UPP Professor Kheir Al-Kodmany Cited in Washington Times on Vertical Farming

Posted on October 15, 2018

Department of Urban Planning and Policy Professor Kheir Al-Kodmany was cited in a Washington Times article discussing vertical farms.

“These high-tech systems represent a paradigm shift in farming and food products and offer suitable and efficient methods for city farming,” Dr. Kheir Al-Kodmany, an urban planning scholar, wrote in the Buildings journal in February 2018.

Dr. Al-Kodmany and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago reviewed more than 100 sources about vertical farming research since 2010 and examined 15 vertical farming projects worldwide — including two rooftop farms in New York; four “low rise” farms in Michigan, Illinois and Tennessee; and six proposed “high rise” farms in Sweden, France, Canada and the Philippines.

“[H]ypothetically, if vertical farms were integrated in the city, they will be able to supply food for the entire population,” Dr. Al-Kodmany concluded. However, there are many challenges to address, including finding funding to build and sustain such projects; finding less costly ways to power facilities; and quickly assembling interdisciplinary research and collaborations on urban agriculture, he wrote in the Buildings article.