Detroit = Blank Canvas
The question of whether we retrofit or build up from the start is always present in sustainability endeavors. Generally speaking a retrofit is less disruptive, more efficient, and clearly more realistic than building from a blank slate. Sure there were eco-cities to (perhaps) be built in China and Dubai, but in places like New York, where we know 80% of the buildings will still be here in 2030, the retrofit option is stronger.
Detroit from Above
What about a combination of both though? In one of the most interesting profiles I have read on a city in a while, Newgeography has a discussion of what exactly is going on in Detroit. Aside from broken car industries, a fleeting population, and corruption, this place might be the urban laboratory we are looking for. I had no idea that Detroit was so sprawling and empty until I looked at the images posted on this blog piece. Imagine a block of row houses…with only 3 houses on it and then grass in between.. Someone apparently came up with the term “urban prairie,” to describe the phenomenon. It really looks like a photoshop experiment gone wrong.
What to do with that grass? Perhaps urban agriculture has a new home testing ground. The Newgeography piece talks about people buying houses for $100 and doing interesting stuff to revamp them. But a lot of these folks are out of towners. (To see what interesting stuff has already been done to houses by in-towners, check out the Heidelberg Project.) To return to the urban agriculture question, people are thinking big in Detroit. They want to turn the urban prairie into an urban farm.
Why it could really work: Detroit could fit the entire cities of New York City, Boston, and San Francisco in its city limits. And it has under 1 million residents. There is plenty of water and nice soil. There are creative transplants with open minds (and open wallets?) moving there. There is a serious lack of fresh food and protein in the city.
This last point is critical. Disturbing but true, apparently 80% of Detroit residents buy their food at one of the city’s one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. People hunt, sell, and eat raccoon to supplement their food intake. As the piece on Newgeography says, this is a testament to people’s resilience and adaptability, while it is a clear indication that something is wrong here. Bottom line: the grounds are fertile for a food revolution.
My biggest concern? Looking at cities as blank canvases might invite the erasing of the solid practices of those who have stayed there–because they wanted to or had no other options. Agriculture projects could certainly be a good way to merge the new and the old worlds of Detroit. Everyday there are new ingenious initiatives in urban agriculture being announced, often from urban minded designers. Food security, cultivation and local supply were once the concern of Americans. (See victory gardens in the World War II era). But that wained and convenience (and convenience stores) took over.
We here at the Institute have been thinking a lot about urban agriculture’s place in society. It seems that what was once largely a fringe issue has made it onto the agenda of the masses and even politicians. And Detroit seems to be an opportunity of epic proportions to create an urban agriculture based economy. What a symbolic movement that would be: to watch the rust belt transition to a green belt. Again though, equity needs a place at this feast, for someone has already coined the term “rust belt chic.”
