Urban Agriculture Takes Root on a Roof in Boston

Can cities grow their own food? That’s the premise behind urban agriculture, a movement to convert urban spaces into growing spaces. An experiment in urban agriculture is taking place at the Boston Design Center, a huge building in a formerly industrial space in South Boston.

I visited Higher Ground farms and talked with one of its founders, Courtney Hennessey, about the project, which started growing in 2013. The farm’s experience shows some of the potential and challenges with urban farming.

Author: Martin LaMonica

Martin is a veteran journalist covering science, technology, and business from Cambridge, MA. He writes about energy and technology for Xconomy, MIT Technology Review, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, and others. For ten years, he was senior editor at CNET where he covered clean tech, the Web, and tech companies. During the dotcom boom and bust, he was executive editor at enterprise IT publication InfoWorld and previously was the Paris correspondent for the IDG News Service. He graduated from Cornell University.