| This thesis will research two main types to explore the possibility of juxtaposing them: commercial park as a type: its structure, design, regulatory constraints, ecological footprint and management; and a precedent study of urban farming within several American inner cities. Understanding how urban farming programs work, both successful ones and those that are failures, will be important to creating a design and management structure appropriate to a commercial park. The idea will be tested on a local site in Buffalo by calculating the environmental costs of the commercial park today (water quality and quantity); proposing restructuring of the commercial landscape; and then superimposing an urban farm on the site. There will also be a study into managing runoff in an environmentally conscious way. The final result will be a redesign of a local commercial park as an urban farm. This will include a management strategy for the urban farm developed from the ideas created from the precedent study. Within the redesign of the commercial park a water runoff management plan will be developed. This too will use strategies developed through research and case studies. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
