When I first saw the line snaking around the block of a non-descript office building, my first thought was:

“Oh, another K-Pop boy band is in town and they’re in line early for tickets.”

But that was not the case. This was a line for an event that I wanted to attend. I had no idea it would be this popular.

Slinking to the end of the line, I asked myself if I was willing to wait to get in, which is rarely something I want to do. Like most people, I hate the idea of waiting in a long line, even though this was a free event for Open House Chicago sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC). I chatted with some folks when a kind, gray-haired docent lady gave us an update.

“Sorry, but you’ll have to wait two hours to get in,” she said, which triggered those behind me to peel off and go elsewhere. So then I asked myself how willing I was to stand in line for several hours. My answer was simple: This venue was on the top of my list for Open House events, which is offered every year and I usually attend. Besides, the weather was perfect on a crisp October morning. A few minutes later, the docent lady returned:

“The wait is now three hours,” she said, noting that members of the Chicago Architecture Center could cue in a “preferred” line and get in much sooner.

“Can I join now?” I asked, hoping for a quick workaround.

“Yes, you can join online,” docent lady replied, smiling.

Out came my smartphone. I was into the CAC membership form in seconds. My rationale was that I visit the CAC frequently when I’m downtown and they offered discounts on their superb architecture tours, which, in Chicago is the equivalent of a culinary tour in Paris.

“Thank you for your membership,” my screen flashed, prompting me to jog over to the preferred waiting line.

“I’m a member!” I gleefully barked to the docent lady. It was like I had won a big stuffed toy at a carnival. Not only was I happy not to be annoyed standing in line, I had a wonderful conversation with Sophie, a college student interested in environmental science, and her friend Melissa, who happened to work for a national environmental nonprofit.

Up a short elevator ride inside the venue, which was packed with other tours, surprises awaited. Farm Zero is an indoor growing facility within a standard office building. There’s nothing special about the building other than it’s kiddie-corner to City Hall, which you can see from the floor. Unlike most official buildings, City Hall has a green roof, meaning it’s growing plants up there. It was hard to believe something like this was possible in Chicago, a city of smokestacks, skyscrapers, elevated el tracks and busy streets.

“This is the first growing space within an office building in the U.S.,” our guide Eric, a former chef and current partner, proudly announced after admitting that he was losing his voice. Detailing Farm Zero’s business plan, he gave a brief tour of the proof-concept seeding and growing rooms.

None of this produced by AI. This is from my own human experience and knowledge of real people doing important things. If you like what you’re reading, please support my humble efforts by upgrading to a paid subscription. Thanks!

The logic of Farm Zero’s business plan is simple. There is plenty of unoccupied office space in Chicago (and many cities and suburbs). Something like 50 million square feet of cubeland is empty in Chicago alone. Office spaces already come with heating, water and air conditioning, so the initial capital investment is relatively small relative to a warehouse conversion or “greenfield” operation.

Then there’s the carbon impact reduction and immediate social benefit: Food produced in these spaces can be sold and shipped locally -- often within several blocks. Food insecure areas could be provided with healthy, fresh produce in a short period of time. The cost of production is also significantly lower: No tractors, combines or big trucks needed. It’s a vertical, hydroponic operation, so there’s no need to seed, till or use soil in a big plot of land.

“It wouldn’t have made financial sense before COVID,” Entrepreneur/Partner Russell Steinberg told Axios recently at the 1,000-square-foot concept farm at 30 N. LaSalle St. “But post-COVID, this is one of the only things that can [easily] go into vacant office space, and we don’t care if we’re looking out over the street or if it’s [lower level].”

Steinberg is emboldened by his new venture, although the City of Chicago was reluctant to approve it. Undaunted, he’s onto Farm Zero 2.0 at 125 S. Wacker Drive, where the facility will be 10,000 square feet and serve a restaurant, a retail store and a wellness plan for downtown employees.

“We have a five-year roadmap, Steinberg told Axios. “After 2.0, we’re going to move on to 3.0 that we’re planning for 401 S. State St. in the Robert Morris College building,” where he plans to include an educational component.

As I’ve reported earlier (see my newsletter last week on the Waukegan CLC Urban Farm Center), the future of farming is vertical and regenerative. We have lots of empty commercial real estate and vacant lots in the U.S.

Instead of spending trillions on AI and data centers, let’s grow healthy food in every community. Jobs are created and our well being is enhanced. Verticulture is the new agriculture. High-rise horticulture can become hotter than our summers, but only if we realize and invest in the potential of this innovation.

