Point your cursor to any corner of the Interest specializing in speculations on the future of architecture and design, and you will likely stumble upon boards of highly developed and intricately rendered schemes for vertical farming. Not unlike the way in which tart frozen yougurt, cupcakes, pork belly, and mobile eateries have all become unlikely culinary phenomena, vertical farms appear to have usurped the collective consciousness of imaginative designers everywhere. Leaving aside the questions of who would own and be responsible for the the thins, they’re an attractive solution to a number of issues, food supply and demand, sustainable farming practices, water and energy consumption, and shipping costs among them. As more of us find ourselves living in metropolices, where our food will come from and who will produce it become ever more pressing questions. These vertical farms, multi story urban sites with crops and vegetables growing in green house like conditions in their levels and livestock and fish thriving below could conceivably alleviate many of those issues.

Through today’s vertical farms may well go the way of yesterday’s walking cities, there are a number of promising developments that point to a symbiosis of urbanism and agriculture. Look no further than new york city, of all places. There you’ll find what is perhaps the most exciting and improbable design achievement of the last decade, the high line, a decommissioned elevated railway on Manhattan’s west side that was transformed into a public park.