Given rising food prices and increasing food shortages, we need to grow more food and make sure it’s affordable. So maybe using Mytholm Works for intensive urban farming, including aquaponics, would be a better use of the site than building a supermarket? This idea came up at the recent Friends of Mytholm public meeting.

Growing Power is an urban community food production scheme in Milwaukee, USA. Its 2 acre site from an aerial view looks similar in size and type of location to the Mytholm Works site.

Growing Power site, Milwaukee. Growing Power photo

Here is its site plan

The Growing Power model takes vacant lots in post-industrial cities and typically adds a healthy layer of soil and compost to the hard surface of old parking lots or floors of demolished buildings. This absorbs rainfall that would otherwise create run off.

This would be a major advantage on the Mytholm Works site, where the current proposed development would increase run off, due to the large carpark and other hard surfaces. In order to avoid an increased risk of flooding from this extra run off, the supermarket and hotel development would need to build a large underground water storage tank to hold the run off and release it at a legally-acceptable rate.

Here’s Growing Power founder Will Allen talking about the project.

There’s an organisation called Community Land Advisory Service that might be helpful.