What if we could take our huge chunks of boring, bland freeway shoulder and turn them into energy, food and big bucks? That’s what this finalist in our Reburbia Competition to redesign the suburbs proposes in his ambitious and financially-focused vision of the future: Inter Estates. These super-modern homes are vertically perched way atop highway-lining vertical neighborhoods that could be the wave of the future.
As much as we would like to implement all of the beautiful new infrastructure that we see in architects’ renderings, we can’t ignore the fact that construction costs money. Unlike the majority of the other finalists, Inter Estates has an answer to a critical question when it comes to green projects – How are we going to pay for this?!!! The answer lies in a series of versatile structural pylons that will facilitate temporary billboards. “Operating like a lamb in wolves’ clothing, revenue generated from the sale of advertising space is in turn invested in future improvements to the site, including retrofitting of the structural pylons to accommodate vertical axis wind turbines,” writes designer Daniel Phillips in his proposal.
As the advertising campaign is retired, the structural frames of the billboards are left intact as the armatures for future residential uses. By that time, a plan to rezone freeway embankments for agricultural use will also promote community edible gardening and biofuel production. Wind turbines which fit on the pylons top the whole project off.
InterEstates is one of 20 finalists in our ReBurbia competition to redesign our suburbs – be sure to check out the other incredible finalists and vote for your favorite!
+ Inter Estates
+ Reburbia Design Competition
The more plants one grows along the freeways, the more pollutants one can soak up.
Growing SOMETHING along there makes sense, if only to soak up all those pollutants. The rest is just optimization for cost and reduction.
I would be afraid of too much pollution would make whatever is grown deadly (to eat) for man and beast. Maybe corn for fuel would work?
The median is not exactly the cleanest place to grow your veggies. I will take mine from elsewhere!
The VAWT mentioned might provide that power provided it worked close to ‘as advertised’. To date none of them have. I have not noticed 1 mW VAWT’s to date – they still can’t make the smaller ones work.
Sounds kind of like homeless people living under an overpass concept to me. Of course no one will have to work all that hard maybe!