© Mark Horler 2014

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Contents

Summary pg 3

The problems pg 5

Regeneration and Gentrification pg 8

Solutions - Vertical Farming pg 11Community Farming/Gardening pg 15Local food markets pg 17

Making it happen pg 18

Appendix I – Other current approaches pg 21

Appendix II - Useful Information pg 23

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Summary

How do we balance the need for economic growth, against the need for social inclusion and the need for environmental sustainability? Our current systems are not working. Together, we need to find a different way.

The problems

1. Run down towns, run down neighbourhoods, run down high streets. The rise of out-of-town shopping and, subsequently, online retailing, has left many high streets unable to compete and unable to cope. The result has been the closure of shops and a drastic decline in footfall, as customers move towards 'all under one roof' shopping areas and/or buy products online. The simple fact is that high streets cannot compete like-for-like with these other retailers. No matter how hard they try, they cannot match the economies of scale and low overheads enjoyed by their competitors.At the same time, as we have moved away from a manufacturing economy and ever more towards as service economy, many towns previously reliant on this secondary economy have been left behind. Entire communities have suffered significant economic hardship and the social difficulties that inevitably come with it.

2. Unsustainable food. Looking at the broader scale, our food production systems have become global. Our food distribution systems have become vast and centralised. At the level of food growing, we use ever more pesticides and fertilisers, leading to run-off pollution. We use 70% of available fresh water, for irrigation of crops. We are reliant of fossil fuels both to grow and especially to distribute this food. Provided with a huge over-abundance of food, we then waste staggering amounts of produce. We cannot continue this way.

Current Approaches

The dominant current approach to urban renewal is Regeneration and Gentrification (the latter being a particular type of the former). The most common method of regeneration is to knock down and rebuild – for example in the case of 1960s council estates, where the residents are moved out, the estates demolished and new houses/flats put up in their place. Gentrification, by contrast, more usually rests on the idea of 'doing up' an area which has become delapidated – typified by the conversion of disused victorian industrial buildings into high cost apartments. Occasionally, these two forms may be used together, where an historic building is 'saved' and converted as the centrepiece of a new development, whilst surrounding 'ordinary' buildings are demolished and new ones put in their place.

What all these approaches have in common, is that they are based on the idea that creating new buildings will bring in those with money to buy them. The 'trickle down effect' is then presumed to bring prosperity across the area – the rising tide that lifts all ships. The same approach is also used to regenerate town centres, with money spent on expensive shopping centres, on the presumption that they will bring increased trade to other shops and streets.

This approach does not work. In fact, it often achieves precisely the opposite of what is intended. As run down areas are bulldozed and new expensive private properties put up, whole communities of poorer residents are pushed out. The economic rising tide becomes a tidal wave of social exclusion. All that remains at the end, are islands of prosperity in an ocean of economic and social hardship.

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The same is true of the shopping malls which, instead of bringing shoppers to high streets, actually draw them away into an 'all under one roof' shopping system.

Most importantly of all, these regeneration and gentrification efforts rest, in the end, upon exclusivity. The simple fact is that such exclusivity cannot be repeated indefinitely. By definition, exclusivity cannot be inclusive, nor can it be everywhere. So regeneration inevitably sows the seeds of its own failure. Yet more and more towns continue to try to use the model, each with a little less success than the last. A better alternative must be made available.

The Mission

1. To create a new model of urban renewal, recreating run down towns and high streets to make them economically successful, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable. Vertical farms will act as the economic engine of renewal, sited in disused buildings in run down neighbourhooods. Community Gardens and Urban Farms, required as part of the development, will connect those vertical farms to the communities around them, making them stakeholders in the success of the projects and contributing to the renewal of those run down communities. Produce will flow to high street markets, bringing back footfall and trade. In turn, this will bring back other businesses, allowing highstreets to recast themselves as social and economic spaces, which do not need to try to compete like-for-like with supermarkets and online retailers.

2. To contribute to the establishment of more sustainable agricultural and food distribution systems. Vertical farms are more sustainable than conventional farms; using much less water, little or no pesticides and fertilisers and little or no fossil fuels (dependent on type and design). Moreover, siting these vertical farms within towns reduces food miles and so further reduces fossil fuel use.

Solution: This is Regrowth!

Regrowth exists as an organisation, to achieve the creation, support and promotion of this new model. For too long we have been stuck with the same problems and we have tried to use the same flawed solutions to solve them. Such inertia may well the product of the lack of an adequate and viable alternative. However, solutions are now available which can provide just such an alternative. The challenge is to join together these disparate elements and, from them, create one coherent model for change.

This report will look in more detail at the categories set out above. It will examine the problems we face, explain in detail why current approaches cannot succeed, it will set out the Regrowth model as a solution and it will explain how we can get that new model implemented. The report will focus on fixing the problem of run down towns and highstreets. Though a brief description of farming sustainability problems will be given and a description of vertical farming to illustrate its advantages over conventional farming, the topic of sustainable food is too large to cover wholly. It is enough to say that, though the Regrowth model cannot solve the problems of global agriculture (nor does it attempt to), it does aim to play its part in the movement towards more sustainability in food production.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” ~ Albert Einstein

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The problems

Run down towns, run down neighbourhoods, run down high streets.

