The carbon intensity of food production has come under scrutiny in the popular literature, which raises questions of how to supply local food needs in order to reduce energy-food miles. This, along with the malnutrition of inter-city citizens, requires a new alternative for providing fresh produce. This study investigates opportunities for reducing transportation energy and greenhouse gas emissions through the construction of vertical farms. These structures are designed to grow hydroponic crops to meet dietary needs in US urban centers. Using the city of Philadelphia as a case study, a model is constructed using data from GREET 1.8c, eQUEST, and the Carnegie Mellon EIOLCA tool to aggregate construction, operation, and deconstruction emissions for a 1.2 million square foot vertical farm over 50 years. Using a hybrid change-oriented Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Economic Input Output (EIO) approach, the results will compare the global warming potential (GWP) per hundredweight of vegetable production of traditional farming against the progressive idea of vertical urban agriculture. We model the farming process and transport of produce from a traditional farm in the United States, with a focus on the import of crops into Philadelphia from California and other agriculturally prominent states. Current estimates indicate that traditional farming creates 43kg CO₂ equivalents per hundredweight of crop production and import to Philadelphia. The goal of this comparison is to examine whether the prospect of a built urban agriculture environment can reduce the carbon intensity of food production and transport relative to the current preference.