Urban Farming, The Green Roofs

Yesterday, I read an articel in NewYork Times.Com. The title is Urban Farming, a Bit Closer To The Sun. This articel tell us about how people can use their roof to plant anything they want. It’s very interesting for me since that issues about Global Warming became a headline news.

Do you know?New York State has subsidies both for roofs with succulents spread out over a thin layer of soil and for edible plants covering a smaller area. A proposed amendment to New York City’s tax abatement for some roof projects would include green roofs. Most roof gardeners aren’t in it for the money, though.

A survey by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, which represents companies that create green roofs, found the number of projects its members had worked on in the United States grew by more than 35 percent last year. In total, the green roofs installed last year cover 6 million to 10 million square feet, the group said.

Ben Flanner, a transplanted Wisconsinite who’s running it, said he became fascinated with organic agriculture and was set to take an internship on a rural farm but then had a change of heart.
“I wanted to farm but I didn’t want to leave the city,” he said.

Mr. Flanner was lucky to find an environmentally aware company — Broadway Stages, a stage and lighting company — that wanted a green roof on one of its buildings. It paid to prepare the roof for planting and agreed to let him grow food on it. Mr. Flanner and his partner, Annie Novak, did the planting and will be able to keep all the profits from their organic vegetables.

“People are knocking on my door to buy the stuff,” he said. Andrew Tarlow, a partner in four nearby restaurants, including Marlow & Sons, has agreed to buy anything Mr. Flanner grows

All this work can be off-putting for landlords. Five years ago, Ms. Crossfield said, the owner of an apartment building on Sixth Avenue in the West Village told one of his tenants to get rid of a garden she had planted.

Paula Crossfield persuaded her neighbors to grow vegetables high above the Lower East Side

“He told the woman to take it off the roof,” she said, “because he didn’t see any benefit in it.”
That’s not so likely these days.
“Several years ago you might have seen a certain amount of resistance,” said Miquela Craytor, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, “but now people are coming to us saying they want one.”

Maya Donelson tends the rooftop garden of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco

In San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, Maya Donelson has filled planter boxes with vegetables on a 900-square-foot patch of roof at the Glide Memorial Church. For the last two years she has managed the Graze the Roof Project at the church’s Glide Center, a neighborhood social service provider

Children hold carrots grown in the Glide rooftop garden

The food goes to the center’s volunteers and children in the neighborhood who work in the garden one day a week and learn to cook what they grow. I like what I see on this photo, children like having fun to grow and harvest their own plants.

Setelah saya membaca artikel ini, terbesit pikiran mungkinkah Jakarta atau Surabaya yang notabene merupakan kota besar di Indonesia, dan mempunyai banyak gedung pencakar langit bisa menerapkan proyek The Green Roof ini?

Proyek The Green Roof di New York bisa sukses karena adanya subsidi dari pemerintah dan adanya keringanan pajak bagi perusahaan atau orang pribadi yang mau menerapkan proyek tersebut di atap gedungnya. Apakah pemkot Jakarta mau memberikan subsidi untuk proyek ini?

Hmm, saya rasa untuk penerapan proyek sejenis The Green Roof masih dalam urutan kesekian bagi pemkot Jakarta. Kita harus melihat realita, masih banyak hal-hal lain yang harus diprioritaskan untuk penyaluran subsidi pemerintah seperti kesehatan , lapangan pekerjaan dan pendidikan.

Well, but if each building in Jakarta wants to “make over” their roof top become a green roof like in this articel , Can you imagine?High above the noise and grime of urban street , gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Another benefit gardeners get from planting well above the ground is that they face fewer pests. We can harvest an organic plants, right?The Green Roof also can decrease the air pollution in city. So, I hope that the owner of a high building not only in Jakarta , but also the other cities in Indonesia can realize a huge advantage from The Green Roof.