ROOFTOP COMMUNITY FARM

BROOKLYN GRANGE
Long Island City, New York
2011

Brooklyn Grange

Piggybacking Tactic
Inhabit a Niche

Rooftops are increasingly being considered as sites for supplementary uses, including energy harvesting, habitat creation, and rainwater collection and management. BROOKLYN GRANGE, located atop three large industrial buildings now occupied by commercial users, seeks to leverage the collective social capital of the community gardening project to realize urban agriculture’s potential as a venue for public action on topics of social, environmental, and economic concern. Unlike Gotham Greens, which prohibits public participation in its greenhouse farming operations (for reasons of food safety and security), Brooklyn Grange encourages it. Brooklyn Grange constitutes three extensive soil-based rooftop farms designed and programmed to address a more expansive audience. They employ a wide variety of techniques—including polyculture, on-site composting, and beekeeping—and host a weekly farmer’s market during summer months and internship and training programs. The enterprise also comprises a green-roof consulting business and a community-events venue with a skyline view. Brooklyn Grange depends on the economics of piggybacking, but it also employs the tactics of piggybacking as a means to catalyze the public, strategically leveraging its rooftop lease toward the establishment of a novel agricultural commons in the heart of the city.