The folks over at Treehugger have
been busy in recent weeks attempting to raise public awareness in some sort
of hope of blocking the eviction of a community garden in LA to make way for
a new warehouse.
Unsurprisingly, the warehouse won, and the garden is being closed.
Now, Treehugger and others are pushing for a potential
ly creative compromise/solution/workaround:
If [developer Ralph Horowitz is] building a warehouse, why
not simply build up a stronger roof and have it be an earth roof where they
can continue farming?
I like the concept, and architects and engineers have started embracing the
idea of “green roofs” as being tools to combat urban heat islands. It
certainly seems like a doable idea.
However, one has to wonder what’s in it for the developer. Putting a
community garden on a roof of a warehouse will add cost to what is likely a
project with fairly lean margins already. Why should the developer seek to
make the project more expensive?
Of course, if some sort of grant money or outside contribution could be
found to defray the extra cost, perhaps the developer would be
agreeable…or could be pressured into being agreeable, to create what one
would think is a win-win solution.