4 Tips For Starting A Farm In Your City [Video] | Fast Company

Consider this paradox: 49 million Americans live with daily food insecurity, 23 million live in urban food deserts, and collectively we’re all getting fatter. Simultaneously vacant lots, concrete grooves, and other desolate, empty spots dot urban landscapes, while a quarter of traditional agricultural land is severely degraded according to the UN.

Enter the urban farm: a fast, smart, cheap way to bring healthy food closer to those who need it, transform ugly vacant spaces into lush gardens, and promote a healthier, greener, more connected urban community.

A recently released video by the American Society of Landscape Architects uses case studies from edible-city innovators, such as Cleveland and Detroit, to offer practical advice for bringing urban farms to your backyard (or corner lot or rooftop). Here are four helpful tips:

The hot tech gig of 2022: Data scientist - Fortune Tech

By the end of the decade 50 billion devices will be emitting information nonstop. Data scientists will help manage it all.

A decade from now the smart techies who decided to become app developers may wish they had taken an applied-mathematics class or two. The coming deluge of data (more on that in a moment) will create demand for a new kind of computer scientist — a gig that’s one part mathematician, one part product-development guru, and one part detective.

D.J. Patil is a pioneer in the field of data science, a new discipline that aims to organize and make sense of all the data generated by machines. It’s a challenge that will grow exponentially over the next decade.

Tech in 2012: Face-offs, failures and fairly big changes at the office

Today there are some 400 million devices connected to the Internet, mostly phones and computers. By 2020 some 50 billion devices, from cars to appliances, will be talking to one another. And companies will need teams of data scientists like Patil to sort through everything from internal inventory metrics to customer tweets. The role is so important that Greylock Partners has hired Patil to serve as a “data scientist in residence” to help its portfolio companies mine their data for patterns or stats that will make them more efficient or smarter than their competitors.

We Can’t Wait: President Obama Announces Nearly $4 Billion Investment in Energy Upgrades to Public and Private Buildings | The White House

Upgrades Will Create Tens of Thousands of Jobs and Save Billions

President Obama today announced nearly $4 billion in combined federal and private sector energy upgrades to buildings over the next 2 years. These investments will save billions in energy costs, promote energy independence, and, according to independent estimates, create tens of thousands of jobs in the hard-hit construction sector. The $4 billion investment announced today includes a $2 billion commitment, made through the issuance of a Presidential Memorandum, to energy upgrades of federal buildings using long term energy savings to pay for up-front costs, at no cost to taxpayers. In addition, 60 CEOs, mayors, university presidents, and labor leaders today committed to invest nearly $2 billion of private capital into energy efficiency projects; and to upgrade energy performance by a minimum of 20% by 2020 in 1.6 billion square feet of office, industrial, municipal, hospital, university, community college and school buildings. This announcement builds on a commitment made by 14 partners at the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in June to make energy upgrades across 300 million square feet, and to invest $500 million in private sector financing in energy efficiency projects.
 
Today’s commitments were announced by President Obama and former President Clinton along with representatives from more than 60 organizations as part of the Better Buildings Challenge. The Challenge is part of the Better Buildings Initiative launched in February by President Obama, and is spearheaded by former President Clinton and the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness to support job creation by catalyzing private sector investment in commercial and industrial building energy upgrades to make America’s buildings 20 percent more efficient over the next decade, reducing energy costs for American businesses by nearly $40 billion. Last year, commercial buildings consumed roughly 20 percent of all the energy used by the U.S. economy.
 
“Upgrading the energy efficiency of America’s buildings is one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to save money, cut down on harmful pollution, and create good jobs right now.  But we can’t wait for Congress to act.  So today, I’m directing all federal agencies to make at least $2 billion worth of energy efficiency upgrades over the next 2 years – at no up-front cost to the taxpayer.  Coupled with today’s extraordinary private sector commitments of $2 billion to upgrade businesses, factories, and military housing, America is taking another big step towards the competitive, clean energy economy it will take to win the future,” said President Obama. “Investments in building retrofits and energy efficiency can make a real difference in the American economy, by creating jobs, growing our industries, improving businesses’ bottom lines, reducing our energy bills and consumption, and preserving our planet for future generations.

The Job Creating Potential of Local Food Systems | Sustainable Cities Collective

Jobs, jobs, jobs.  Although the recession is technically over, the (nonfarm) unemployment rate is holding constant at 9.1% and the American public are understandably nervous about their ability to find well-paying middle class jobs.  On the federal front, both the President and a new crop of potential replacements are pitching their plans to get America working again.  On the food front, Good Food advocates are shifting their focus to promote the job-creating potential of the local food movement.  On the surface, this makes a lot of sense.  Local food jobs cannot be outsourced, they are Green, the multiplier effect ensures that more money circulates in the region, and you don’t need to have years of formal schooling to land one (although sometimes it doesn’t hurt).  However, often these jobs are low-paying, seasonal, and physically demanding.  What follows are a few highlights of the local food system job boon, as well as a reminder that the slogan “will work for food” can be both a rallying cry and a disheartening sign of the times.

Researchers and Job Searchers Agree

from the Union of
Concerned Scientists

In recent months, several key reports have come out that highlight the prospects of a national strategy focused on food-related job creation.  A summary report recently released by the Union of Concerned Scientists cites numerous studies to make the case that farmers markets create wealth in a number of ways. Regional studies such as the those conducted for Northeast Ohio or by Ken Meter at the Crossroads Research Center use input-output models to demonstrate where money in the food system is leaking out of the region.  These analyses are helpful for policymakers to determine what areas of the food system need shoring up in order to ensure that food system jobs and money stay in the region.

via smartercities:

“The Bloomberg administration believes a tech-focused school would create nearly 30,000 jobs and lead to $6 billion in total economic impact over 35 years.”

via nycdigital:

A great example of the power of data visualization, and a sobering reminder of how big a whole we have to dig our way out of — Smarter Planet Tumblr team

From the feature story: Unemployment, Inc.: Six reasons why America can’t create jobs.

csmonitor:

Jobs for Data Scientists Explode Across The Market | ReadWriteWeb

n what’s likely just the beginning of a long-term story, job listings indexed by employment search engine Indeed.com indicate that market demand for data scientists and people capable of working with “big data” took a huge leap over the last year. David Smith of Revolution Analytics performed several related queries and posted the results today on his company’s blog. The most common definition of “big data” is datasets that grow so large that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools, such as Excel. It’s a soft term and is super trendy right now - but that doesn’t mean the trend’s not big and real.