Downsizing Detroit: agriculture in the inner city

We mentioned last summer that there was a chance some of the American cities affected worst by the changing economic climate deliberately “downsizing” themselves in order to consolidate what remains and cauterise the wound, and it seems that the decision has been made in the case of Detroit.

With the town already showing signs of becoming a new frontier for hippies, frugalists, art communes and close-to-the-land types, Detroit’s planners are proposing to change roughly a quarter of the city’s ghost-town urban areas into semi-rural farmland [via BoingBoing].

That’s a grim decision to have to make; I think we can assume that it’s being made by people who really can’t see any other way out. Question is, will Detroit be just the first of many?

4 thoughts on “Downsizing Detroit: agriculture in the inner city”

  1. I think we’ll find that when other cities become aware that the game is changing, they will play along. Some may ‘doze and plant, others may sell off land to corporations (in some instances possibly ceding all title to said land), still others may do other entirely unexpected things with the land. But eventually, equilibrium will be achieved, as these bloated bureaucratic monstrosities shrink to a more sane size.

  2. This reminds me of that SF story where someone travels to the future and discovers that civilisation is being regressed to more primitive states for environmental reasons. The next step after Detroit reverts to a pastoral community is hunter-gatherer I believe 😛

  3. “… that SF story where someone travels to the future and discovers that civilisation is being regressed to more primitive states for environmental reasons.”

    Wait… are you saying that the Republican party line is a science fiction story? 😉

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