Wikinomics and Urban Ag

Dan Tapscott says:

"We can peer produce an operating system, an encyclopedia, the media, a mutual fund, and even physical things like a motorcycle. We are becoming an economy unto ourselves—a vast global network of specialized producers that swap and exchange services for entertainment, sustenance, and learning. A new economic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role."

This is certainly parallel to the line I have been towing in debates with my cog-sci and interactive media chums. As an era of youth brought up in the digital world, we are highly optimistic to think that the production of physical objects is subject to the same processes as digital objects. What we fail to consider are the numerous real-world potholes in the road to production, ones which I have become acutely aware of in my training as an Industrial designer. Despite the fact that I am one of the first to willingly make that jump, taking the principles of the digital realm and applying them to the physical, I am still acutely aware that there is progress yet to be made. What a bullet train is to a dirt highway- using a pin router for mass production seems archaic in the face of technologies like 3d Printing, laser cutting and CNC. Very geeky people out there are working hard to blur the lines between the real world and the internet, and they are closer together than ever before.

That said, in the context of community planning, there is still a lot of ground to cover before the mass collaboration through technology will be a stand-alone tool for developing something like food security. The major issue is that we have developed at a pace as to become reliant on capital-based massive systems to support ourselves, so whether we are able to become self-reliant, and how that transition could look is still very much up in the air. In reading the Food Secure Vancouver Baseline Report, it has become very clear to me that the city of Vancouver cannot support the food needs of its population through Urban Agriculture alone, at least, not how we are currently doing things.

So, what role can Urban Agriculture play in developing food security and improving the overall health of the Vancouver population? And, secondly, how will urban agriculture change in coming years to better suit the needs of the population?

Here are a couple interesting links I came across.
National Geographic article on green roofs, which mentions the downtown Public Library green roof. Here's more info on that.

From the National Geographic article:

Stephan Brenneisen, a Swiss scientist and a strong advocate for the biodiversity potential of living roofs, says simply, "I have to find easy, cheap solutions using materials that come from the region." That means less reliance on plastics and other energy-intensive materials between the roof structure and the plants themselves."

This speaks to the direction green roofing, and other green technologies will be moving in the future, I believe. More biomimicry and less basic attempts to "copy" nature.


Thirdly- and perhaps more importantly- will these new and innovative methods for production remain 'unfettered by the greed of corporations'? That is to say, will mass collaboration be absorbed by the millions of creative minds working to place it firmly within the grasp of middlemen, thus squelching its advantage over their existing systems?

This is a concern that I often run into when social action becomes trendy. I'm often worried that the green movement will be swept away by all the greenwashing marketing, and when the people who drive these things decide to move on, then little residual benefit will be left over.