Please join Dickson Despommier of The Vertical Farm and Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE to discuss the radical assertion that the city of the future should provide all necessities for living within its physical borders.

Terreform One, located on Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, is a non-profit design group of scientists, artists, architects and others that promotes green design in cities. Dickson Despommier, author of The Vertical Farm, advocates the development of urban skyscraper farms that can feed an entire city.

Together, our presenters argue for an urban future in which all the vital needs of a city’s residents are provided for within the boundaries of that city. Food, water, air, energy, waste, mobility, and shelter are radically restructured to support life. The strategy includes replacing dilapidated structures with vertical farms and transforming streets into snaking arteries of livable spaces using renewable energy sources, soft cushion vehicles, and productive green rooms.

As Terreform One explains, these operations are not just about a comprehensive model of tomorrow’s city, but an initial platform for discourse. “We think the future will necessitate marvelous dwellings coupled with a massive cyclical resource net. The future will happen, how we get there is dependent upon our planned preparation and egalitarian feedback.”

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What Happened

Join us for a multimedia tour of the decadence and divinity of two New Jersey utopian communities founded in the 19th century: one for pleasure, the other for purity.

Edith Gonzalez presents two faces of the utopian mind of the 19th century: Ocean Grove, which remains to this day a “religious resort”, while Asbury Park, a secular pleasure zone, has faced more worldly ups and downs. Since their respective founding side by side on the NJ coast, these two communities have been engaged in a dynamic dialogue of morality.

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Edith Gonzalez is an historical anthropologist specializing in nineteenth-century systems of power, and a native New Yorker with a deep and abiding love for New Jersey.