Livable Cities: PSFK Trend Insights Around Food

We spent some time recently looking back at the patterns in the content in PSFK to try to identify emerging themes within specific target categories. ‘Livable Cities’ is one of three trends we identified from the data found on our site.

Livable Cities:

As the world’s population increasingly moves into urban centers, our cities will need to evolve in order to meet a new set of demands. In order to grow bigger and overcome diseconomies of scale like congestion and rising housing and business costs, cities must become more efficient, innovative, and production – bringing to mind the larger idea of sustainability. And of course along with this, people need to eat.

Food, therefore becomes a central component within the larger discussion happening around the health of our environment and ourselves. Finding a universal solution – if one even exists – will require that we develop and test localized models of varying scales to discover what works best. From futuristic skyscrapers that house vertical farms to reclaimed rooftops and back lots, the potential for raising food and feeding our cities from within is becoming a common aspect of urban life.

Examples

The Rise of Urban Farming Worldwide

From Mumbai to Manila, cities in emerging economies are looking to urban farming to bolster job growth, improve food security and make more productive use of organic waste.

Urban Farm Tours: Building a Network of Backyards, Rooftops and Abandoned Lots

The Urban Farm Tour concept builds a network of individuals who are raising their own food in limited space and opens their homes and gardens to the public. The event synthesizes ideas of local food and community with a bit of DIY inspiration and education.

Hyperlocavore: A Yard Sharing Community

A hyperlocavore grows their own food, keeping it in their own backyard, or somebody else’s. The community website is set up to facilitate the sharing is of space, skills and resources, due to the growing interest in organic produce and urban farming.

Organic Rooftop Urban Farm Overlooks Manhattan

Rooftop Farms is a 6,000 square foot organic vegetable farm in an industrial area of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As surreal as it may seem, it is just in line with the growing population of urban hippies, somehow largely concentrated in the borough of Brooklyn.

Beekeepers [PSFK Snapshot Brooklyn]

Beekeeping is actually illegal in New York City, but that hasn’t stopped Brooklyn’s
underground beekeeping community from raising tens of thousands of honeybees on rooftops or hidden in community gardens. And now with the Brooklyn Beekeeping Meetup boasting almost 300 members and a newly formed City Council bill that 
would decriminalize this urban farming community, Brooklyn’s beekeepers might
 get a chance to legally harvest honey and sell it in the open. The group also holds honey-themed brunches, winter classes on 
basic beekeeping, and if you can catch it, the big summer honey extraction and 
bottling bee outing.

In New Film, Urban Chickens Come Home to Roost

A new documentary called ” Mad City Chickens” takes an informative (and often whimsical) look into the increasingly common practice of backyard chicken raising, telling the stories of the very human personalities behind the poultry.

Tesco To Start Renting Out Urban Farms

For a new store development grocery retailer Tesco plans to rent 30 ‘allotments’ for part time gardeners to locals in Lancashire in the UK. In tandem with an interest in grow-your-own-food PSFK has noticed around the world, there has been a recent boom in interest in allotments in the UK (see our interview with an allotment ‘owner’ here). The store will also sell starter kits to the renters.

For more information about how PSFK helps our clients identify and act on patterns of trends data, read our Consultancy page.