Vincit Omnia Veritas (truth conquers all)

I am a sentient writer, journalist, author, environmentalist, speaker, musician and elected county forest preserve commissioner who’s written 20 books and contributed to The New York Times, Next Avenue, Bloomberg and Reuters. My upcoming book “A Green Fire” will be published in April, 2027 by Eckhartz Press.

Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. To contact me about speaking and writing or offer even more dangerous ideas, email me: johnwasik@gmail.com

“Let’s get growing!” implored Dr. Jesse Ruiz, dean of the College of Lake County’s (CLC) Lakeside Campus. The Urban Farm Center (UFC) at the CLC in Waukegan was launched.

Marigolds, symbolizing a bright, new beginning, were given to attendees. So I raised my flower with the others on cue, feeling the energy of thousands of seeds of hope and action being planted. With marigolds raised to the heavens, a crowd of 100-plus shouted Dr. Ruiz’s acclamation in unison.

Orange petals for progress! I thought.

A drone buzzed overhead, but only to capture the exhilaration of the celebrants. In a community plagued by the ongoing ICE menace, however, the local police presence was welcoming and protective. Normally I don’t wave at drones, wary of police surveillance. This time, though, I waved at the cyberbird like a little boy. Joy moved my right hand to celebrate the sweetness of the moment.

After an elite drill dream -- drums clacking and throbbing -- marched to the entrance and a Mexican folklore troupe danced, the reality set in: Waukegan, hometown of Ray Bradbury and Jack Benny, would be ground zero for a burgeoning local agricultural revolution. This movement has a name: Verticulture.

So many hands grabbed shovels to build this $15 million miracle blocks from Lake Michigan in a city that has experienced decades of industrial disinvestment and toxic dumping. Director Eliza Fournier was leading many dynamos powering this project. Private donors and the College’s Foundation pitched in along with a community and college committed to a progressive vision of the future of agriculture education.

“The Urban Farm Center is about much more than growing food—it’s about growing opportunity,” said UFC Director Eliza Fournier. “We’re creating a place where students can gain skills for emerging careers, local growers and food entrepreneurs can build their businesses and our community can have greater access to fresh, locally grown food. Most importantly, we’re bringing all those pieces together in downtown Waukegan to create a stronger, more resilient local food system.”

What’s unique about the UFC is its bold, hybrid goal: To integrate a community college education/training mission with providing fresh, healthy food to an underserved area in a food desert. Yet it felt that every inch of the 24,000-square-foot center had a stakeholder from the county’s diverse population. Even food service entrepreneurs will be welcomed here. Supporters of the project range from the college’s board of trustees to the City of Waukegan.

Students from CLC will learn how to grow vegetables and mushrooms in a controlled environment. Water, nutrients and temperature will be monitored closely. Local growers will be able to process their food to supply the local produce market. A commercial kitchen will allow students from the college’s culinary arts program to learn how to prepare fresh local food, a surprising rarity in the agriculture-rich Midwest.

More importantly, the facility is a public enterprise. You want to learn about food technology in the age of AI? This is the place where the dynamics of growing are in place to embrace a community that needs to learn new skills. Climate change and increasingly challenging heat and violent weather demand new skillsets.

“We can cultivate real change,” Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham shouted effusively at the opening. “This space belongs to you.”

Embedded in the UFC are several components that will support local agriculture. Growing rooms with powerful LED lighting team with vertical, hydroponic growing racks will ensure quick and healthy harvests. Produce can be washed and then sold to the public in a retail space that also features a bookstore. Ideally, food education and the community will coalesce in a wide-window space that overlooks Lake Michigan just below a lovely bluff.

None of this produced by AI. This is from my own human experience and knowledge of real people doing important things. If you like what you’re reading, please support my humble efforts by upgrading to a paid subscription. Thanks!

Partners in the UFC include CLC’s horticulture and culinary arts programs (based at its main Grayslake campus), local growers and the Lake County Forest Preserve’s youth farm at the Greenbelt Cultural Center. Ideally, communities that usually don’t have access to fresh, healthy food will have a hub that they can easily visit. A bus stop and commuter train station are literally across the street.

As if that integrative model isn’t enough, the UFC -- and verticulture in general -- addresses a much larger problem. Despite its rich soil and robust transportation network, Illinois residents get more than 80% of their fresh produce from out of state, particularly during the winter. For some commodities, the supply chain is more than 1,000 miles, which creates a significant carbon footprint and higher retail prices. Shortening the supply chain, that is, growing locally indoors year-round, reduces the impact of diesel-fueled transportation. Downsizing carbon-intensive growing and transportation is a triple win for the environment and well-being of all.

