Page 269 - Beyond Decommissioning

250 Beyond Decommissioning

However, roofs can offer much more than this. For example, they can provide space
to grow food, build inexpensive housing, improve the energy budget by installing
solar panels, and green up our environment. And all of these could be tantamount
to cost-effective design solutions.
Added greenery can do much more than create a pleasant oasis. Green roofs can
decrease storm-water runoff and lower cooling costs.
Larger rooftop gardens can also become farms (greenhouses). Brooklyn Grange
runs rooftop farms in several parts of NYC, producing large amounts of vegetables
that are sold directly to restaurants and greengrocers. Rooftop farms also reduce
transport costs by growing products in the vicinity of consumers. These farms create
a biodiverse ecosystem, attracting birds, insects, and butterflies. Moving from here,
henhouses and beehives are other innovative additions to rooftops. These develop-
ments (including the NYC High Line presented elsewhere in this book) can be viewed
as part of the “urban revegetation” trend; innovations like the “Vertical Forest” belong
to the same vision (Boeri, 2011). A broad range of state and local governments, com-
munity organizations, and private sector interests across the USA are actively assist-
ing residents in establishing gardens in redeveloped areas as a sustainable reuse.
However, legacies of historical industrial activities or construction practices mean that
residual contamination may exist on redeveloped properties that may be considered
for gardening and crop production. Therefore, EPA and other organizations have
developed resources to assist actual or prospective gardeners in assessing soil contam-
ination, whether such contamination poses a risk, and what can be done to lower
the risk.
Berlin architects launched Cabin Spacey to help solve the urban congestion by
building tiny homes on Berlin’s 55,000 unused roofs. These cabins—still in the con-
2
cept stage—can house two people in some 25 m , and can be fully sustained by solar
panels.
Unused roofs can be turned into recreational areas. Rooftop pools have long been a
feature of luxury hotels, but larger gyms, soccer stadiums, playgrounds, and jogging
paths are becoming more common.
As the catchment area for rainfall, roofs can be used to harvest rainwater. This age-
old method of collecting water can be especially cost-effective in drought-afflicted
developing countries. In addition to reusing large amounts of water, this method
can also serve to retain storm-water runoff and reduce pollution (Curbed, 2018).
Construction of a sloped roof over an existing flat roof is commonly used for one or
more of the following reasons:
Fix a chronically leaky flat roof without having to completely dismantling it
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Avoid exposing the occupied part of a building to rain damage should rain occur during the
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construction phase
Add insulation to the building structure
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Correct a difficult-to-vent moisture trap in a flat roof.
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More details are given in Inspectapedia (n.d.). Other common reuses of
rooftops include bar/restaurants (Rubio, 2016) or open-air cinemas (https://
rooftopcinemaclub.com/)