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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Food Among the Ruins
  • Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:12:53 -0400


Food Among the Ruins

by Mark Dowie
Guernica - a magazine of art and politics <http://www.guernicamag.com/>
August, 2009
Mark Dowie is an investigative historian living in Point Reyes Station, California.

*Excerpt:*

“There are more visionaries in Detroit than in most Rust-Belt cities, and thus more visions of a community rising from the ashes of a moribund industry to become, if not an urban paradise, something close to it. The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit, at least the ones who drew me to the city, were those who imagine growing food among the ruins—chard and tomatoes on vacant lots (there are over 103,000 in the city, sixty thousand owned by the city), orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores,

livestock grazing on former golf courses, high-rise farms in old hotels, vermiculture, permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, waving wheat where cars were once test-driven, and winter greens sprouting inside the frames of single-story bungalows stripped of their skin and re-sided with Plexiglas—a homemade greenhouse. Those are just a few of the agricultural technologies envisioned for the urban prairie Detroit has become.”

“There are also proposals on the mayor’s desk to rezone vast sections A-something (“A” for agriculture), and a proposed master plan that would move the few people residing in lonely, besotted neighborhoods into Detroit’s nine loosely defined villages and turn the rest of the city into open farmland. An American Institute of Architects panel concludes that all Detroit’s residents could fit comfortably in fifty square miles of land. Much of the remaining ninety square miles could be farmed. Were that to happen, and a substantial investment was made in greenhouses, vertical farms, and aquaponic systems, Detroit could be producing protein and fibre 365 days a year and soon become the first and only city in the world to produce close to 100 percent of its food supply within its city limits. No semis hauling groceries, no out-of-town truck farmers, no food dealers. And no chain stores need move back. Everything eaten in the city could be grown in the city and distributed to locally owned and operated stores and co-ops. I met no one in Detroit who believed that was impossible, but only a few who believed it would happen. It could, but not without a lot of political and community will.”

--

Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47407
(812) 335-0383
- Permaculture Activist <http://www.permacultureactivist.net/>
- Permaculture Trading Post <http://www.permaculturetradingpost.com/>
- Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting <http://www.permacultureactivist.net/design/Designconsult.html>
- Permaculture & Regenerative Design News Blog <http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/>
- APPLE (Alliance for Post-Petroleum Local Economics) It's a small world after oil. <http://www.relocalize.net/groups/applebloomington>

- Transition Indiana <http://transitionindiana.blogspot.com/> - Blog <http://transitionindiana.blogspot.com/>

- Transition Bloomington <http://transitionbloomingtonind.ning.com/>
- Association for Regenerative Culture <http://www.arculture.org/>
- The Gardeners' World Blog <http://theecosystem.blogspot.com/>
- Renaissance Farm and Permaculture Center <http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/growers/show/212>
- Bloomington Permaculture Growers Cooperative <http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/>
- Bloomington Permaculture Guild Blog <http://bloomingtonpermacultureguild.blogspot.com/> - Calendar <http://my.calendars.net/bloomingtonpccal/>
- Continental Bioregional Congress Blog <http://bioregional-congress.blogspot.com/>
- Switch to Solar Power the Easy Way <http://www.jointhesolution.com/KeithJ-SunPower>





  • [permaculture] Food Among the Ruins, Keith Johnson, 08/17/2009

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