Much has been made, in recent times, of the troubles faced by our towns and especially our high streets. Recent years have seen huge increases in the number of shops closing. Indeed, entire high street retail chains have gone into administration, including such well known brands as HMV, Blockbuster and Jessops, amongst many others. The most obvious cause for this, of course, is the recession that has been ongoing since 2008 and is just now perhaps drawing toward a close as I write this in 2014. Many of the retailers going into administration (including those listed above) cited variations on the theme of 'difficult trading conditions'. But there have been recessions before and these chains have not gone bust then, so why now?

A big part of the answer, it seems, lies in the growth of online shopping. The three retailers listed above, were all victims of this circumstance. The simple fact is that high street retailers cannot compete, like for like, on price with the internet. Being rooted in physical spaces – in shops – means that they have higher costs for rent, for staffing, for business rates and for various other overheads (electricity, water and so on). They even have to suffer higher logistical costs since, just like the online retailers, they still have to maintain warehouses and fleets of vehicles, on top of their high street stores.

The internet giants, like Amazon and Ebay have received the most attention in this respect. But it is worth remembering that both do much, if not all of their trade through small businesses or individuals, using them as an online marketplace.

High street retailers have also struggled for years, with the growth and impact of out of town shopping. As with the online retailers, though perhaps to a lesser extent, these have lower costs than town centre retail stores. They achieve this mostly by economies of scale, using their size and dominance of the market to drive down prices. But they also have lower overheads (when considered like for like). Finally, they are able to offer pretty much everything the consumer could want, all under one roof and with an enormous car park right outside.

It is interesting to note that these out of town retailers have not, for the most part, suffered from the growth of online retailing (though there are exceptions). Instead, they have used their sheer size and economic clout to join them. Supermarkets are a particularly notable example here. They already had all the products, they already had the vast logistical infrastructure in place. All they had to do was make a way to sell the stuff online and use their size and profits to keep prices down.

So, from the above, it is clear that high street retailers were already struggling and unable to compete directly. When the recession came along, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for many. But then, this situation should not have come as a surprise to the chain retailers, since they themselves were, not so long ago, the beneficiaries of very similar circumstances.

There was a time when our high streets were full of independent shops. How often have we heard of the time when every town centre had an independent butchers, a grocer, a fishmonger, a bakery and so on? It was said that these shops were an indivisible part of the community; that they knew their customers and what they wanted. So where did these independent retailers go? Well, they were out competed by the chain stores of course (although perhaps different ones to those we have now, admittedly). Independent local stores couldn't hope to compete with the chains on price, for more or less exactly the same reasons that those chain stores are failing now (Carolyn Steel's book Hungry

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City sets out in some detail the worrying extent to which supermarkets dominate the supply of food in this country. Food is far from all they sell either.)

One might be able to find a certain pleasing irony in this, were it not for the fact that it has left many of our town centres destitute, even deserted. Though consideration of the causes is valid and important, we must look now at the effects. These run down towns are suffering from a seemingly incurable sickness, whose symptoms are the empty units in the high street. Where shops remain, they are usually pound stores, betting shops and a smattering of fast food outlets. All too many towns now look like this, decorated with the bill-post adorned, boarded up windows, of shops yet to find a new owner (if they ever do). It is now abundantly clear that the high street will never be able to compete like for like with the chain stores, the out of town units and especially, with the online retailers.

But these are not the only causes of our run down towns, naturally. We cannot blame it all on consumer spending habits and retail models. Many people will be familiar with another problem, which frequently despoils the outskirts of our towns. That problem is the incidence of empty and abandoned warehouses. In some towns these have become effectively no go areas, left to decay and now covered in graffiti and broken windows. Some of these will have been victims of precisely the circumstances set out above. After all, a closed down retail chain no longer needs any warehouses in which to keep stock.

But perhaps more, particularly in certain parts of the country, are the victims of a more profound change in the economic landscape and outlook of the UK. Over the last few decades, the UK has moved generally away from manufacturing – from the production of things – toward to provision of services. This shift in emphasis, from the secondary (or even primary) to the tertiary economic sector, has had a deep and lasting effect on many areas of the country. It is a factor in the emptiness of both warehouses and high streets. More broadly, whole geographic areas and entire communities have suffered and become run down.

Some of these warehouses, particularly in these poorer areas, have been converted into housing, under an approach generally known as gentrification (about which, much more later). But many more have not and still stand vacant. A similar story can be told for the communities in which they sit. As we shall see, entire communities have simply been pushed aside in the name of money.

Unsustainable food

Globally, farming as it is now is unsustainable. It is as simple as that. Agricultural run off of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers into our waterways, our estuaries, and eventually our oceans is a major problem. These substances are highly toxic and create dead zones wherever they flow. We are also washing huge amounts of topsoil away with our frequently flood based and incredibly wasteful irrigation methods. This means we must use ever more of precisely the harmful substances above, simply to make up the nutritional shortfall for the plants.

As the population of our planet grows, we have to clear more land for farming. Great swathes of the rainforest are slashed and burned every day for the purposes of farming. The irony of this, of course, is the the verdant rainforest grows in the thinnest and nutritionally poorest of soils. Such soils cannot support agricultural monocultures. So we leave yet another desert and move on. With the global population expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050, we are simply not going to be able to

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continue this way (and forests are only one ecosystem out of many destroyed to meet our needs). Forests of course, sequester CO2, so cutting them down in this way is also not good news for our goal of dealing with our carbon emissions. When you add to this that farming uses vast amounts of fossil fuels, both for mechanised production and for transport, it becomes clear that, this too, is unsustainable.

