Coming off the contagious energy of the Foodprint.TO event last weekend, and the whirlwind of conversations (now thankfully on video) on Toronto’s food infrastructures, it was a pleasure to see the finalists of the ONE Prize competition included an agro-centered proposal by students – Drew Adams, Fadi Masoud, Denise Pinto, Karen May, and Jameson Skaife – from the University of Toronto.

The ONE Prize competition had asked for proposals of productive landscape strategies  in urban contexts. This team’s proposal re-considered the extensive network of publicly-owned hydroelectricity corridors cutting through urban infrastructures. They identified its potential as a food line – turning a land-use detractor (powerlines) into a land-use amenity (agriculture). Here is an accurate portrayal of a typical hydroelectric corridor from Toronto’s resident flaneur.

[Intersections of the proposed Hydro Fields at various sites along the corridor.]

The Hydro Field design team writes that:

Within a 125 mile radius of downtown Toronto, there is approximately 8,145 acres of space to grow within Greater Toronto’s Hydro Corridors. This is the equivalent of 51 full 160-acre commercial farms, or 294 28-acre urban farms, or 58,500 0.14-acre community gardens. Such vast amounts of arable land suggest not only considerable feasibility but significant potential for a reduction in imported produce.

[Toronto’s hydroelectric network carves green lines through the city’s grid.]

[World crop import dependence and seasonality for produce into Toronto.]

The team suggests the origanization of a body called FeedToronto (similar to BuildToronto and InvestToronto) will modulate seeding, harvest and distribution. Though the current land is owned by the hydroelectric company, the team proposes a provocative solution of a split ownership of ground rights (for cultivation) and air rights (for electrical transfer).

[Land-use typologies for Hydro Fields.]

[Typology deployment along Hydro corridors and in relationship to existing transportation networks.]

Converting the corridor into an (economic) amenity will dramatically affect adjacent land uses. Toward this, the team offers a range of types to demonstrate various Hydro-field edge developments – residential, institutional, commercial, and light industrial. You can imagine the possibility of harvest time cruising down a corridor in a Gleaner combine harvester in a single, continuous line, experiencing the field as an urban section through the city’s back hydro-electric (agro-)avenue.

[Nutrition facts!]

For more on corridors, see Terrestrial Discontinuities and Power of Ecosystems / Ecosystems of Power.

Increasingly, carbon emission issues will need to be addressed at a very large, even regional and urban, scale to offset a downward spiral. And nowhere is this more pressing than in parts of rapidly-developing China. London Metropolitan University’s Unit 8, led by CHORA (Raoul Bunschoten) and Tomaz Pipan is exploring just such an initiative in a studio titled “Urban Incubators.” They write that “Energy is the city’s new design force.” Unit 8 investigated this by inviting students to develop a energy map of an area of Xiamen, documenting it as a “cohabitation of processes.” Index maps and scenario-modeling, techniques and methods well demonstrated in much of CHORA’s work, provides a catalyst for a prototypical urban approach. Each proposal was held accountable to 4 criteria: branding, earth (site prototype), flow (processes and exchanges), and incorporation (development strategy). The scale of thinking is powerful and ambitious.

There are many fantastic provocative projects that emerged from the studio – though we thought to only highlight a few here, as the website itself is very effective. Proposals range in terms of implementability, scale, and degrees of publicness. Below is Patrick Fryer’s “Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure.” This project strategically inserts a vein-like network organization of agriculture in a site of expanding industrial lands. Aquaponic greenhouses form the primary agent in site, with a complementary matrix of composting and other ground-based agro-processes. The center spine is host to an intensive nutrient flow system, integrating the greenhouses. Intermittently strung along the spine are public programs including housing and schools.

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Branding, by Patrick Fryer.]

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Earth, by Patrick Fryer.]

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Flow, by Patrick Fryer.]

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Incorporation, by Patrick Fryer.]

Another provocative project is “Algal Economies” by Tom Down. This project recognized that much of China’s “urban villages” have limited access to land and have struggled to find agency other than as a overcrowded hub for transient populations. Instead, this proposal offers biofuel, specifically algae harvesting, as a new economy for the residents. Scaffolding-like structured farms are integrated into the village architecture in semi-public and semi-private spaces, such as roofs, patios, and courtyards. Banks of algae production line these structures, offering a new produce for the new city: renewable energy.

