The next few posts will be dedicated to culture change related to sustainability in Detroit, MI.
Detroit is getting a terrible rap in the mainstream media these days — and that’s not altogether unfounded. But there’s another Detroit story to tell: at the moment, it might well be one of the most oddly extreme cities in the country: extreme poverty that’s carved out a bizarre post-urban landscape, an extreme history, and a potential to redefine how cities work in a time of resource and job scarcity.
From a sustainability perspective, it could be a “canary in the coal mine” for cities around the world: economic crashes tied, in part, to industries out of step with environmental limits, bad land use planning, a lack of regional resilience, poverty. In short, the city deserves some attention – but less for the bad news, and more for the people tackling these issues at full tilt. Some of the solutions, like shrinking the city-limits, urban farming, green space, compact urbanism, and renewable energy manufacturing, are all consistent with a move from bigger to better. Could success in getting Detroit off the canvas spell the birth of America’s first post-growth city?
If a culture of sustainability arises anywhere, Detroit might be the place. Detroit leaders like Mayor Bing and Gov. Granholm have publicly been clear that there’s no going back to the metallic arms and conveyor belts of GM and Chrysler: a diversified, regionally sufficient, solutions-based economy is touted as the way forward. The hollowing out of the city is an open invitation to new ways of doing things — and as the people dedicated to the city drive a new agenda from the ground up, Detroit might emerge as a kind of culture laboratory, with the will to try anything in ways that cities tied to their particular industries can’t.
Urban farming is the obvious place to start. With a population that’s plummeted from 2 million to around 800,000, there’s a lot of unused land lying around — and a lot of people looking for work. Agriculture as economic savior (let alone farms in cities) was definitely not in vogue just a year or two ago, but both are on the tips of many people’s tongues these days (that’s culture change!). In Detroit, it’s already happening. Georgia Street Community Gardens began when Harper/Gratiot area resident Mark Covington started cleaning up empty lots near his grandma’s house. A small garden came next, and now the place spans 5 lots and a fruit orchard, and is on its way to becoming a neighborhood revitalizer, an after-school spot for youth, and a business draw. GSCG now has a board of directors, a blog, educational programs, and a pool of volunteers in the area and elsewhere, some from as far away as Ann Arbor.
Ok, you might say: it’s just a community garden. That’s true, but Detroit’s troubles are in the spotlight now, and it’s significant that there are some solutions in play to meet them. What if the Georgia Street Community Garden scales up, inspires other growing projects elsewhere in the city’ s tracts of unoccupied land? What if the Eastern Market provides an outlet for that hyper-local produce? And what if the reviving riverwalk engages with the city’s underground bike culture? And if Granholm and Bing succeed in drawing renewable energy projects? Maybe that’ll be the start of a new, post-growth Detroit.
Stick around, more to come…
UPDATE 10/22/09:
Turns out the Georgia Street Community Garden is just the tip of the urban farming iceberg in Detroit. It’d be interesting to see data on farmland acreage/city — I wonder how Detroit would stack up against other cities that have begun to embrace these ideas…
Below is a brief list of other growing-related projects in the city limits. Please feel free to suggest others if you’re aware of them…
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network
And a longer list of smaller garden projects throughout the city.
Also: The Ferguson Academy for Young Women is a high school for pregnant teens in Detroit that’s launched its own community garden project. A one-hour documentary about their project, “Grown in Detroit”, debuted on Detroit Public Television on Sept. 22nd. Check out the trailer, here.
If these projects manage to succeed in what they’re designed to do — hold communities together and feed their neighbors — Detroit might emerge as the first city in a long while to truly invest in its natural and human capital, lay bare the life support relationship between country and city, and get vibrant not because it got lucky in the globalization lottery, but because it invested locally.
Image credit: Tour de Hood and GSCG
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October 20, 2009 at 1:59 am
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[...] Detroit: America’s First Post-Growth City? « The Butterfly Generation butterflygeneration.org/2009/10/20/detroit – view page – cached 9 billion people. Expanding economies. A finite planet. — From the page [...]
October 20, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Al Shaw
Interesting.
I’ve been thinking a lot about urban farms recently and Detroit is obviously pioneering some interesting models in that regard. It’s interesting too to think about the ways that this particular development could link in with other grass roots business and cultural initiatives.
I look forward to the rest of the series.
October 21, 2009 at 3:56 am
Scott
Thanks for the thoughts, Al.
I agree: urban farming seems like a solution particularly well-suited for Detroit, as population has dropped and vacant land is all over the place. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Even more interesting is the space left open for other culture-changing initiatives like community banking, public art space, green affordable housing, community centers, a new urban plan…
Detroit’s got the seeds of all of that. I wish media in America would work harder to ferret out those stories, instead of lamenting the folding of the car industry.
Are you in the UK? Would be very interested to hear if the Detroit story has made it across the ocean — or if there are any cities there that are in similar shape…
October 26, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Local Resiliency From the Ground Up « The Butterfly Generation
[...] Urban farms and markets, lively community organizations, alternative energy, locally-focused finance, a lively art scene — these are all pieces of a puzzle that could add up to a locally resilient Detroit. If the city can do it successfully, we might see the birth of a new, post-growth, post-industrial urban model in this country. Ultimately, it’d be a model that’s built for economic shock, in step with natural capital scarcity, scaled to community and ecology, and designed for people (not car companies). [...]
January 26, 2010 at 9:12 pm
The Farmer & The Philosopher « The Butterfly Generation
[...] I posted thoughts on why Detroit might be America’s first post-growth city here, which dove-tail nicely with another point Barlow makes: in the coming age of climate change, guess [...]