As set out above, we are just not going to have enough land to feed us all before too long. But perhaps more pressingly still, we will not have enough water. Already, 70% of all freshwater available to us goes to irrigating crops. This is an astounding figure. When you consider that we are contaminating that water with highly toxic substances, it is clear that our current system is madness.

However, perhaps strangest of all, is the fact that the vast majority of us live in urban areas, yet we grow our food far away in the rural areas (what we call food miles). We must then transport this food to where people can consume it, using vast amounts of fossil fuels (with all the associated problems that brings -- see above). When we have finished with it, we then throw it away and transport it back out of our cities and towns to be buried!

Before we can look for solutions to these problems, we need to understand clearly what attempts are being made to rectify these problems now. We need, above all, to understand why those approaches are not working and cannot work long term.

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Regeneration and Gentrification

Between them, these two represent the current dominant model of urban renewal. Indeed, it could be said that the latter is a particular type of the former. At any rate, the principle is that you take an existing place and redevelop it to attract more money to the area. The trickle down effect is then supposed to come into play, creating a rising tide that lifts all economic ships in the area. In the case of Regeneration, the plan is usually to bulldoze what is already in place and build something new and luxurious in its place. Gentrification works on a slightly different basis, in that it involves rennovating the existing buildings and area, to attract a higher price in the marketplace. An example would be the habit of converting old victorian hospital buildings into 'luxury apartments'. Frequently, of course, these two actually happen side by side, with the conversion of an old building and the bulldozing of surrounding buildings, followed by new buildings going up (often in a gated community form). So what's the problem with this model? Well...

If you wanted to search for an example of how not to do regeneration, how not to build communities, if you wanted to know how to get it almost completely wrong in every possible way, from start to finish, you could hardly wish for a better example than the Heygate estate.

Completed in 1974, the Heygate estate was the perfect example of concrete box social housing, common to that era. It was built to replace 'inadequate housing' in the area and , at the time, was regarded as the future of housing. Residents moving in found it spacious, light and well equipped, compared to what they had had before.

However, as so often is the case with these tower block estates, it came to be known for deprivation and crime. Some campaigners say the reputation of the estate has been greatly exaggerated by the media (a report commissioned by Southwark Council found a 'very low crime rate' for the Heygate, in comparison to other parts of the area). At any rate, a mere 25 years after being completed, plans were already being formed for its demolition. Council planning, being the lengthy process it is, this eventually translated into residents being 'decanted' (what an awful way to describe it) in 2007.

Southwark Council struck a deal with a company called Lend Lease to demolish and subsequently redevelop the Heygate. Now Lend Lease, an Australian company, doesn't exactly have a shining reputation, having been the perpetrator of a massive property over-charging fraud in the US (for which it eventually paid out over $50 million in fines). Claims have been made about there being a 'revolving door' between council and developer in Southwark too, but that is just the smallest part of the bigger story.

What should have been (and should still be) an absolute scandal was the number involved. Here, quoted from an article in New Statesman magazine, are those numbers in full:

Price paid by Lend Lease for 22-acre Heygate Estate site: £55m Price paid for nearby Oakmayne/Tribeca Square 1.5-acre site: £40m Expected total cost to Southwark Council for evicting residents: £65.5m Previous estimate of cost to refurbish Heygate Estate to modern standard: £35m Expected profit from sales for Lend Lease: £194m Expected profit from sales for Southwark Council: £0 Average compensation given to leaseholders of one bedroom flat: £95,480 Average compensation given to leaseholders of four bedroom flats: £177,421 Lowest price unit in new development (one bedroom flat): £310,000

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Number of social-rented units in Heygate Estate: 1,200 Number of social-rented units in new development: 79

Just let those numbers sink in a minute. Starting with those first two, let's assume for the moment that the two sites had the same land value in the marketplace. That would put the market price at £26.7 million per acre. Multiply that up for the 22 acres of the Heygate site and you have a price of £586.7 million. The council sold it for less than 10% of that! Certainly you have to take into account the fact that the Heygate was a dilapidated site with some extra costs attached. But a 90% reduction? A loss of nearly half a billion pounds to the taxpayer? This can't be right surely, you say?! Sadly though, it is absolutely correct. When you then add on all the profit that will be made by the private developer, you see how insane this all truly is.

Then, at the bottom, you see that last little stat: 1200 social-rented units down to 79 social-rented units – a reduction of some 93.4%. Claims are made about the costs of maintaining social-rented units, particularly in light of funding cuts from central government (with some degree of justification). Claims are also made about 'affordable housing'. The latter are of course entirely spurious, as you can see for yourself from the numbers (and only 300 of the nearly 2500 planned units to be built will be in this 'affordable' category anyway). So once again, poorer people are pushed out of their homes to make way for those with more money. Gentrification strikes again.

