Identifying the Potential for Intensive Green Roof Farming in New York City

184 pages. Examining committee chair: Jacques AbelmanClimate change, capitalism, globalism, densification of cities, and the rise of large scale monocrop farming have created an environmental landscape of food instability and a lost opportunity for human connection to and through food, especially in dense urban landscapes like New York City.1 One solution to cultivate healthy human connections with and through food, while also addressing economic and environmental pressures is through the practice of rooftop farming. This research presents a guide to selecting potential sites for rooftop farm development in NYC and what design typologies might be implemented. This work incorporates the three elements of a sustainable business through the lens of the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit). This work uses a three phase process of GIS analysis and ground truthing, typological classification schema via site visitation of case studies, and research by design to produce potential projective designs pulling from the locations identified through GIS and the typologies discovered. Through these methods, thousands of sites and many design potentials were identified and categorized with relation to how they most strongly relate to one of the three motivational elements of the triple bottom line and how each element influences a rooftop farm development. This work intends to serve as a resource that will lead to the expansion and proliferation of rooftop farming in urban environments