SETPEMBER 19TH, 2011
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Chicago is no second city to New York: in urban agriculture, she ranks high as a site of vegetable production, great use of abandoned urban spaces, and (crucially) city support for green roofs and urban farms. City Lights Farm (pictured above) is a partnership between a church and Growing Power, where visitors are welcome to volunteer on Saturday mornings. Growing Power’s series of sites additionally includes an new location on Iron Street in Chicago’s southwest side, where a huge warehouse hosts a neophyte vermicomposting system and aquaponics set up, and the parking lot crawls with pumpkins. But all’s not food and farming: atop Chicago City Hall in the downtown Loop, a greenroof landscape turns the skyline to what it once was: a prairie landscape, fall flowers turning purple and gold.