Equally, of course, there are no plans to include spaces for things like growing food. Even green space of the most basic kind will probably be limited to a patch of lawn here or there and a few trees to prettify the site. Indeed, Donnachadh told me that Southwark Council have made numerous efforts to sell off what green spaces do exist in the area, including his local Burgess Park. Having been unsuccessful thus far, the plan now is apparently to completely surround the park with intrusive , overbearing high rise buildings. Presumably, the idea is that this will take away the intrinsic open nature and value of the park, making sell off and development eventually nigh on inevitable. Given that the positive value of open green spaces for mental and physical health and well-being has long since been comprehensively established, the effects of this hardly bear thinking about really!

What we end up with, almost unbelievably, is a site that has denser housing development, has less green/communal space and is completely unaffordable for the people presently living there. But then perhaps that last point is somewhat moot, given that the council 'decanted' residents back in 2007, with no alternative housing available to them (demolitions are still ongoing in 2014 as I write this). Various groups have come together to create a record of what has come to be known as the 'Heygate Diaspora'. People moving out of the Heygate, given pitifully low compensation by the council (certainly nowhere near enough to move back into one of the new units), have been pushed out of central London. To quote one of those campaign groups, 35 Percent:

Around half have relocated to SE postcodes (including Woolwich, Thamesmead and Welling), most of the rest have had to move to suburbs such as Sidcup, St. Albans, Chelmsford, Croydon, Bexleyheath, Ilford, Romford, Dartford, Cheshunt, Mitcham and West Thurrock. The reason for this is clear: the very low levels of compensation leaseholders have received for their Heygate homes...

...The average compensation paid for a 1 bed flat is £108,164 (indexed to today’s value). Owners of 2 bed flats received on average £122,140, 3 bed maisonettes £185,070 and 4 bed maisonettes £209,440... Compare this to the cost of the new Heygate homes as advertised by Lend Lease. These start at £330k for a 1 Bed flat, £455k for a 2 Bed flat and £590k for a 3 Bed.

Some have been tracked out further still, and others – so called insecure tenants, who have no right

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to a new property – have been lost altogether, with no record of where they went.

All of this, just to knock down and rebuild what was itself knocked down and rebuilt just 40 years ago. This is what happens when the numbers are allowed to dominate the debate, when numbers are given greater priority than human needs. In the end, it seems even those human people become little more than numbers in the system, to be moved around whenever it is deemed necessary. There are people who will have gone through both those demolitions, who will have been 'decanted' twice, only to find themselves pushed out of the communities (along with everyone else) they may have spent many years building.

It is impossible to build any kind of community with this endless focus on economic numbers and an insatiable 'knock down and rebuild' mentality. This mentality is by no means limited to The Heygate or to Southwark Council either. This is going on all over London (and the wider UK). The upshot is that, rather than creating a rising economic tide, we are in fact creating a tidal wave of problems, that drowns the local communities. In doing so, we end up with areas that are little more than islands of prosperity in an ocean of economic and social (and environmental) hardship.

Perhaps most ominously, the simple fact is that this regeneration cannot be replicated indefinitely. As a model, it rests entirely on creating exclusivity and that, by definition, can only be repeated so many times: everywhere cannot be exclusive. Yet councils across the country continue to sign up to regeneration programs that are, as often as not, unsuccessful if not actively counterproductive. So what does Regrowth propose instead?

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Solutions

I propose three solutions, linked together to form the complete Regrowth model:

Vertical Farming Community Farms/Gardens Local high street food markets.

Vertical Farming:

What is it?

Put simply, vertical farming is farming indoors, in layers. Most people will be familiar with the idea of growing plants in a greenhouse, particularly those which cannot tolerate frosts or excess rain. Many a keen gardener will have a greenhouse, in which they might grow tomatoes, strawberries and chillies (as just a few examples).

Equally, most readers will have seen the polytunnels in which many commercial crops are now grown – usually soft fruits like strawberries.

What is less commonly known is that many of these commercial plants are grown using hydroponics, whereby the plants are grown in water containing dissolved all the dissolved nutrients they require for growth. No soil is required for this process. Another method also exists, known as aeroponics, which is like hydroponics, except the plant roots are in an enclosed environment, into which a mist of nutrient rich water is sprayed. Again, no soil is required.

The primary innovation added to this by vertical farming is that instead of the single storey growing tunnels or greenhouses we have now, we would have multi-storey buildings, containing multiple levels of plants. It has been calculated that one acre of high-tech vertical growing space could produce the same amount of crops as around 20 acres of traditional farmland (though of course, the exact amount would vary by crop and technical limitations).

This approach offers a potential revolution in the way we produce our food. Growing our crops inside buildings would allow us to move food production into urban areas. Our towns and cities could grow all their own food. In turn, we could decide what to do instead with all the land no longer required for crop production.

But this is getting ahead of ourselves for now. The important question is this: What would such a vertical farm look like?

There are many answers to this question. Many different designs exist. Perhaps the most common design is, in effect, a giant multi-storey greenhouse with transparent walls of glass (or similar material). However, advances in lighting technology mean that this does not have to be the case. Specialised lights exist, which emit precisely the light wavelengths essential to plant growth. This means that vertical farming can actually take place in virtually any building large enough to accommodate it. Clearly, where there is sufficient sunlight to do so, the glass model may be most efficient and effective. But it is not a prerequisite; in fact, in northern European countries for example, where temperature and sunlight is much more variable across the seasons, it may well be more efficient to grow indoors in a wholly enclosed and controlled environment, without any windows at all.

