Farmer Tales: Concrete Jungle

Posted July 10, 2017

External Article: Creative Loafing

Carl DiSalvo, an associate professor in the Digital Media Program in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, was mentioned in “Farmer Tales: Concrete Jungle” for Creative Loafing.

Excerpt:

 Science tells us that we homo sapiens have been walking on this spinning dust ball for about 200,000 years, yet the first farms didn’t pop up until only 10 or 15,000 years ago. So what’s with the gap? How did our species survive for all those millennia without farmers to grow our food? The answer, of course, is foraging: the ancient process of gleaning naturally growing fruit and nuts from the land. And here in our little "city in a forest," which boasts the densest tree coverage of all major US cities, the practice remains alive and well. At the heart of this pre-agricultural revamp is Concrete Jungle, an Atlanta nonprofit that pairs foraging with farming to benefit some of the most at-risk members of our community… The organization is also pushing the bounds of technology. Through an official partnership with Georgia Tech, they’ve explored the use of drones, virtual tree mapping and various sensors to indicate when a tree is ready for picking. “Collaborating with Concrete Jungle is some of the most exciting and inspiring design work we get to do,” says Tech professor Carl DiSalvo, Ph.D., who heads up the partnership. “Concrete Jungle is all about new ways that we can care for each other.” DiSalvo believes this kind of compassionate research and design is exactly the kind that public institutions like his should be taking on. “It’s important to do because it’s never going to be done by corporate design studios, not even those focused on innovation,” he says. “Because it’s not about making technology for commercialization, it’s about designing so that we can better care for our communities.”

For the full article, read here.