Photo by James Griffioen, a vacant lot in Detroit
Once a symbol of 2oth century manufacturing success, the city of Detroit has been hit hard by financial issues and a rapidly-changing marketplace. City authorities have tried several times in the last few decades to revive Detroit’s fortunes.
Today 33,000 empty lots and vacant houses litter the city. The once-wealthy magnet for immigrants and big business is now facing an unemployment rate of nearly 50 per cent.
In a nation where unemployment benefits and public health care are virtually non-existent, people must find other ways to survive.
“Across Detroit, land is being turned over to agriculture. Furrows are being tilled, soil fertilised and crops planted and harvested. Like in no other city in the world, urban farming has taken root in Detroit, not just as a hobby or a sideline but as part of a model for a wholesale revitalisation of a major city. Some farms are the product of hardy individualists or non-profit community groups. Others, like Hantz Farms, are backed by millions of dollars and aim to build the world’s biggest urban farm right in the middle of the city…
“As with many community or charity-run farms, the food is simply available free to residents. When it is ready they can come and harvest it straight from the ground themselves. Such a scheme might seem a recipe for chaos, but vandalism on the city’s urban farms is almost unknown. They are unfenced, open to all, and run by volunteers or charity workers.”
Motown is turning into Growtown.
The city council is broke, manufacturing industries are failing, tourism is almost non-existent, many home owners lost their over-mortgaged properties in the global financial crisis, and the city’s population has shrunk significantly. There are no major supermarkets in the city, no WalMart or CostCo.
“Right now, Detroit is as close as any city in America to becoming a food desert… where the distance to a bag of potato chips is half the distance to a head of lettuce… About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.
“Detroiters who live close enough to suburban borders to find nearby groceries carrying fresh fruit, meat, and vegetables are a small minority of the population. The health consequences of food deserts are obvious and dire. Diabetes, heart failure, hypertension, and obesity are chronic in Detroit, and life expectancy is measurably lower than in any American city.”
The Spectre web site has collected several fascinating articles about the issues Detroit faces and various attempts to deal with them.
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