For more than a decade, Chicago has been at the forefront of the green-roof movement. Now the city is poised to take an active role in the next environmental push — using roofs to grow food. It’s a movement that is sparking interest in cities nationwide.
Rooftop farms are popping up around the city, from the McCormick Place convention center, which has grown tens of thousands of pounds of produce since 2013, to a historic Pullman neighborhood factory — expected to have the world’s largest operation when it’s completed this summer — to small businesses and educational programs.
Steven Peck, founder and president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a Toronto-based industry association that promotes green roofs, said cities have “just scratched the surface” in the conversation about green roofs and rooftop farms, which are “making use of an otherwise wasted space.”
Across the country, there has been a call for new food-producing spaces, Peck said.
“There’s a demand for high-quality food in our cities, a consumer demand for it, a social need for it,” he said. “There’s a longing for people living in densely developed cities to reconnect to farming and to nature, to rooftop agriculture.”