[Algal Economies - Earth, by Tom Down.]

[Algal Economies - Flow, by Tom Down.]

A third project is “Bamboo Components” by Benjamin Walton. This proposal capitalizes on the wasted land that has emerged through the combination of rapid development and land ownership laws of Xiamen. These sites are then tested for intense bamboo farming.  Bamboo is harvested for engineered timber construction in newly constructed production towers.

[Xiamen Bamboo Components - Earth, by Benjamin Walton.]

[Xiamen Bamboo Components - Flow, by Benjamin Walton.]

Dr. Benjamin Richardson conceived of a city of health called Hygeia in 1876. Dr Richardson is an M.D., and he calculated a death rate for Hygeia of 8 per 1,000 in the first generation and 5 per 1,000 in the second generation. The current rate at the time was approximately 20 in 1,000. Hygeia anticipated a population of 100,000 in 20,000 houses on 4,000 acres, or about 25persons/acre. Hygeia was of considerable influence to Ebeneezer Howards Garden City (whose trajectory can easily be traced through to modern planning and urban design).

Here is Dr. Richardsons description of Hygeia in terms of food, water, animals, and the dead:

Our model city is of course well furnished with baths, swimming baths, Turkish baths, playgrounds, gymnasia, libraries, board schools, fine-art schools, lecture halls, and places of instructive amusement. In every board-school drill forms part of the programme. I need not dwell on these subjects, but must pass to the sanitary officers and offices.

There is in the city one principal sanitary officer, a duly qualified medical man elected by the Municipal Council, whose sole duty it is to watch over the sanitary welfare of the place. Under him, as sanitary officers, are all the medical men who form the poor law medical staff. To him these make their reports on vaccination and every matter of health pertaining to their respective districts; to him every registrar of births and deaths forwards copies of his registration returns; and to his office are sent, by the medical men generally, registered returns of the cases of sickness prevailing in the district. His inspectors likewise make careful returns of all the known prevailing diseases of the lower animals and of plants. To his office are forwarded, for examination and analysis, specimens of foods and drinks suspected to be adulterated, impure, or otherwise unfitted for use. For the conduction of these researches the sanitary superintendent is allowed a competent chemical staff. Thus, under this central supervision, every death, every disease of the living world in the district, and every assumable cause of disease, comes to light and is subjected, if need be, to inquiry.

At a distance from the town are the sanitary works, the sewage pumping works, the water and gas works, the slaughter-houses and the public laboratories. The sewage, which is brought from the town partly by its own flow and partly by pumping apparatus, is conveyed away to well-drained sewage farms belonging to, but at a distance from, the city where it is utilised.

The water supply, derived from a river which flows to the south-west of the city, is unpolluted by sewage or other refuse, is carefully filtered, is tested twice daily, and if found unsatisfactory is supplied through a reserve tank, after it has been made to undergo further purification. It is carried through the city everywhere by iron pipes. Leaden pipes are forbidden. In the sanitary establishment are disinfecting rooms, a mortuary, and ambulances for the conveyance of persons suffering from contagious disease. These are at all times open to the use of the public, subject to the few and simple rules of the management.

The gas, like the water, is submitted to regular analysis by the staff of the sanitary officer, and any fault which may be detected, and which indicates a departure from the standard of purity framed by the Municipal Council, is immediately remedied, both gas and water being exclusively under the control of the local authority.

The inspectors of the sanitary officer have under them a body of scavengers. These, each day, in the early morning, pass through the various districts allotted to them, and remove all refuse in closed vans. Every portion of manure from stables, streets, and yards is in this way removed daily, and transported to the city farms for utilisation.

Two additional conveniences are supplied by the scientific work of the sanitary establishment. From steam-works steam is condensed, and a large supply of distilled water is obtained and preserved in a separate tank. This distilled water is conveyed by a small main into the city, and is supplied at a moderate cost for those domestic purposes for which hard water is objectionable.

The second sanitary convenience is a large ozone generator. By this apparatus ozone is produced in any required quantity, and is made to play many useful purposes. It is passed through the drinking water in the reserve reservoir whenever the water shows excess of organic impurity, and it is conveyed into the city for diffusion into private houses, for purposes of disinfection.

