Downtown Cleveland gets taken over by a mall, which gets taken over by a farm.

Shopping malls haven’t shown any sign of slowing down in their rampant development since the first one opened near Kansas City, Mo., in 1922.  The economy, on the other hand, has shown woeful signs of slowing down to the extent that many retail centers are closing their doors due to the traumatic hit consumer confidence has taken in recent years.

Such was almost the case with the Galleria at Erieview in Cleveland, Ohio but it took the bright idea of Vicky Poole, their marketing and events director to do more than just drop the cost of rent.

I started, again, reevaluating the space and when this idea came for urban growing and I got, again, more involved in the local food movement, I realized that there was no reason why we couldn’t implement growing and still be a business center and an events center.  We could still remain a community and yet benefit from the plants and the local food.

Vicky says the businesses will take time to come back, just as the plants will take time to grow.  For now, the visibility and good feeling the greenhouse gives to the community is a solid foundation for a sustainable future.

For the full interview with Vicky Poole, click here.

Photo by T-FIZ.

It’s one thing to make a documentary film on America’s sustainable communities but it’s another to do it by bike.

The hand brakes have been applied to the pedal-powered production phase of a soon-to-be-released documentary film called Within Reach, a 6000 mile bike tour of communities, cohabitations, and communes shot entirely using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles.

We caught up with riders, director, and producer Ryan Mlynarczyk and Mandy Creighton encamped and rejuvenating at the Joyful Path Healing and Meditation Center out in Blue Mounds Wisconsin.

For us that meant eco villages, co-housing communities which are more of an urban, townhouse style co-habitation, a co-op where everybody lives under the same roof but you each have your own bedroom.  And then we also visited a couple of the old communes that are still around.

The movie isn’t slated to be screened until Earth Day 2011 but you can catch teasers, clips and blog posts on their website, WithinReachMovie.com.

For more on sustainable communities and the full interview with Mandy and Ryan, click here.

Photos by Ryan Mlynarczyk.