This may sound like an armageddon-esque movie trailer, but picture this: Detroit, with hundreds of abandoned homes and buildings strewn across the landscape, becomes a renewed community—the epicenter of self-sustainability. In a matter of years, the city itself becomes completely self-sufficient, building living and growing farms where vacant lots once stood.
Do you think it could happen? Take a gander at this blurb on the topic over at Utne Reader, and then read the entire piece, Food Among the Ruins by Mark Dowie at Guernica.
The author points out that Detroit has zero home-grown food chains or grocery stores, and the quick availability of processed foods available at convenience stores has taken its toll on the health of the community. Basically, Detroit could be a blank slate, and it's not just hippie visionaries who think this is the route the city could—and should—take.
There are more visionaries in Detroit than in most Rust-Belt cities, and thus more visions of a community rising from the ashes of a moribund industry to become, if not an urban paradise, something close to it. The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit, at least the ones who drew me to the city, were those who imagine growing food among the ruins—chard and tomatoes on vacant lots (there are over 103,000 in the city, sixty thousand owned by the city), orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores, livestock grazing on former golf courses, high-rise farms in old hotels, vermiculture, permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, waving wheat where cars were once test-driven, and winter greens sprouting inside the frames of single-story bungalows stripped of their skin and re-sided with Plexiglas—a homemade greenhouse. Those are just a few of the agricultural technologies envisioned for the urban prairie Detroit has become.
What do you think? Will a vibrant food community spring from the ruins for this 'urban prairie'?
Related posts:
• 100 Abandoned Houses
• Building? Demolish With Care
• Reimagining Boston's Stalled Projects
(Image: sxc.hu member Robmania.)
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I've said ever since I was in middle school, living in Goodrich (near Flint, north of Detroit), that they should wipe both cities flat and start over. What a glorious way to do so! I'd be tempted to go back and be a part of it.
view dannyomo's profile
well not all of it needs to be wiped flat, there are some amazing areas. but i think having areas allocated for just the growing of food would be super fabulous. we live here and are staying but id love the city to evolve into some thing like that.
view Ashasage's profile
The Idea of Detroit becoming a testing ground for urban agriculture is beyond the phase of idea, it has happened. However, how can you keep the urban agriculture in the urban area long term? If the city rebounds I am guessing that so to will land prices. If that happens one would have to legitimize the growing of food on the land in place of revenue. I am all for urban agriculture but think it needs long term planning.
view kavan1donohue's profile
The theory sounds good. Where's the reality? I agree that part of Detroit need to be wiped flat, however, I'm still trying to wrap my head around turning all of the urban decay into rural agriculture. The idea of an "urban prairie" seems like a little backwards to me. I can envision community gardens and parks like some of the ones found in various parts of NYC. For that to happen here though, it takes people and there are very few that are willing to get up and do something about it. I have found some Detroiters to be very complacent; kind of go-with-the-grain sort of people.
Parts of Detroit have great architecture, it would be a shame to eviscerate what's left of the city for wheat covered fields and the stink of cow manure. I could drive out towards where dannyomo lives if I want to see or smell that.
I get that the visionaries of Detroit wants to see something that the city can call its own. It's not a good idea to forget that past when trying to create a future. This city's history lies in the auto industry, like or not. It is up to the people of this city to make is a better one and it's going to take something that the majority of them can excited over. I'm not sure that it's an "urban prairie".
And I thought Meijer was home-grown? Unless he means Detroit-based...
view Neeco's profile
While sociologists and people on blogs are debating what Detroit needs to do, Detroiters are making it happen:
http://georgiastreetgarden.blogspot.com/
http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/02/100-true-story-of-how-i-polluted-time.html
view lis0's profile
It is happening in Buffalo NY as well.
http://www.buffalorising.com/2009/12/wilson-street-farm-sprouts-a-hoop-house.html
view breeze245's profile