TOW #10: "Up on the Roof"

Flourishing rooftop gardens (like this one) vastly improve the quality of city life in Philadelphia.

http://blog.gardenmediagroup.com/2012/08/roof-top-gardens-flourish-from-hong.html

In a world where cities blossom rapidly every day at the sacrifice of the environment, it is not uncommon to feel overwhelmed and depressed by the lack of nature. By destroying preexisting habitats only to create environmentally-deprecating centers for pollution, not only are we (being citizens of cities and inhabitants of Earth) helping to cause a (potential) global crisis, but we are making the world an arguably more depressing space. Verlyn Klinkenborg proposes a solution to an urban-environmental conflict through his investigation of rooftop gardens, called “living roofs,” that are present in forward-looking cities such as Vancouver. These garden are quickly taking root on the roofs of progressive cities across the world. Klinkenborg’s purpose in writing “Up on the Roof” is to inform the readers of the benefits of rooftop gardens in large cities. To demonstrate the pros of “living roofs” (with the idea that anything other than a roof with a garden is a “dead roof’) Klinkenborg uses examples to demonstrate how specific instances of these rooftop gardens work and improve city life. Also, Klinkenborg lays out his essay chronologically, moving through logos-generating reasons that explain, for example, how rooftop gardens “enhance the urban soundscape”, or how they are environmentally beneficial. Klinkenborg proposes an interesting concept in the form of a systematic argument in which he addresses both his side of the concept of green rooftops and the counterargument. For this reason, I believe he accomplished his purpose. I now see that cities don’t have to be epicenters of pollution; maybe natural environments and urban environments can actually coexist. City goers and environment lovers would constitute this article’s audience. This article is only of interest to a very specific type of audience, although the actual number of people it would interest (since cities are enormous) is much larger.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/05/green-roofs/klinkenborg-text