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Inside the building plants are grown in specially constructed racks. The roots are held in a pipe through which the water (hydroponics) or mist (aeroponics) passes, allowing the plant to gather what it needs. These pipes are usually plastic at present, but other more sustainable options may well be available in future. The top of the plant is outside the pipe, just as it would be were it grown in soil. The building in which the vertical farm is housed would be carefully controlled for humidity, temperature and light. It would also be even more carefully controlled to remain free from plant pathogens – likely maintaining positive pressure within the building and strict bio-security measures – both for plants and for all human personnel. Finally, depending on circumstance, the racks containing the plants may be movable on some sort of conveyor type system, in order to control and/or maximise their exposure to light and other variables.

The vertical farm may also, under optimal conditions, operate as a closed loop, meaning that materials and energy put in are used and reused in a loop to prevent waste. A good example of this can be seen in the description of the aquaponics system I visited in Manchester. All sorts of exotic design proposals have been made, by various people interested in vertical farming for the possibilities of such closed loops. One notable such future solution suggested that large scale vertical farms could help manage the extraordinary volumes of waste water produced by cities. Whether or not this is viable is not something I can address in this book, though it does go to show the potential power and advantages of closed loop systems, when compared to the wasteful systems we invariably have today.

Why do we need it?

There are good reasons to move towards vertical farming. These can be divided into three main categories:

1. Ecological2. Practical3. Economic

Ecological:

Globally, farming as it is now is unsustainable. It is as simple as that. Agricultural run off of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers into our waterways, our estuaries, and eventually our oceans is a major problem. These substances are highly toxic and create dead zones wherever they flow. In poorer areas, where these expensive products are not so readily available, excrement is used instead, contributing to the spread of disease. We are also washing huge amounts of topsoil away with our frequently flood based and incredibly wasteful irrigation methods. This means we must use ever more of precisely the harmful substances above, simply to make up the nutritional shortfall for the plants. Eventually, in many areas it simply eventually becomes impossible to farm an area. In such places, our legacy is the desert (at least until such time as nature can recover and recolonise, if it does).

As the population of our planet grows, we have to clear more land for farming. Great swathes of the rainforest are slashed and burned every day for the purposes of farming. The irony of this, of course, is the the verdant rainforest grows in the thinnest and nutritionally poorest of soils. Such soils cannot support agricultural monocultures. So we leave yet another desert and move on. With the global population expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050, we are simply not going to be able to continue this way (and forests are only one ecosystem out of many destroyed to meet our needs).

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Forests of course, sequester CO2, so cutting them down in this way is also not good news for our goal of dealing with our carbon emissions. When you add to this that farming uses vast amounts of fossil fuels, both for mechanised production and for transport, it becomes clear that, this too, is unsustainable.

Vertical farming has the power to remove most of these problems at a stroke. Because crops are grown in a controlled environment, there is literally zero need for the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers.

Perhaps most importantly of all, on the global scale, the advent of large-scale vertical farming allows us not only to protect such ecosystems as remain now, but eventually to return landscapes currently intensively farmed to their natural state. In doing so, we would finally go some way to restoring a portion of the natural world and undoing the immense damage we have done.

Practical:

As set out above, we are just not going to have enough land to feed us all before too long. But perhaps more pressingly still, we will not have enough water. Already, 70% of all freshwater available to us goes to irrigating crops. This is an astounding figure. When you consider that we are contaminating that water with highly toxic substances, it is clear that our current system is madness.

Just as importantly, we must consider the astonishing amount of what water is left (the 30%) that we waste. When we flush our toilets, wash our hands, do our dishes, have our baths and showers -- the so-called black and grey waters -- all that water goes to be processed, stripped of life with chlorine (to prevent the spread of pathogens) and dumped into our waterways. All of that comes at an eye watering cost. In countries where this isn't possible, this water is simply dumped as is, adding even more to the spread of diseases and parasites.

However, perhaps strangest of all, is the fact that the vast majority of us live in urban areas, yet we grow our food far away in the rural areas (what we call food miles). We must then transport this food to where people can consume it, using vast amounts of fossil fuels (with all the associated problems that brings -- see above). When we have finished with it, we then throw it away and transport it back out of our cities and towns to be buried!

As with the ecological consideration, vertical farming has the power to resolve these issues. Water use is dramatically reduced by vertical farming as well. It has been calculated that hydroponic irrigation uses around 70% less water than conventional irrigation. In turn, aeroponic irrigation uses around 70% less water than even hydroponic irrigation. Furthermore, because vertical farms operate as closed loop systems, none of this water is wasted. Indeed, vertical farming systems can even be used to turn grey water back into safe drinking water.

The way the vertical farm operates means that there are little or no waste products (though responsibility will of course remain with the consumer for their own waste). Equally, because the farms are right in the urban areas in which they wish to sell their produce, food miles can potentially be reduced to food metres!

Economic: Looking at the international level, many countries lack good land for farming. Alternatively, at higher latitudes, the climate of a country may not provide a suitable growing season. In some

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countries, these two may even be combined. Iceland springs to mind as an example. As a result, these nations have to import much of their food from abroad. This is clearly a costly way to feed a population. Vertical farming offers these countries a means to be self-sufficient and, at the same time, to dramatically reduce their food bills. It is notable that countries where vertical farming is at the most advanced stage, are the countries that face some or all of these problems and have the money to be able to do something about it. In Sweden, Japan, Canada and South Korea, numerous commercially viable vertical farms are already in operation.