The slaughter-houses of the city are all public, and are separated by a distance of a quarter of a mile from the city. They are easily removable edifices, and are under the supervision of the sanitary staff. The Jewish system of inspecting every carcase that is killed is rigorously carried out, with this improvement, that the inspector is a man of scientific knowledge.

All animals used for food,–cattle, fowls, swine, rabbits,–are subjected to examination in the slaughter-house, or in the market, if they be brought into the city from other depots. The slaughter-houses are so constructed that the animals killed are relieved from the pain of death. They pass through a narcotic chamber, and are brought to the slaughterer oblivious of their fate. The slaughter-houses drain into the sewers of the city, and their complete purification daily, from all offal and refuse, is rigidly enforced.

The buildings, sheds, and styes for domestic food-producing animals are removed a short distance from the city, and are also under the supervision of the sanitary officer; the food and water supplied for these animals comes equally, with human food, under proper inspection.

One other subject only remains to be noticed in connection with the arrangements of our model city, and that is the mode of the disposal of the dead. The question of cremation and of burial in the earth has been considered, and there are some who advocate cremation. For various reasons the process of burial is still retained. Firstly, because the cremation process is open to serious medico-legal objections; secondly, because, by the complete resolution of the body into its elementary and inodorous gases in the cremation furnace, that intervening chemical link between the organic and inorganic worlds, the ammonia, is destroyed, and the economy of nature is thereby dangerously disturbed; thirdly, because the natural tendencies of the people lead them still to the earth, as the most fitting resting-place into which, when lifeless, they should be drawn.

Thus the cemetery holds its place in our city, but in a form much modified from the ordinary cemetery. The burial ground is artificially made of a fine carboniferous earth. Vegetation of rapid growth is cultivated over it. The dead are placed in the earth from the bier, either in basket work or simply in the shroud; and the monumental slab, instead of being set over or at the head or foot of a raised grave, is placed in a spacious covered hall or temple, and records simply the fact that the person commemorated was recommitted to earth in those grounds. In a few months, indeed, no monument would indicate the remains of any dead. In that rapidly-resolving soil the transformation of dust into dust is too perfect to leave a trace of residuum. The natural circle of transmutation is harmlessly completed, and the economy of nature conserved.

Editors Note: File under Glacier / Island / Storm, a studio run by BLDGBLOG at Columbia University GSAPP. Island Edition.

———–

Gilles Deleuze, in "Desert Islands," distinguishes between two types of islands, continental (separated) and oceanic (originary) islands. He writes, “Continental islands serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth. Oceanic islands that the earth is still there under the sea gathering its strength to punch through to the surface.” While certainly staying true to deep-time, geological phenomenon, he does overlook another obvious case of artificial islands, which are simultaneously originary—because they are often constructed from scratch—and separated—because they are often grown upon annexed foundational granular material. The previous century was witness to an abundance of innovative development energy in producing something solid amidst something entirely liquid. It most early cases of land fabrication, catalysts of the artificial, manufactured islands type are centered on volcanic heroism, political anomaly, or development opportunism.

[The Federated States of Micronesia consists of 607 islands extending 1,800 miles and is divided into four states. Nan Madol is on the eastern state of Pohnpei.]

1. NAN MADOL // What better place to start than volcanic heroism. The early occupants of The Federated States of Micronesia constructed Nan Madol, a series of 92 artificial rectangular islets, for nobility made of basalt prisms in about 1300. Megalithic land manufactured of columnar basalt formed seawalls stacked like logs, with coral rubble fill behind the seawalls. The basalt seawalls and breakwaters of Nan Madol have survived centuries of brutal Pacific conditions and have become symbiotic with the existing island coast.

[Nan Madol map.]

[Earths first prefabricated material, basalt prism columns are formed from the mathematics of cracking cooled lava.]

Columnar basalt forms when flowing lava is spread think over a large area and cools simultaneously from the top (air cooling) and bottom (earth cooling). It contracts as it cools, but due to irregularity, the entire body does not contract. Instead, the contract is localized and cracks form, resulting in polygonal columns of basalt that are only a few feet wide. The early Pohnpeians of Nan Madol used these columns in a manner similar to log-cabin construction with alternating rows.

