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"My father was a master mechanic; I grew up with a screwdriver in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other."
- Frank Herbert

Farming Trantor  
  Taking apart a vast city, and returning to farming the land.  

Trantor was a planet the surface of which was entirely enclosed in metal buildings many stories thick.

But even galactic empires fall, and people need to farm the land for food...


(Farming Trantor in 'Second Foundation' by Isaac Asimov)

Trantor was a world in dregs and rebirth. Set like a faded jewel... it alternately dreamed of past and future...

Until the decay of the Empire eventually reached it... its drooping powers had been bent back upon themselves and broken forever. In the blasting ruin of death, the metal shell... wrinkled and crumpled into an aching mock of its own grandeur.

The survivors tore up the metal plating and sold it... for seed and cattle. The soil was uncovered once more and the planet returned to its beginnings. In the spreading areas of primitive agriculture, it forgot its intricate and colossal past.

Technovelgy from Second Foundation, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Doubleday in 1953
Additional resources -

Philip K. Dick described this development in his 1954 short story The Turning Wheel:

Below his ship, the barren countryside spread out, ugly and bleak. Great red spots that hadn't yet been overgrown, and slag surfaces were still visible - but by this time most ruins were covered by soil and crabgrass. He could see men and robots farming; villages, countless tiny brown circles in the green fields; occasional ruins of ancient cities - gaping sores like blind mouths, eternally open to the sky. They would never close, not now.

Ahead was the Detroit area, named, so it ran, for some now-forgotten spiritual leader...

He dropped his ship down. An open field lay to his right; a robot farmer was plowing with a metal hook welded to its waist...

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Second Foundation
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
  Tech news articles related to Second Foundation
  Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov

Farming Trantor-related news articles:
  - Farming Detroit Like Trantor
  - Agrarian Detroit, Your Harvest Home
  - Detroit's Urban Agriculture Ordinance

Articles related to Agriculture
MK-V Smart Tractor - Fully Electric, Farmer Optional
Vertical Farm In Singapore's Output Is 1.5 Tons Per Day
Mashambas Skyscraper Farm Design Wins
Self-Driving Tractors From China Plan Ahead

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