Though this may arguably be the least pressing of the three areas on the global scale, it is certainly the most important for the UK. We are lucky enough here in the UK to not suffer from the worst weather phenomena. Tornadoes, hurricanes, monsoon floods, prolonged droughts; all these things tend to occur in other areas of the world. Equally, we are blessed with relatively fertile land upon which to grow our crops. Where that isn't possible we have strong animal farming communities, something which vertical farming does not aim to supplant.

Still, even taking this into account, a quick trip to the supermarket will reveal the extent to which we import food. Many of the fruits and vegetables we eat need sunnier climes than we can provide here. There are grapes from Chile, tomatoes from Spain and spring onions from Egypt, to name but a few. For the ecological reasons already set out, this is a pretty simplistic way to operate, when you consider than any of these crops (and many more) can be grown right here, where they are needed, in the UK.

So, there you have a list of compelling reasons why, across the world, vertical farming could form the basis of a genuine agricultural and sustainability revolution. However, while some may look to glass skyscrapers on a truly grand scale, to be built in the largest cities, Regrowth aims to take a slightly different approach. The creation of vertical farms in our urban areas – particularly those which are presently run down and in need of regeneration -- would create jobs, revitalise our urban spaces, save our high streets and benefit our citizens. They would act as the engines of urban renewal, the hub around which the Regrowth model is based.

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Community Farming/Gardening

Having read about the problems of and with the way we produce and consume food, it was clear to me that community gardening offers a more sustainable alternative. However, it was also perfectly clear that community gardening simply couldn't offer the required quantity of food. It cannot and will never be able to replicate the role currently filled by conventional agriculture. Even at the level proposed in this book, of supplying local market towns, restaurants and cafés, it would be unlikely to provide sufficient guaranteed supply to meet demand. Only vertical farming can offer that. So how to fit community gardening into this scheme?

We have already seen that the current gentrification model of urban regeneration has some significant problems. Notable amongst these is the myth of the rising tide effect. The idea is supposed to be that gentrification brings prosperity and hence money to an area which is deprived or run down – the rising tide that lifts all ships. However, the reality is that it creates islands of prosperity, isolated from their surroundings. Worse still, it can actually push out those from poorer economic groups; for example, as housing prices rise to levels that are unaffordable for those groups. In this instance, we have seen that this rising tide is actually a social cleansing tidal wave that washes away the local community.

Vertical farming, in my view, has an inherent related weakness. Due to the various technologies involved and the high price of urban land, set up costs for a vertical farm are going to be very significant. As such, it seems likely that most vertical farms will be set up by corporations with sufficient funds to invest. By contrast, community set up of such a project would be unlikely. This is especially true in the deprived economic areas targeted by this book. So, the potential weakness of the vertical farm alone is that, as with gentrification, it becomes an island of prosperity in an economically deprived area. In fact, given the technical requirements of such a project, such as biosecurity for example, it may actually be more accurate to describe it as a fortress of prosperity in an economic wilderness.

For any regeneration project to be counted as successful, it must surely engage with and benefit the local community in which it is sited. This then is where community gardening comes in. I am proposing that vertical farms be retro-fit into existing disused industrial buildings. It is a simple fact that most such buildings have an area of disused land around them. Often as not, this land will be covered by some form of hard surface, such as tarmacadam or concrete. As such it is land that, just like the building it surrounds, is completely wasted. Obviously, a proportion of this land would need to be used by a commercial vertical farm for logistical purposes – delivery vans and the like. But since distribution will be purely local, this area is likely to be small. No need for vast loading bays and lorry fleets here! As a result, much of the land would likely remain unused and unneeded. So why not use this space for community gardening projects? The benefits of such an arrangement are clear to see.

From an environmental point of view, growing things would very much be preferable to tons of concrete and/or tarmac. Used across multiple projects this would help mitigate the heat island effect prevalent in towns and cities. Equally, the growing of plants is good for air quality, especially the removal of CO2. It may even be possible for plants, in certain circumstances, to aid in removing some toxic materials from the ground itself, via a process called phytoremediation (although this is less certain). This may seem tremendously ambitious, but consider for a moment that there may be hundreds of these projects located across the country. The potential is there and, to coin a phrase, every little helps!

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However, an even bigger benefit is right there in the name itself. Community gardening offers the opportunity to connect the vertical farm to the community around it and so overcome the fortress problem set out above. Volunteers from that local area can manage this land and gain all the benefits that entails, in terms of health, mental well-being and social community. Furthermore they become stakeholders in the success of the vertical farm and the wider regeneration scheme it is part of. Built in numbers throughout a town then, these projects will engage a significant proportion of the population in the restoration of their own towns. In performing this role, community gardening becomes the vital link in the chain that makes an actual holistic regeneration possible. Without it, the whole scheme could at best be only partially successful and, at worst, could fail entirely.