[A portal marking the entry into the mortuary enclosure of Nandauwas of Nan Madol. Constructed entirely out of basalt prisms, est. 1200. Apologies for the tourist, but it is useful for scale.]

Today, Nan Madol’s ruins, often called the Venice of the Pacific, are connected by a grid of shallow canals. (In fact, “Nan Madol” originates form the term “spaces between,” which carries a double meaning of between land / water and literally the canal-like spaces between its enclosures.) Again, Deleuze is useful here. From Desert Islands he writes: “Islands are either from before or for after humankind.” Islands are themselves a kind of geologic ruin—or in some way considered partial complete or partially eroded. How ideal then to have Nan Madol, artificial island, nestled within Micronesia, an originary island.

[Deshima is a Dutch trading post setup in 1634 on artifically constructed land in Nagasaki Bay, so as to prevent foreigners from touching Japanese soil.]

2. DEJIMA // Now for the case of political anomalous artificial land fabrication. The Japanese constructed Dejima, a man-made island in Nagasaki Bay in 1634. The island was constructed on the orders of the shogun to accommodate merchants, who were later expelled leaving only employees of the Dutch East Trading Company (also known as VOC) in 1641. At 120 meters by 75 meters wide, the fan-shaped island was administratively part of Nagasaki, but autonomous in many other ways. It housed residences for twenty Dutchmen, warehouses, and some accommodations for Japanese officials. With 150 interpreters deployed to Dejima, the island was heavily controlled to ensure that there remained room for economic benefit without political compromise.

[Deshima Island, circa 1810.]

The Dutch East India Company, arguably the first megacorporation, set the benchmark for trade in Asia. And cultivated a fleet of over 4000 ships to establish its monopoly–through political-spatial exceptions on trade islands throughout Asia. Dejima, because of the suspicion of of shogunate rule, was the most extreme with its own land serving as both port, trading post, resort, and geographic satellite. The Dutch flag was flown there from 1641 until 1857. For several years during the Napoleanic wars, Dejima was the only place that the Dutch flag stood firm.

In many ways, Deshima was a foreshadowing of globalization, trade politics, free-trade zones, and other EEZs, 400 years in the making. The island form, especially that which is entirely artificial, served as a prophylactic throughout the trade exchange and contact between Asia and Europe. It was a mediator, neither authentically Japanese nor authentically European. Its fan-like shape provided an ideal lengthened edge towards the Bay for docking.

[Construction of the Venetian Causeway in Miami (1925). From the Florida Photographic Collection, Rc21474.]

3. VENETIAN ISLANDS // No, not the real Venice; Venice, Miami. Before the faux fronds of Dubai, there was the Venetian Causeway–a developers crap shoot. The 1920s saw a land boom in Florida. The team of John Collins, a farmer turned developer, and Carl Fisher, a promotional genius, responded by constructing a chain of capsule-shaped islands along a causeway linking Miami to what became know as Miami Beach. The project, known as the Venetian Islands, began by selling underwater plots, specifying that the buyer would receive land on an island that had been dredged, filled, and improved. There was no physical land for potential buyers to survey when buying; they were buying the idea of land and lifestyle convey through images and real-estate speak.

[The perfect pill-shaped developments of Biscayne Island, San Marco Island, San Marino Island, Di Lido Island, Rivo Alto Island, and Belle Island. Constructed in the 1920s.]

The Venetian Islands were tightly calibrated to dimensionally ensure as much beach property as possible. All the islands were bisected by the Venetian Causeway, a bridge linking across the Bay that provided infrastructure and access. Collins and Fishers development in the Bay is tied to a contentious legacy, initiated in the 1860s, of drainage and land reclamation in the Florida Everglades.

[These concrete pillars are all that exists of the unfinished Isola di Lolando in Biscayne Bay, the Venetian Island under construction when the market crashed in 1929. Now, ironically, rather than an artifical island, it is an artifical reef.]

The exuberance of the overall project finally stalled with the combined strike of hurricanes and a burst real-estate bubble (the first of its kind!) in 1929. The legacy of this can be seen in the massive outline island figure of Isola de Lolando and its concrete pilings rising some 5-10 feet out of the Bay.