With American agriculture hobbled by Donald Trump’s tariffs and high diesel and fertilizer prices -- caused by his war with Iran – verticulture can spark a return to local, regenerative agriculture. Think of the millions of square feet of empty warehouses, retail space, office buildings and factories that can be repurposed for fresh vegetable production. Verticulture has a minuscule carbon footprint relative to “big ag” that can create local, sustainable jobs.

Days later, musing about the UFC opening, I realized the communal power of a small farm. Whether we realized it or not, we were conjoined in a profound undertaking: Transforming agriculture from a large-scale corporate enterprise to a hyperlocal community project. Anyone willing to learn about growing food could do this at the UFC; they could start their own business or just help relieve food insecurity. We were all united by what the late Poet-Farmer-Prophet Wendell Berry often reminded us over his 92 years: “Eating is an agricultural act.”

We all have to eat. Yet it takes an engaged community to feed people. It’s time to not only start growing our own vegetables in a low-carbon, hyperlocal environment, but inventing newer, healthier ways of feeding ourselves. Learning is growing, too.

Vincit Omnia Veritas (truth conquers all)

This essay was not produced by AI. I am a sentient writer, journalist, author, environmentalist, speaker, musician and elected county forest preserve commissioner who’s written 20 books and contributed to The New York Times, Next Avenue, Bloomberg and Reuters. My upcoming book “A Green Fire” will be published in April, 2027 by Eckhartz Press.

Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. As a bonus, subscribers receive free access to my new book “The Natural Neighborhood,” which is serialized in this newsletter: A new chapter every month. To contact me about speaking and writing or offer even more dangerous ideas, email me: johnwasik@gmail.com

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” – Aldo Leopold

Paddling down the Wisconsin River, my mind was unburdened, enchanted by the flow of the undammed stream as it rambled to the Mississippi. My brother-in-law Martin was inspired to book a canoe trip down the river. We would camp overnight on a random sandbar, hoping that a storm wouldn’t suddenly submerge our campsite.

My daughter Sarah and niece Maria Luisa were our only passengers, brimming with pre-teen energy on our daddy-daughter adventure. Suddenly, a moment of joy appeared: A group of bald eagles soared on the far bank. Since I had never seen them in the wild, it was a revelation. As a dad, I hoped it made an indelible impression on our girls. You can’t get this experience from Disney World or Six Flags Great America.

You can get a focused sense of being in a greater living community when you are in the middle of wilderness. No planes or helicopters overhead. No resonator mufflers or trucks on nearby highways. No rumbling freight trains. No data centers. In the wilderness, it’s not about you, your next meal or paying your bills. Just wind, water and the life that surrounds you without interruption.

Thanks for reading and please share! Please upgrade to a paid subscription to support my work. Readers receive serialized chapters from my new book “The Natural Neighborhood.”

Aldo Leopold, the iconic conservationist who wrote “A Sand County Almanac” not far from our Wisconsin river sojourn, devised a pyramid that describes his idea of a “biotic” community. After a career of teaching and working in various professional conservation positions, he spent his last years restoring a degraded farm and “chicken shack” near the river. Inspired by former Wisconsin resident John Muir, Leopold developed a “land ethic” that would be a guiding philosophy for future environmentalists.

His land ethic is so powerful that the Leopold Foundation, which celebrates and perpetuates Aldo’s work, trademarked the term. It’s more than a brand, though. It’s a guiding light that embraces biodiversity and the entire community of living things. It’s natural “DEI” before that became a toxic rallying cry for MAGA.

Unlike many eco philosophies, Leopold’s “Almanac” celebrated the seasons with joy, insight and reverence. He loved –- as I do – the bi-annual migration of Sandhill Cranes, which roosted on the countless sandbars in the Wisconsin River on their journey. That’s my strongest connection to Leopold and his writing; Some 30-plus years ago, I first engaged in environmental activism by counting cranes, which were then fairly rare, but have bounced back thanks to widespread conservation efforts –- one of many eco success stories.

There’s more to Leopold than one book and philosophy, though. A land ethic envelopes the entire living community along with soil and water. We’re not simply proprietors of the biosphere. We’re “intertwined” with the environment and need to follow a “moral code” in what should be a “caring relationship.” These ideas were not unique to Leopold or early conservationists: Native Americans embraced this worldview thousands of years ago (and still do).

Not only are we responsible for changing this often un-healthy relationship, the land ethic emphasizes our interconnectedness. We need to ask questions about our “progress” in an industrialized world.