What is a community garden? Well, the clue is in the name really. It is a garden run by members of the community for the benefit of that community. However, this simple statement conceals a considerable level of variation and complexity. Communities have been proactive in seeking out opportunities to create community gardens. In fact the community gardening and farming movement collectively:

● employs nearly 600 staff on nearly 1,000 sites across the UK● actively supports and empowers thousands of volunteers (two thirds ofthe projects are run entirely by volunteers)● attracts over 3 million visitors a year● has a turn over of around £40 million

In contrast to the traditional allotment, community gardens are usually operated collectively. That is, they treat the whole space as one single garden and everybody works together to improve that garden. That's not to say though, that the garden won't have complexity of design or separate areas within it. In fact, there are as many ways of making a garden as there are gardens themselves. A truly bewildering array of designs and principles are available, from the simplicity of beds dug into the ground, up through raised beds, nature areas and on eventually to the scientific complexity of the forest garden (where the whole thing is eventually almost completely self-sustaining). All community gardens work towards the same aims by the same principles (for more on this, readers could look up permaculture). What level of complexity the garden reaches depends largely on the ability of the people running the garden.

However, it also depends to a degree on what the aims of the particular project are. Community gardens have a role far beyond that of just growing things. Clear benefits have been shown for individuals participating in community gardens, in terms of improving mental health, improving physical fitness and also learning and improving important job skills. Additionally, community gardens can provide great social input, particularly for people who might otherwise be isolated and/or marginalised.

One other positive outcome of these projects is that they can be used to give children a chance to work outside, learn where food comes from, and about sustainability and to gain all the other advantages offered above, only perhaps even more so. The importance of children learning how to move towards more sustainable systems can hardly be overstated. That they gain health, social and societal benefits as well is a major added bonus!

Community gardening and city farm projects empower people and communities to help themselves. They can thus provide the social contribution to match the economic contribution of the Vertical Farms.

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Local Food Markets

These represent the final piece in the Regrowth puzzle. Vertical farms act as the economic engines and community farms and gardens as the social wheels that connect it them to the community in which they are sited. But this vehicle needs somewhere to go too. The vertical farms have to have somewhere to sell their produce. Equally the people and the towns themselves need thriving high streets.

Over and again, I have read stories of high streets effectively shutting down, due to ever decreasing customer footfall. Of course, this is a viscious circle, since each closed shopping and moved market only makes it less likely that people wil come.

Food markets, with produce from the vertical farms would reverse this trend. People would come to see (and buy!) the fresh produce grown in, as it were, their own back yard. With the return of footfall, would come the return of other businesses to serve those customers. It's not hard to imagine that all those shoppers might want a drink and sandwich at a cafe for example. If that cafe is supplied by the vertical farms too, then all the better! Instead of trying to compete like for like with out-of-town and online retail – a fight it is simply never going to win – the high street can recast itself as a social and local shopping space, offering sustainablity and economic success.

Together, these three elements – vertical farming, community farms/gardens and local high street food markets – can offer a completely new way to address the problems of our run down towns and highstreets. The Regrowth model offers a way to create towns which are economically successful, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable.

The only question left then is how to make it happen?

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Making it happen

What we want to achieve:

1. We want to take existing disused industrial buildings and retrofit them as Vertical Farms.

2. We want to surround these Vertical Farms with Community Gardening projects.

3. We want to use the Vertical Farms to supply high streets, recasting them as social and economic market towns.

4. We want the combination of Vertical Farms and, especially, the Community Gardening projects to help regenerate the run down areas in which they sit.

Why we want this:

There are three clear reasons we want these outcomes.

1. Economic: We wish to give high streets (and the towns they are in) a chance to flourish once more economically. We also wish to bring lasting prosperity to run down communities. In so doing we can genuinely create a rising tide that lifts all ships.

2. Social: Current economic models segregate people and damage (if not destroy) community. Giving communities a genuine stake in the success and the future of their towns is to the benefit of everyone, with attendant improvements in physical and mental health (among many other improvements).

3. Environmental: It is evident that current food production processes are unsustainable. The model set out in this book is not sufficient to fully address that and other, bigger and more ambitious projects will be required long term. However, this model does offer a clear environmental benefit in the local production, supply and purchase of food. (Community Gardening projects will also help to create more green spaces, which also has environmental benefits).

How to achieve it:

1. Get every council in the UK to make a Devlopment Planning Document (DPD) level commitment to food growing spaces as part of all new developments and, where appropriate, redevelopments. This is necessary to drive the implementation of the Regrowth model (see website or book for more info)

2. Retrofit vertical farms into existing industrial buildings. In many cases, as shown in this book, this would be in buildings which are currently disused. Where these are not available, it may be appropriate to use warehouses on the edge of town industrial sites.

3. Surround these vertical farms with community gardening/city farming projects. Ideally, vertical farm operators will do this voluntarily. However, the DPD level commitment can be used to oblige vertical farm developers if necessary.

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4. Use these vertical farms to supply frequent fresh produce markets in town centre high streets or market squares. This will bring back footfall to these spaces.

5. These markets can supply local people with fresh local produce. They can also supply (perhaps in combination with the vertical farms directly) cafés, restaurants and other social spaces set around the market spaces.

6. Community farms can supply fresh produce to local communities. More importantly, they can empower those communities to be stakeholders in their own Regrowth and can prevent the isolation of prosperity in enclaves that may otherwise occur.

Making it happen:

I believe that my model deserves the work to make it happen, so I have decided to take on that work myself. To that end, I have created a website called Regrowth.org. This website will do several things:

1. I will be sending Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to every council in the country. This process has in fact already begun. These FoI requests ask the following questions.

