Blank, windowless exterior walls that get plenty of sun exposure could become vertical farms with the addition of recycled modular scaffolding. A project called GreenBelly aims to make use of these wasted urban spaces to provide fresh food to the surrounding neighborhood with a system that’s easy to transport, install and remove, and it doesn’t even require hookups to utilities. A six-level GreenBelly system made of reclaimed scaffolding and wooden pallets taking up just 35 square meters of land can produce over 14,000 pounds (6400kg) of vegetables per year.

The basic module contains a soil bed, two aeroponic towers and a hydroponic wall, capable of growing hundreds of plants at a time. Multiple modules fit together like Legos, stacking vertically to create multi-tiered open-air structures that harvest rainwater and run on solar energy. The bottom unit contains a farm stand for selling the produce to local residents, and the top level contains beehives to help pollinate the plants and produce honey. Producing and selling food in the same urban location allows the stand to sell fresh produce at fixed, affordable prices.

Created by AVL Studio, a design boutique specializing in sustainable architecture, the GreenBelly system could be run as an educational project by a school, an assistance program for homeless people or an addition to an existing restaurant or market, or its individual modules could be rented out to locals in a manner similar to community gardens. How it’s managed would likely depend on who owns the land it’s built on. The architects estimate the cost of a 20-module unit at about 30,000 euros (roughly $35,000 USD), which could be recouped after three years of operation.

It’s an interesting proposition for the many blind building facades found in an average city, especially in areas where fresh produce is harder to come by. AVL Studio envisions the GreenBelly system being especially valuable in disadvantaged neighborhoods. They’re currently raising money on Kickstarter to build more prototypes at various scales, which could be exported in containers to places that need them most, like Palestine.

The United States currently has a shortage of about 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for households with incomes at or below the poverty level, a statistic that’s clearly linked to the homelessness crisis. Meanwhile, 8 million Americans spend more than half of their monthly income on rent.

To house those most urgently in need as well as the people who make just enough money to fall through the cracks, cities have to start building more affordable housing as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t mean they should slap up some public housing towers and call it good. To be successful, affordable housing has to offer more than just shelter; it has to be thoughtfully designed to provide a good quality of life to its inhabitants.

In the U.S., the few affordable housing developments that exist often feel like fenced-off prisons, reflecting common attitudes about poverty rooted in the just-world hypothesis – the assumption that, essentially, people get what they deserve. Barriers to creating more affordable housing include city and state regulations that prioritize profitability for developers, and severe cuts to federal housing programs proposed by the current administration.

But some cities are forging their own paths. New York City has set out to build and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing by 2026, and its Public Design Commission (PDC) published design guidelines for that goal that could become a blueprint for the entire nation.

More Than Shelter: Defining Successful Affordable Housing

“Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” lays out best practices in planning affordable housing that “contributes to the quality, character, diversity and experience of New York City’s communities” while improving equity, resiliency, sustainability and health for residents and neighborhoods. The developments should foster density and encourage interaction while presenting inviting, warm, safe and dignified living spaces that are durable, easy to maintain, attractive and accessible by transit, car, bike and on foot. Oh, and they have to be budget-friendly to build, too.

That may sound like a tall order, but the guide includes seven case studies of existing developments that tick off all of these boxes and more, and there’s no reason their success can’t be replicated elsewhere while also being tailored specifically to each location and population. Utopian dreams of affordable housing communities have certainly fallen flat before, like the spectacular failure of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in St. Louis, Missouri, but today most of them read like warnings of what not to do. While the future of affordable housing may center upon open-source technological solutions, PDC’s guide is a step in the right direction that can be acted upon right now, adding to the general discourse about what makes affordable housing successful.

Community-Oriented & Woven Through the Urban Fabric

Integrating affordable housing into the community instead of setting it apart is a great place to start. Not only should they offer easy circulation into transit and segue culturally and aesthetically into existing neighborhoods, they should respond to the priorities of the communities they serve. PDC cites the Frost Street Apartments, a 7-story, 47-unit complex in a gentrified area of Brooklyn by Curtis + Ginsberg Architects as an example.

Not only does it complement the typologies of surrounding architecture and avoid a monolithic appearance with setbacks and a variety of facade colors, it roots affordability into Williamsburg by housing people with incomes at 50%, 60% and 80% of the area median, with eight units set aside for adults with developmental disabilities. On-site support services are available, and residents enjoy bike storage, lots of natural light, bamboo flooring and open kitchens; five percent of the units are pre-adapted to be handicapped accessible.

