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Thread: Living off the grid in the city

  1. #1
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    Living off the grid in the city

    Hi all,

    I'm working on an article for a national magazine about living off the grid in an urban environment. Do you hang your clothes out the apartment window? Can vegetables on the 37th floor? Do you participate in a rooftop garden or use your flower garden to grow veggies instead? Do you choose to bicycle or walk everywhere rather than use a car or public transportation?

    If so, of if you know of someone I should talk to, please leave a message below or send me a PM. My deadline is quickly approaching though, so please don't wait!

    Thanks,
    -Joy

  2. #2
    Helper Gregg's Avatar
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    Hey Joy, what a great topic. We have rigged up a vertical vegetable garden in our part of the concrete jungle (actually a townhouse in a medium sized mid-western city). Plants are all in containers and just getting started so photos aren't very exciting just yet. Inspiration was from the fire escape garden crowd in NYC. I feel strongly about letting people know what is possible so will help if I can.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gregg View Post
    Hey Joy, what a great topic. We have rigged up a vertical vegetable garden in our part of the concrete jungle (actually a townhouse in a medium sized mid-western city). Plants are all in containers and just getting started so photos aren't very exciting just yet. Inspiration was from the fire escape garden crowd in NYC. I feel strongly about letting people know what is possible so will help if I can.
    Gregg

    Very cool. If you're interested in how some experts hope to take this type of urban farming to a grand scale see if you can track down a podcast of NPR's interview with Professor Dickson Despommier. Fascinating stuff about using abandoned high rises to feed the city's population as proposed by a man well qualified to address the practicalities of such ventures.

  4. #4
    Senior Member lhamo's Avatar
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    We live on the 30th floor of a highrise in Beijing. We are not "off the grid" by any means (can't imagine trudging up that many flights of stairs every day!), but I think we do have a pretty small energy footprint. We have a drying rack that we use regularly -- that is quite common here in China, dryers being something that pretty much only rich expats have (we have one, inherited from the previous owners of our place, but only use it to get cat hair off our fleece clothes...). We pay for heat every winter at a basic charge that is based on square footage, but we rarely turn it on -- apartment seems to stay warm enough with the heat from the surrounding apartments so that we don't need it. We don't own a car -- I take the bus to work and a taxi home, and we use taxis/bus/subway for errands around town, which are rare. I do most of my shopping in the neighborhood -- bought a wheeled grocery bag at Ikea and that holds the bulk of a week of groceries. I did try container gardening and started a worm bin last year, but both were pretty much flops. Still trying to decide if I'll try to grow something in the containers this year.

    lhamo
    "Seek out habits that help you overcome fear or inertia. Destroy those that do the opposite." Seth Godin

  5. #5
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    This all sounds great. Thanks for your help--I'll be in touch via PM soon!

    PS lhamo--love that quote by Seth Godin.

  6. #6
    Helper Gregg's Avatar
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    Joy, another thing you are welcome to do is post topic in the various forums relating to specifically what you are interested in and see who responds. From there you could PM the folks that have promising ideas to see if they may want to share more. I think your readership might be a lot wider in those areas of the forums.

  7. #7
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    HI Joy, nice topics, i red all conversion, really its very nice.

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