“What is your town's overall DPD? Please give name and an online link so I can access it (preferably in pdf format).

Does your DPD contain a specific commitment to food growing, as part of new developments and/or redevelopments?

If your current DPD does not contain such a commitment, do you intend to introduce one in your next DPD?”

In sending these request, I intend to find out exactly how many councils have any commitment to food growing or intend to have one in future. All of this information (for some 400+ councils) will be stored in a single database, accessible to everyone.

2. I will keep a second database, again accessible to all, of projects in the UK which fit the Regrowth model. In order to maximise my effectiveness, I must necessarily focus my efforts carefully. This means that I will put most of my efforts into looking at Vertical Farms and other innovative projects. However, I will not be limiting it solely to that (see below). People will be able to use this database as a one-stop-shop for information on as many projects as possible.

3. I will be running a blog on the site. My intention is to visit projects and do write ups on them and/or interviews with those running the projects. This will allow people to get more information about what is happening out there.

The second part of the equation is you, the reader, and the general public at large. I can and will put in as much work as possible to drive the project forward, but I know I cannot do it alone. Here's what you can do.

1. Visit my website at http://www.re-growth.org. Also, please share widely via social media

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and by word of mouth. The more people we can get together on this, the better!

2. Have a look at the Council DPD database. Find out if your council has a commitment to food growing as part of new developments and/or redevelopments. If they don't, get in contact with your council and/or your councillors and ask them to make the commitment. If enough of us do this one simple thing, we can make a huge difference.

3. Have a look at the Projects database. If you have a project near you, visit it, talk about it, share it and make it known. Make it known. Equally, if you know of a project I haven't included, please get in contact and let me know. This is particularly true of community gardening and city farm projects. There are many many such projects and I simply haven't the time and resources to find them all. Your help is both needed and appreciated.

If you are reading this book, the chances are you are already conscious of the issues that it explores. You may already buy local food and shop through independent retailers. You may well work in your community, maybe even in a project such as those examined. If you are one of those people, good on you. However, if you're not, I urge you to become one. I know it's difficult to do, I don't always do it myself. But wherever possible I try, and I think we all should. By doing so, we can definitively prove that there is a strong economic argument to be made here. We can show that if they build it, we will come. In so doing, we can also help hard pressed traders and communities to survive.

Finally, if you have enjoyed this book, if you agree with the ideas it contains and believe, like me, that they can become a reality, then please talk about it, share it, spread it as widely as you can. Together, we can make Regrowth really happen.

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Appendix I – Other current approaches

Although regeneration and gentrification dominate current approaches, they are not the only available option. To include these in the main text body would have disrupted the flow of the report, so I have included brief descriptions and considerations here.

Garden Cities

Created by Ebenezer Howard, in 1898, in the in the form of a book 'To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform', Garden cities are enjoying something of a rennaissance right now. The principles on which the garden city is based are as follows*:

Strong vision, leadership and community engagement. Land value capture for the benefit of the community. Community ownership and long-term stewardship of assets. Mixed-tenure homes and housing types that are affordable for ordinary people. Beautifully and imaginatively designed homes with gardens in healthy communities. A strong local jobs offer in the Garden City itself and within easy commuting distance. Opportunities for residents to grow their own food, including the use of allotments. Generous green space, including a surrounding belt of countryside to prevent unplanned

sprawl; well connected public parks, high quality gardens, tree-lined streets and open spaces.

Strong local cultural, recreational and shopping facilities in Walkableneighbourhoods Integrated and accessible transport systems.

* Adapted from a display board at the International Garden Cities Exhibition, Letchworth Garden city

Clearly, this is a model that still has great potential for today. It will have to resists the efforts to corrupt it, however, that are evident in the so-called 'ebbsfleet garden city' proposed by the current government – which is effectively nothing more than another commuter town for London and thus actually sits in direct opposition to the very principles of the garden city.

However, more to the point for this document, is the fact that a garden city is, by defintion, a planned town. It must be conceived and built from the very outset, according to the principles above. As a result, it can offer no solution for places which already exist, such as those that Regrowth is trying to help.

Transition Towns:

For those unaware of Transition Towns (TT), this is how they describe themselves:

“Transition Network supports community-led responses to climate change and shrinking supplies of cheap energy, building resilience and happiness. ”

So their relevance to this work should be obvious. They too recognise the need for change, that current systems are unsustainable. They too are working on new models for communities, housing,

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local food production and supply and thriving high streets.

For the most part, TT work on small scale local projects. This is a problem for me, since a broader view and a bigger approach will be necessary to solve the problems we face. That said, an offshoot from TT does give me hope. It's called the Atmos Project and its stated aim is to convert an old disused industrial site (and a historic building alongside it) in Totnes, into an environmentally sustainable, community owned economic hub for the town.

I would ultimately like to see the likes of Transition Towns, adopt the Regrowth model as a way forward. I believe the aims are compatible and the Regrowth model offers TT the opportunity to 'go up a league' and address larger scale issues. This is something I will be pursuing.

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Appendix II - Useful Information

Information sources available on request.

Regrowth Website: http://www.re-growth.org

Regrowth book – available to buy here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-horler/regrowth-vertical-farming-community-gardening-and-urban-renewal/paperback/product-21780703.html

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