Gardens Flourish on Top of City Busses

February 1, 2011 by

Bus Roots is a living garden planted on the roofs of city buses. It’s an effort that rose out of New York City designer Marco Antonio Castro Cosio’s graduate thesis at the NYU. The project aims to reclaim the forgotten space on the tops of city buses, while enhancing the quality of urban life by proliferating green spaces on these unused bus roofs. A prototype of the rolling gardens has been installed on the roof of the BioBus, a mobile science laboratory and the first bus with an extensive green roof system. It has been growing for five months while travelling around New York City and as far as Ohio.

Bus Roots joins the ranks of mobile gardens planted on trucks, trains, and other roving sites. Cosio explains his project as an exercise in “nomadic urban agriculture.”

Benefits
According to the bustop gardener, benefits include:
• Aesthetic Value
• Mitigation of Urban Heat Island Effect
• Acoustical and Thermal Insulation
• Storm Water Reduction and Management
• CO2 absorbtion
• Habitat Restoration
• Public Education and Recreation
• Reclaiming Forgotten Real Estate

Raising the Roots
Cosio estimates Bus Roots can add greatly to the city’s green space. Each public transit bus has a surface of 340 ft2., and The Metropolitan Transit Authority has a fleet of around 4,500 buses. Do the math.

“If a garden were planted on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the city’s bus fleet,” calculates Cosio, his busses could add 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city.

For more info or to support the project, contact the designer.

Category: Green & Sustainable, Green Roofs, Greening
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  • anon

    habitat restoration! hahaha

    any idea of the reduction in fuel efficiency due to the added weight?

  • Georgia

    How about solar panels on the roof to power the bus? I wonder if the bus could digest the plants and fuel themselves that way…

  • http://jordihatten.wordpress.com Anders

    Everything thats green is not green. A pretty strange idea, there must be millions of places to make green that would have a grater benificiary effect than plants on a busroof. It feels like people make a knot on them self trying to find new ways of being sustainable instead of implementing the systems availiable. But I guess everything is about making debate, lifting issues. It made me laugh and then be bit angry, so I guess its a success. thanks for a great blog by the way. a lot of nice reading!

  • http://gardenbythesound.blogspot.com Cindy Juliano

    I love it! I especially love the succulents. My 10 year old son just said “that looks like a rock garden”! He goes with me to all kinds of gardens and nurseries, and last spring on a visit to the NYBG he especially loved the rock gardens there (amazing and if you ever get to visit, check them out). We came home and created four mini rock gardens in pots. He is a huge succulent fan now, as am I! thanks for so many engaging posts on your blog.

  • http://www.ahamodernliving.com Jayme

    This is a great use of wasted space. I would love to peer down from my apartment window (if I lived in one) to see all the driving roof top gardens atop busses.

  • http://www.manuretea.com Annie Haven/Authentic Haven Brand

    I think it’s classic just shows how easy it is to grow : ) Great share Annie

  • Robin Plaskoff Horton

    So many weighing in here with different opinions, that’s what I love about blogging! I see some of you feel the rooftop would be better used for solar panels and others feel that the added weight impacts the fuel use…it’s a great discussion, lets keep the dialog going.

  • http://www.lifeisbalance.com Sheryl

    What do you think they did to protect the bus top gardens in the ice storm today?

  • Mary Anne

    It’s an interesting idea and now I’m thinking about places I don’t expect to see plants and gardens. Thanks!

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  • Gabb

    >>>What do you think they did to protect the bus top gardens in the ice storm today?>>>

    Parked it under a bridge, and went and got beer?

  • Robin Plaskoff Horton

    That’s a possibility!

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  • http://verchini.com/that-lung-nam that lung nam

    The world is experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in history. For the first time in history, more than half the worldâ??s population is living in cities. By 2050, according to a United Nations estimate, the worldâ??s cities will be home to more than 9 billion. How will we feed these urbanites?

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  • Brian

    What happens when there’s a wreck and plants/rocks/debris goes flying into others who would have otherwise been uninvolved?

  • Todd

    So – it’s a great idea – but – what about the extra energy the bus needs now to carry all that extra weight? Dirt isn’t light!!

  • Ben L

    Stupid idea! Local politicos are praising themselves for agreeing to it.

  • Jamie L

    how heavy they are? how much extra gas it will burnt?

  • Richard J.

    Did you hear the J. Peterman Catalog is coming out with an urban garden hat !!!

  • Erica

    So I’m curious as to whether any of the plants used were native to the area? You could still receive many of the same stormwater management benefits, but also create wildlife habitat in the process.

    We have a few garden trucks with native and edible gardens in their beds in my neck of the woods.

    Nice idea!

  • Dan

    Most of the claimed benefits can be refuted:
    â?¢ Aesthetic Value â?? I’m not sure I’ve ever taken seen the top of a bus. I mostly see the sides of them. Installing an extensive roof â?? generally meaning small plants â?? would not be seen by as many people as greening a space on the ground.

    â?¢ Mitigation of Urban Heat Island Effect â?? I may be wrong, but I feel that glossy white bus roofs have higher albedos than greenery.

    â?¢ Acoustical and Thermal Insulation â?? Buildings may benefit from improved acoustics, but do buses? I agree that thermal insulation would be a benefit.

    â?¢ Storm Water Reduction and Management â??

    â?¢ CO2 absorbtion â?? As others have pointed out, the additional weight of soil and water may reduce the mileage of the buses and thereby increase their emissions.

    â?¢ Public Education and Recreation â?? Recreation obviously can’t be taken seriously here â?? try to imagine a class of schoolchildren playing tag atop a bus â?? better yet a moving one. Nevertheless, using this as a mobile educational tool â?? like Truck Farm â?? could be fantastic.

    â?¢ Reclaiming Forgotten Real Estate â?? When in history did people capitalize on the real estate of bus roofs? This can’t be forgotten real estate if it was never used. Also, this isn’t real estate. The buses will only be improving real estate when they’re parked in bus depots. Why not actually reclaim forgotten real estate and convert parking lots and spaces into greenspaces?

    â?¢ Habitat Restoration â?? ……see above comment.

    The main benefit from this is simpler than the above: it shows people just how easy it can be to grow plants if they want to. If a designer can do it atop a bus for no good reason, you can too â?? hopefully with a better one.

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  • Mercedes

    If I were starving and living in a mobile home, maybe I would start planting food on my roof. But I hope somebody would smack me upside the head and help me use my time and brain cells more effectively. Not to mention what it might do to my mobile home.

    what?!?

  • http://www.hksconsultants.com/ Public Gardens Design

    This is a great idea to have the garden on the city bus i never seen such before but truly great idea and looks amazing on bus.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=732224094 Kevin Rutan

    My question is fuel economy. Does it use more fuel with the added weight of the soil and the plants. Does it then put out more CFCs than the plants make up for?

  • urbangardens

    Kevin, this was a purely conceptual project. I am about to write about one that has been carefully researched. Stay tuned!

  • http://freeaudionetwork.wordpress.com/ Secular Antitheist Liberal

    Given the city smog don’t eat plants that grow beside highways or on top of city buses. :)

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