· If we bulldoze a farm field for a logistics or data center, how will wildlife habitat be impacted?

· Will the ability of a wetland to store and filter groundwater be lost?

· If trees are chainsawed, how will air quality suffer and carbon storage be negated?

Like any ethical system, Leopold’s views influence how we should think about the world around us. Undeveloped land should never be seen as “vacant” or “underutilized.” It has a biotic capacity that we can measure and preserve.

A biotic pyramid is a symbol that shows energy flow and conversion to matter. We start with the sun, which provides energy to grow plants and algae. We eat plants, which keeps us going. In between, we have energy facilitators like pollinators (bees, etc.) that help plants grow. When one part of this system is compromised, the top of the pyramid is adversely impacted, meaning there may not be enough food to eat, Carbon and water cycles keep the pyramid pumping.

Of course, the biotic pyramid is much more complicated when you include other components like bacteria, fungi and viruses. At the risk of oversimplification, this is a boiled-down version:

Thanks to brave environmentalists like Rachel Carson, we’re able to see bald eagles and many other species of plants, animals and fungi in metropolitan settings. If we’re even more successful in following Leopold’s land ethic, we won’t have to venture to a wilderness area to be active, caring biotic community members. We can enjoy biodiversity in our suburban yards and city parks. Metropolitan ecology is coming into its own as we plant more trees in barren areas, restore wetlands and prairies.

So here’s the “practice what I preach” part: To embrace Leopold’s biotic community ethic, my wife and I are fostering a yard that features native prairie wildlflowers, forbs and grasses. I am gradually reducing the lawn of our yard to walking paths.

My modest rain garden, which is nourished by our sump pump outflow, will champion pollinator- and water-friendly plants like swamp milkweed. I call it my “Triple B” plan: “Bugs, Birds and Biosphere.” Our yard will invite and celebrate biodiversity in many ways. Of course, we have a lot of work to do — knocking back invasive plants like Canadian Goldenrod, Phragmites and Teasle. Even natives like Cup Plants and Crown Vetch need some focused attention. And don’t even talk to me about ticks.

I’m not sure that I will see a bald eagle in our backyard anytime soon, although several have been spotted on our manmade lake in the winter. By no coincidence (thanks to the founders of our community George and Vicky Ranney), our humble pond has a meaningful name: Lake Aldo Leopold. While we can be guided by inspiration, it’s perspiration and spirit that creates and maintains a loving community.

Vincit Omnia Veritas (truth conquers all)

This essay was not produced by AI. I am a sentient writer, journalist, author, environmentalist, speaker, musician and elected county forest preserve commissioner who’s written 20 books and contributed to The New York Times, Next Avenue, Bloomberg and Reuters.

Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. As a bonus, subscribers receive free access to my new book “The Natural Neighborhood,” which is serialized in this newsletter: A new chapter every month. To contact me about speaking and writing or offer even more dangerous ideas, email me: johnwasik@gmail.com

“First they fascinate the fools, then they muzzle the intelligent.”― Bertrand Russell on how fascism starts

In the sanctuary of the First Methodist Church of Chicago –- the “Chapel in the Sky,” -- the capacity crowd was murmuring in anticipation of tilt-a-whirl rhetorical ride. Yet no one was standing in the pulpit. The altar was pushed back to seat thre…

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“AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious.” – Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

“What questions should we be asking about data center impacts?” I implored the small crowd of environmentally focused attendees. “I would like to have a conversation.”

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At a native-led climate knowledge event, host Gabriel Ayala sarcastically rued the absence of an indigenous land acknowledgement, which has become standard practice for many Chicagoland institutions in recent years. It goes like this:

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“The threat of authoritarianism abroad becomes a rationale for building the tools of digital authoritarianism at home. Too bad it’s not just fiction.”

– Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

My brother’s ex-wife was swindled out of tens of thousands in savings. The bot presented itself as the handsome actor Charlie Hunnam. How my former sister-in-law got …

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“We must cultivate our own garden.” -- Voltaire, “Candide”

If a green agricultural revolution is afoot, cities and engaged communities may be its new home.

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Why We Struggle With Odysseys:

My Personal Journey

‘I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

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Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.’ – T. S. Eliot, “…

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“All flourishing is mutual.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer

Sometimes a kernel in someone’s past is a potent seed in understanding who they are and how they see the world. When I first Michael, I knew little about him other than he was an environmentalist and executive.

Then one important personal fact about him emerged like a blossoming bee balm flower: Michael g…

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“In order to change an existing paradigm, you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”

-Buckminster Fuller

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And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.

—Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

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