“How can a building contribute to a sense of community, and help its residents regain stable, independent lives?” asks the Public Design Commission. The Schermerhorn in Brooklyn helps answer that question with 180 studio units for low-income residents and 9 multi-person suites with shared kitchens and bathrooms for formerly homeless single adult residents, all set along day-lit corridors. Preference is given to those working in the performing arts.

The building’s ground floor is home to a dance studio as well as the Mark O’Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Arts Center, hosting performances by residents, and the entire second floor is devoted to shared spaces, social services and a rear terrace. It’s visually striking, too, cantilevered over a subway tunnel with a facade defined by five vertical channel glass panels.

Sustainability Means Addressing Health, Too

Making a structure sustainable requires more than just going down a checklist of physical attributes. Sustainability should address the health and well-being of inhabitants, too. While the Creston Avenue Residence in the Bronx may include rooftop solar panels, green roofs, low-VOC finishes, formaldehyde-free materials and a rainwater harvesting system, making it one of the few LEED Platinum Certified supportive housing buildings in the United States, it also incorporates community rooms and amenities that open onto a rear courtyard landscaped with native plants, offers lots of views of the neighborhood and encourages the use of stairways.

This building provides housing to people who are chronically homeless or in danger of being homeless, veterans with housing vouchers and households meeting income eligibility requirements, and offers support services to residents. It’s the first building funded by the New York State Medicaid Redesign Team Supporting Housing Initiative, which recognizes housing as a social determinant of health.

Another example cited by PDC is Arbor House in the Bronx by Bernstein Associates, a state of the art affordable housing complex that incorporates a 10,000-square-foot hydroponic rooftop farm that provides fresh produce like lettuce and herbs to tenants. Built in an area where residents have lower life expectancies and higher rates of preventable chronic diseases compared to New Yorkers in wealthier neighborhoods, Arbor House offers an indoor gym, a wide, central day-lit stairway, an outdoor fitness circuit and organic-themed artwork by a local artist to help give the building a sense of identity.

Smart Use of Land and Materials

For Navy Green, a 433-unit building in Brooklyn by FXCollaborative, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects and Architecture in Formation, one key to affordability was the choice to transform a contaminated brownfield into a building that takes up almost an entire city block to accommodate residents with a wide range of incomes and needs. Owned by the city, the land was once a naval prison.

After rehabilitation, it’s a series of four apartment buildings (low-income rental, mixed-income rental, mixed-income condominium and a supportive housing residence) that form a perimeter around a shared green. The buildings are strategically designed to block views of the adjacent Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a 15-story Navy Yard warehouse. The distinctive facades of each individual building make the complex seem like it was developed over time.

While located in a waterfront neighborhood that’s susceptible to flooding, the Hunter’s Point South Commons and Crossing building by Ismael Leyva Architects and SHoP Architects in Long Island City offers affordable and income-restricted units stunning views while building flood potential into the design. Critical infrastructure is raised to higher elevations and the building is capable of withstanding substantial water loads, with temporary flood barriers integrated into the ground floor.

Of course, these projects don’t just spring up out of nowhere. Many of them receive special state or city funding and are built on land already owned by the city, circumventing a lot of common obstacles to building new affordable housing. But they also address affordability in a holistic way that benefits the city as a whole, avoiding the segregation of low-income residents from the rest of the population and improving their lives in the process.

Designing and constructing affordable housing also requires taking a hard look at what the word ‘affordable’ actually means in relation to the real and growing issue of income inequality in the United States. But the PDC’s “Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” gives us a strong foundation for a future of affordable housing that could also include lots of modular, 3D-printed and otherwise technologically advanced structures.

A key development in the quest to create sustainable ecosystems in space, this expandable greenhouse prototype aims to generate essential food and oxygen for long-term astronaut travel.

Recently, Peggy Whitson broke the record for longest stay in space (534 days) and astronauts have started growing their own vegetables on the International Space Station. This collapsible growing unit aims to take things to the next level, enabling longer-term settlements on places including the moon and Mars.

Developed by NASA and agricultural researchers at the University of Arizona, the test unit spans 7 by 18 feet. Its primary functions: convert carbon dioxide from crew, support plant photosynthesis. This bio-regenerative approach to life support is an essential system for recycling scarce resources off-planet.

It also takes its queues directly from our own world: “We’re mimicking what the plants would have if they were on Earth, and using of these processes for life support. The entire system of the lunar greenhouse does represent, in a small way, the biological systems that are here on earth.”

