This is literally among the dumbest environmentalist ideas out there. It's a tragedy it gets so much attention because that enthusiasm could be oriented toward

This is literally among the dumbest environmentalist ideas out there. It's a tragedy it gets so much attention because that enthusiasm could be oriented towards advocacy of things which actually make a difference. A napkin calculation a while back factoring in the cost of farmland, light, land, and skyscraper construction showed approximately a 60,000x cost difference per pound of crops between purpose-build skyscraper-type vertical farming startup costs, and prime Iowa farmland. I'm not exaggerating. Compare irrigated desert land under intensive greenhouse cultivation with skyscrapers, and you're still at hundreds or thousands of times more expensive. The most sizable vertical farm at present is either a natural-light "bookshelf style" setup in Singapore which does absolutely nothing for land use by shading other land, and grows a trivial amount of crops, or a artificially-lit 30x30m area on Chiba University operated purely for research purposes, which sells its products on the side. When someone says "X is planned for Chicago", that actually means something to some of us, something other than "An undergrad design student asked for creative solutions to save the world came up with a pretty render that any architect, engineer, farmer, or businessman would laugh at on close examination". I would ask the green energy sites to stop lying to our faces on this topic, necessitating stories like this [1]. The only way this kind of solution is remotely feasible is when your product is marijuana, and it costs $1000/lb. Expensive niche herbs like basil and wasabi may be able to grow economically in a climate controlled hydroponic system... but they can only pay warehouse rent if that, not skyscraper rent. We owe the promotion of this concept to Dickson Despommier [2], a tenured professor of public health / environmental health sciences at Columbia University in Manhattan. Take one of the two most geographically and economically scarce land markets in the country, and apply "locavore" principles, and this stupidity is what you get. To the people believing because a render was created and it was "planned" that this means they can absolve their share of environmental white guilt for living in a neighborhood without any trees or permeable surfaces... Stop promoting this, please. Tens of square miles of city displaces thousands of square miles of suburb, and you're living at 1/10th the resource intensity of the rest of the country by not driving everywhere. Farmland is not this scarce, and transportation for food is not this expensive. The breathless enthusiasm of the green bloggers which are paid per post and have no formal science training past middle school has brought this concept to the forefront again and again. I've been shouting at my computer for nigh on ten years now and it will not die. [1] http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/1810325/so-las-vegas-getting-vertical-farm http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/1810325/so-las-ve... [2] http://www.verticalfarm.com/ http://www.verticalfarm.com/