Aida Edemariam on a new scheme aimed at turning city rooftops into green spaces

It is quite utopian, in its way: Boris Johnson and Rosie Boycott, in her first major initiative since being appointed chair of London Food, announced this week that they would aim to have 2,012 new green spaces growing food for Londoners by the 2012 Olympics. They even hoped, in a slightly literal manner, to be able to feed some of the resulting fruit and vegetables to visiting Olympians. There are official allotments, of course, but in London keen gardeners are currently waiting up to 10 years to get one; Boycott and Johnson believe that there are, as Johnson put it, thousands of "unloved" pieces of land across the capital that could be developed in this way - on the banks of canals and reservoirs, in disused railway yards; and in, said Boycott, "surprising places such as roof gardens". The London Development Agency is to... [read full story]