Intended simply as evidence of a more storied history of innovations in land fabrication, these case studies show the role of economic opportunism and exceptions to create something solid from nothing, or something inhabitable from the uninhabitable. How do politics and economics figure in the scale and magnitude of these geographic exceptions? Although single-minded in their intention, how can the techniques involved in their fabrication–socially, ecologically, economically–further their viability and relevance?

Caught somewhere between No-Stop City and an Everyday Virilio-ism, Tom Vigar's Master of Architecture thesis "Subtopian Dreams" at Sheffield University posits a shared economy (and landscape) of suburbia and military sites. Arguing the inevitable links and interdependence of one with the other, they could share the same territory in a cyclical symbiosis. Suburbia thrives on the technology transfer offered by the military, while the military conveniently hides behind the false front of oh-so-innocent suburbia.

[The shared infrastructures and economies of suburbia (top layer) with manufacturing (middle) and the military (bottom).]

Vigar writes:

The suburbanite is in a state of constant warfare against their neighbours, nature and terrorism. Luckily at the suburbanites command is a whole host of military developed technologies to help them rid all their work surfaces of 99.99% bacteria & maintain a sterile home whilst inadvertently helping to keep the war industries in business. Somehow we have confused the strict military ordering of things with the act of living!

[The 3 layers stacked into a hypothetical configuration called Suburbia 451.]

Seeking an optimal performing suburban pattern for the top layer, various network configurations are evaluated on the basis of defense and access. A combination of types becomes the chosen condition that is then mirrored and repeated. Meanwhile, below that cleansers and domestic technologies are being manufactured for consumption. And, yet again, meanwhile below that troops are training in subterranean bunkers for the next call-up. The military-industrial complex and the suburban-industrial complex unified in marital bliss.

[A suburban pattern language guaged by defensibility.]

[Typical section through Subtopia 451 with manufacturing, bunkers, missile silos.]

[After total war can come total living.]

Get in touch with him at t.vigar[at]gmail[dot]com.
And for more on defense infrastructures, we defer to our blog-colleague at Subtopia.

With the cost of a barrel of oil dipping below $40 a few weeks ago (recall this summer’s price of $140), imagining a post-oil future may not be on everyone's mind .  This is not the case for venture-backed  Better Place and its partners.  Since 2007, Better Place, led by founder and CEO Shai Agassi, has been working to design and deliver a strategy to transform transportation infrastructure from oil-based to renewable energy sources thereby reducing harmful emissions.

The goal for the project is not about familiar half-measures such as hybrid or flex-fuel cars.  Instead, the plan calls for the complete decommissioning of the combustion engine in favor of a fully electric solution.

Embracing the electric car on its own doesn’t make for an original insight.  In fact electric cars have occupied our technological horizon since the beginning of the twentieth century.  Then, as now, the limiting factor in leveraging the opportunities of the electric car has remained the same – battery life.

Agassi’s plan is different in that he dismissed the shortcomings of battery life as a reality and instead reformulated the entire automotive model. His plan separates the battery from the car and views automotive transportation as a service instead of a good.

The Better Place zero-emission vehicle system needs three things for optimal performance:  charging spots, battery switching stations, and software to automate the entire experience.

[change spots and swapping stations: www.betterplace.com]

Charging spots, located everywhere you can park your car, will ensure that cars are always equipped with enough juice for 100 miles of travel.  For longer trips, roadside battery switching stations allow you to swap your depleted battery for a fully charged one.  The swap is fully automated – drivers pull in and out without leaving their cars in less time than it takes to fill your tank today.

What makes this all work is the innovative hybridization of the automotive and mobile phone industries.   You currently have a phone that you may have bought outright or chosen to take advantage of a discounted price by making a commitment via a contract.  Once you have the phone, you choose how you want to use it: unlimited minutes, maximum minutes, or pay-as-you-go.  Substitute phone with car and minutes with mileage and you have the Better Place model.

[the first electric parking lot in Israel at the Cinema City parking lot in Pi-Glilot]

The Better Place electric car network is becoming a reality.  Renault and Nissan have partnered to develop cars to meet the requirements of the plan.  Israel has also committed and promises a nation-wide infrastructure to be in place by 2011.  Israel is thought to be an ideal test ground because it is geographically small with all of its major urban centers less than 150km apart.  As a result 90% of car owners drive less than 70km each day.  Denmark is the next adopter. While similar geographic properties make Denmark another ideal early adopter, the extreme cold climate offers additional challenges.  Other markets planning to go online include Australia, California, and Hawaii.

