

Plowing Detroit Into Farmland - davi
http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/plowing-detroit-into-farmland/

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arenn
Thanks for the recco. I appreciate it. I hope you'll all check out the blog.

By the way, I'm a hacker myself. I wrote the only utility in the world I'm
aware of that will actually recover data out of corrupted tarballs, gzrecover:

<http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/coding/gzrt/gzrt.html>

Along with other free software. Cheers!

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pchristensen
Egad, Mr Urbanophile is here! I suspected you were a computer guy but you're
fairly coy about your Clark Kent side on your blog. Welcome!

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pchristensen
Anyone interested in this really should read Aaron Renn's blog The Urbanophile
<http://www.urbanophile.com/> \- he wrote the New Geography article. He writes
mainly on the Midwest but uses it as a lens to examine urban issues. He's one
of the sharpest urban thinkers out there.

~~~
fnid
Another interesting perspective of detroit: <http://www.sweet-
juniper.com/2009/07/feral-houses.html>

Jim takes lots of pictures of Detroit. He's also got his more original site,
which is less bloggy and I like it better:
<http://jamesgriffioen.net/index.php?/prairies/feral-houses/>

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pchristensen
The feral houses are cool but the writing at <http://www.detroitblog.org/> is
amazing.

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davi
discussed article: [http://www.newgeography.com/content/001171-detroit-urban-
lab...](http://www.newgeography.com/content/001171-detroit-urban-laboratory-
and-new-american-frontier)

\-----

edit: wonder what fraction of this land is contaminated by previous industrial
activity? (per: [http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/plowing-detroit-
in...](http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/plowing-detroit-into-
farmland/#comment-27649))

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jswinghammer
Many plants like spinach leech toxins from the soil so over time the soil
could heal.

I think the biggest obstacle to this sort of thing would be that it would be
seen as "giving up" by the government. They have the ability to block it too
because of zoning laws.

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yangyang
What would you do with the spinach though? Presumably it couldn't be eaten by
man or beast. Or does it convert the toxins into less harmful substances?

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nfnaaron
_Presumably it couldn't be eaten by man or beast._

Oh, but it could. My assumption is that it's a near certainty that some
enterprising contractor would sell this stuff as feed, regardless of the
damage to animals and humans.

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lssndrdn
Government could take an active role and redefine zoning laws to allow for
agricultural areas in some formerly urban areas. Other cities in Michigan have
done something similar: Flint started a program to assist moving residents out
of sparsely populated, heavily foreclosed areas, into more densely populated
areas, consolidating people and turning abandoned neighborhoods into parkland.

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chasingsparks
Detailed PDF referred to by the referred to article (mmm, linked list):
[http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab0802...](http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab080216.pdf)

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chasingsparks
I'm just curious, were any HN readers actaully inspired a bit to move to
Detroit? I am currently at work researching Detroit because of this article.

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stevenbedrick
I was actually in Detroit over the summer visiting some extended family, and
was awestruck. It's really quite remarkable... within _maybe_ ten blocks of
the (surprisingly nice) Renaissance Center and re-developed waterfront area,
there were entire city blocks that were completely overgrown with ivy and
other such plants. It felt like I was inside the pages of "The World Without
Us". I can totally see the urban agriculture thing working out in Detroit,
except for the industrial contamination problem.

Of course, what _really_ struck me was the abrupt transition we saw driving to
the north and east along Jefferson Ave. For block after block, it's nothing
but abandoned factories, vacant lots, and eerily empty and overgrown
neighborhoods, with the only operational (i.e., not boarded up) businesses
being convenience stores and the occasional bait shop. Then, all of a sudden,
without any transition, the scenery changes to a ritzy suburb. I swear, it was
a sharp enough contrast that my mind was reeling from psychic whiplash for the
rest of the day.

It was like the NYC good-block/bad-block phenomenon, only on a massive
geographic scale and with the volume turned up to 11.

~~~
carbon8
Yeah, the transition to Grosse Pointe is dramatic. You can see it clearly on
gmaps:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=42.390833,-82.911389&#...](http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=42.390833,-82.911389&ie=UTF8&ll=42.374905,-82.940447&spn=0.007989,0.02002&z=16)
As you go down jefferson ave to the northeast it goes from vacant lots to a
couple blocks of small homes to one of the wealthiest areas in the midwest.
Along the river is even more dramatic:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=42.390833,-82.911389&#...</a>

