In the near future, I see a sudden change in demand for plants within our cities and suburbia. Picture a world filled with vertical gardens, living walls, living roofs, skyscrapers with beneficial gardens harvesting rainwater, tree houses, and plants dwelling amongst our ugliest buildings, beautifying the eye sores of our modern day semi- temporary architecture. Imagine, birds atop roof gardens and a new ecosystem brought in, so humans can live in harmony with plants and animals once more. No longer will the city dweller suffer from "nature deficit disorder"! It will make cities more pleasant, clean, and appealing overall. Think of all the jobs corporations could provide to beautify their buildings!
If you can notice in some of the living wall pictures, there lies a group of plants called "epiphytes" that live on other things like buildings, walls, or trees, derives nutrients and moisture from the air, and thrives among high stress conditions. These would be successful in our indoor city areas. Most are quite beautiful and aesthetic- such as a heart shaped philodendron. I yearn to see more horticultural businesses that will install these in the future, they will be surely successful.
In some places like San Francisco, they are already growing their own vegetables in the restaurant on the walls inside! In Chicago, Seattle, and Japan there are rooftop gardens to harvest rainwater and vegetable gardens to supply the restaurants. If we supplied ourselves with enough edible landscape in the city, people might not ever go hungry.
And why not government funded community gardens? If we stopped putting all this money into welfare and assistance programs, we could have land donated or supplied by the government or generous donors. It could be used for low income community gardens for single mothers with children, homeless, college students, teenagers, the elderly, and so on. There are so many problems in today's world but what it comes down to is, can you feed your family, and is it nutritious? If you have a 2 acre lush vegetable garden with fruit trees and an outdoor cob oven for baking complete with wood countertop, thats ideal! You could get graduate students to run it for intern credit, and oversee the program with master gardeners (they're free too!) I just can't seem to piece together how suppressing lower class people, then giving them money for support is productive. This will teach skills for jobs, feed their families, and build a strong community.
The fact is, our air is becoming more polluted everyday. More cars are on the road, more rain forests and trees are being deforested, and more people are breathing now than ever before. We need more plants and trees to rejuvenate the air and reincorporate them into our everyday lives. We need to become harmonious, diversify, and extend life to things other than domesticated animals such as cats and dogs. We NEED birds, chickens, ladybugs, butterflies, bees, and beetles. Insects like bees pollinate flowers (fruit) and that is the main reason we even exist! Support plants, gardens, and biodiversity. Its the only way we can keep doing what we're doing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F6afMn7W_E&feature=related
heres a quick video what it would look like inside...