But a big trick to the design is simply its portability: materials take up space, so engineering minimal frameworks that will work when the system is expanded is critical to getting space greenhouses into (and out of) orbit in the first place.

Meanwhile, on the ISS, astronauts continue to grow (and consume) plants outside of Earth’s normal gravity, paving the way for a better understanding of how agriculture will really work off-planet in the future.

Most urban environments aren’t lacking in sunlight – it’s a lack of square footage and healthy soil that makes it hard to use these spaces to grow food. While many a high-tech concept design has envisioned vertical skyscraper farms or entire cities built from scratch, we need low-cost solutions that can be implemented into disused urban spaces, easily assembled and moved when necessary. These smart urban farming and gardening ideas reclaim pallets, cardboard tubes, shipping containers and bicycle wheels, and many take advantage of sunny available spaces on rooftops, in abandoned buildings or along stretches of hot concrete walls.

The Growroom: IKEA Flat-Pack Spherical Garden

Developed by IKEA’s external innovation hub, Space10, the Growroom is a spherical structure that makes it easy to grow lots of food in a compact space thanks to its unique design. Since shipping the structure around the world would be too expensive and negate some of the benefits of local food sourcing, IKEA decided to offer the structure as an open-source design built with plywood, a CNC milling machine and a rubber hammer.

Floating Gardens in an Abandoned Chinese Factory

This area along the Pearl River Delta in Shenzhen was once a thriving community relying on fish ponds and water-based commerce, but most of that has since vanished in the face of rapid urbanization, leaving many abandoned structures behind. ‘Floating Fields’ occupies this space and makes it useful again as an aquaponic garden. Created for the Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale, the installation is an experiment in water-based gardening, algae cultivation, sustainable food production and water filtering in an underutilized urban environment.

Recycled Cardboard Tube Garden

Water-resistant, recyclable cardboard tubes provide the basis for a modern pop-up garden in Sydney by Australian design studio Foolscap. The tubes were used to build the walls of a temporary outdoor recreation space, taking inspiration from the formwork used to cast concrete columns in a nearby Sydney neighborhood. In addition to an outdoor theater, food and co-working areas, ‘Wulugul Pop Up’ had its own edible garden full of native plants.

Grid Garden on Wheels

This clever portable garden rests on reclaimed bicycle wheels and features an open gridded design so sunlight can reach tiered plants. The ‘Why not in the garden?’ installation by A4A Rivolta Savioni Studio was literally rolled out into a Milan city square to demonstrate how concrete urban spaces can be temporarily used for food production.

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Reclaiming Urban Food Production 12 Smart Designs For Farms Gardens

Using the sun and the sea, renewable sources of energy and water, a desert farming operation in Australia shows how organic food can be grown in a fresh new and sustainable way.

The soil-free hydroponic systems of Sundrop Farms use solar energy to filter brackish water for use on crops, growing 17,000 metric tons of food annually. The sun’s energy also powers, heats and cools the greenhouses as needed, reflected via a series of 23,000 mirrors. In contrast, a “conventional greenhouse uses groundwater for irrigation, gas for heating, and electricity for cooling.”

The “plants are grown hydroponically, which is the technical way of saying we don’t use soil. Our plants flourish on nutrient-rich coconut husks instead.” Additional climate and irrigation controls allow the farm to maximize outputs with minimized inputs.

The desert location as well as natural control strategies allow Sundrop to accomplish their goals without harmful, expensive or polluting inputs as well. “Unlike traditional agriculture we use no fertilizers and no weed killers. We control plant eating bugs with carnivorous ones, just the way nature intended.”

Sundrop’s success illustrates the possibilities of working in a world where water, land and energy are all scarce and valuable. Moreover, the farm shows that fruits and vegetables can be produced year-round in any conditions thanks to hydroponics and green energy, from rural wastelands to urban food deserts.

“Because we do everything in a controlled environment, we know what our input costs are, and we’re doing everything on a renewable basis, we can provide real consistency of supply and a higher quality product at a better price year ’round,” said Philipp Saumweber, chairman and CEO of Sundrop Farms.

“Existing farming practices are unsustainable,” explains Sundrop. They generally use fossil fuels, excessive groundwater and require appropriate soil and weather conditions. “Yet by 2050 rising populations will see a 50% increase in food demand. Climate change is increasing the number and the severity of catastrophic weather events. And water scarcity is becoming more acute in arid regions. We need to look at alternative ways to create energy and to produce food. That’s no longer a preferred option but a necessity. Fortunately however, things are starting to change.”