs to go vertical. Energy and land can be saved by placing rural function in the city. Consumers should be as close to the farms as possible. Just like citizens started find homeland vertically, farmers need to find farmlands vertically.
How do we buy our food, and what is our connection to what we eat? Traditional markets are the true forms of social interaction. The less you see about cultivation, the less you know about what you eat, the more isolated you become of the food you take in. You need to visit the farmer to be certain about your daily food.
Alternative growing methods and vertical shelf method of cultivation creates vertical rural landforms. Attached to a traditional, but vertically structured market, consumers of cities just need to take the paternoster, a constant moving elevator to get to farmers and the farm produce in dense cities.
Layers Vertical Rural Landscape Several types of alternative cultivation systems - plastic bag cultivation, glasshouse culture, home gardening, market gardening, soilless culture, tray method, protected cultivation, shelf method, early outdoor production, late field growing. Each farmer has a farmhouse through they can connect to the market, as the second layer. The house links the two layers. Vertical harvesting zones are supported by reapers, tractors, sprinkler systems, all working in vertical cultivation.
Market Supporting structure holds the market, as series of vertical urban spaces. Traditional market hall structures appoint the marketplaces, while platforms are for average consumption for groceries or greengrocers, etc. You find taverns, pubs, ale-houses connected to the market halls. Vertically a parallel system of permanently moving paternosters (for people, and for cars, too) connect the farms and markets. The perpetually moving vertical street fragments assure the altering.
Service Top and sides of the rural land is for vertical agrarian machines, ventilation, electricity, turbines, all supporting the cultivation. Tanks are for watering systems, collecting rain water, some of them can serve as crawls, or settling pans.
Seasons and functioning Farmers buy or rent the land for cultivation and harvesting, and with direct connection to consumers, they sell what they produce. Also animal husbandry is welcome on the vertical rural land. By being two-sided, the Rural Skyscraper can be located perfectly, by constant solar energy, sustainable energy systems are used. At winter, seasonal glasshouse cultures function to supply the market , while ice-skating or leak-fishing is provided too. Taverns, pubs and additional functions are open all year.