Better Place has effectively decoupled the issues of energy source and transportation. This open-source model allows for innovations in renewable energies to continue and the electric car network to grow in parallel.  In fact, introducing millions of batteries capable of storing the fluctuating output of energy derived from renewable sources (think solar and wind) only reinforces and strengthens the opportunities of a sustainable future.

[Moving houses in Malartic, QC as part of a 18-month long neighborhood relocation program.]

This summer, two houses were moved from the south end of Malartic to the north. These are part of a 23 home “demonstration phase” anticipating a total of 170 houses to be relocated. Malartic, Quebec (Canada) is a 3700 population town that is no stranger to the role of mining town. The town originally formed as a result of the 1930s gold rush. It began a decline that peaked in 1960s when Malartic nearly became a ghost town.

[Malartic,QC. The yellow patch to the south, and its overlapping with 170 houses, is the location of the future open-pit mine. The green patch to the north is the future planned neighborhood taking in these orphan houses.]

Things have now come full circle as Malartic again is a gold town. Drilling and compilation work carried out by Osisko has outlined a gold mineralized system measuring 1900 metres x 350 metres, with a variable true thickness ranging from 40 to 270 metres to a vertical depth of 320 metres from surface. The system is open to the west and to the south at depth.

[Section through prospective gold location, showing core sample locations in excess of 300m below the surface. Red equals high gold (Au) deposit levels. (view large)]

Below are a few shots from their animation on the project:

[Evident here is the new neighborhood accommodating the 170 displaced houses, and a linear park, which we'll come back to...]

[At year 15 in the development, the open-pit mine will be at its full depth.]

[According to Osisko, year 35 will mark the shift from giant void to artifical lake.]

[A simple representation of the rather complex task of loading a house onto a truck and moving it northward.]

One element in particular stands out as significantly missed opportunity. Recognizing that relocating part of the town "solves the problem" of those immediately over the precious gold, but not those immediately adjacent to it, there is a proposed landscaped barrier, though underwhelming in its current guise. Forming a lip or ridge to a giant ha-ha (the mine pit), the linear park will obscure the mine from street corridor views and provide recreational activities grafted onto its northern edge.

[A linear park, aka giant grassy mound, visually seperates the mine from the adjacent neighborhood... If we cant see it, then it must not really be there.]

Other even more ambitious forays into town moving include: Kiruna, Sweden, well covered at Strange Harvest. Happisburgh, Norfolk, England, or the Retreating Village, well covered at Pruned.

]]> http://infranetlab.org/blog/2008/08/moving-houses/feed/ 1 http://infranetlab.org/blog/2008/07/big-sort/ http://infranetlab.org/blog/2008/07/big-sort/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:20:03 +0000 InfraNet Lab http://infranetlab.org/blog/?p=18

Political partisan-ship in the US no longer simply defines ideas and voting patterns.

Americans are increasingly choosing to live among politically and socially like-minded neighbours, further entrenching the growing political and intellectual divides in the nation. This ability to self-isolate is, of course, best exercised in suburbia. Cities, by nature diverse, encourage constructive confrontation with vast swaths of humanity.

As Americans enclave and isolate themselves, they limit their exposure to ideas that differ from their own. And ironically, it is the wealthy and educated, who are more mobile and have the greatest ability to choose where they live, who are most likely to exercise this right to seek out ‘their own’.

The vast choices in news sources, both on television and the internet, further filter how individuals receive information. Home schooling begins this filtering of information and ideas from a very young age.

“We now live in a giant feedback loop” says Bill Bishop, author of “The Big Sort: Why Clustering of the Like-Minded America is Tearing us Apart”. Perhaps it is time to tune in to another channel.

via the Economist June 21, 2008.

Mr. Benner, 78, a retired professor of ornamental horticulture, is also a longtime practitioner and advocate of what he calls "the moss approach" to lawn maintenance. "Every time I give a lecture, I go into this spiel: get rid of your grass, and grow moss," he said. "And now it’s finally gaining momentum."

According to one estimate, 40 million acres of land is devoted to turfgrass in the United States with nearly 75 percent in home lawns and more than 30 billion dollars spent on annual lawn maintenance.