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It has been talked about for years now, but more and more seriously since the turn of the century. Detroit has one of the largest urban footprints in the nation. It is a massive area of land designed to house more than three million people, but as of now houses less than a million. With that number shrinking even further, there has been talk for years about what to do with such a huge foot print. People live all over the place, but the city is unable to provide services over such a massive area with ever dwindling resources. Up to now, the plan of action has generally been to raze empty buildings whenever they could come up with the money, and to allow them to revert to nature. It has cut down on the number of hovels that drug dealers and squatters can use for illicit purposes.
Urban gardens have sprung up in pretty impressive numbers in the past couple years for three basic reasons: it fills vacant lots, it provides jobs, and it provides produce to a city that has been classified a "food desert" by some, due to its lack of supermarkets and the difficulty in accessing healthy foods for residents.
But people have been looking for more permanent solutions for awhile too. Redeveloping all the empty lots that exist for industrial, commercial or even residential purposes is just not going to happen. Detroit, and Michigan, are losing, not gaining citizens, so nothing is going to fill the space. Thus, Detroit is the best place in the world to experiment with large scale urban farms.
TIME Magazine is doing a year long series of stories about Detroit. They actually bought a house in urban Detroit and are living there and exploring the cities to do stories. Their latest article is about the upcoming plans for urban farming in Detroit. It's a great read.
I don't know if the whole tourist attraction angle will play out the way Hantz wants it to, but it'd be pretty cool if it did. Not only would this be a boon to Detroit, as far as tax revenue, health reasons (cheap, nutritious food), jobs to for a reeling city, and environmental reasons, but it would also be a great test-bed for urban farming around the world. Farming locally needs to be a huge aspect of future cityscapes, and Hantz Farms looks to take advantage of a lot of theoretical technologies and applications that have been pushed but never tried large-scale in an urban environment, like vertical farming.
I'm a little leery of the amount of land that might end up being owned by a single company, but if it ends up being a series of small urban farming corporations, and maybe a couple thousands resident run co-ops, then I'd be satisfied. Land values all over the city and the suburbs should see a big boost if this takes off. Or at least, a stabilization and modest recovery.
Would anyone actually take their next summer vacation to see the Gardens of Babylon in Detroit?
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It sounds to me like the situation that this plan for urban farming is predicated upon is "massive financial ruin" — what happens if Detroit regains financial footing? I'm leery, but in my case it's of the fact that this is effectively a backup town in case your metropolis turns into an economic casualty.
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Even if Detroit stabilizes and rebounds a little, they'll never return to their WWII population heights. Even then they were the third largest city in the country but with space for even more people, but without the skyscrapers that make the population density of a place like NYC possible. In other words, even if Detroit itself "regains financial footing," then all that will happen is a stemming of the losses, not a return to glory. Detroit has the footprint of a first rate global city, but has the destiny of a second rate post-industrial washout. Perhaps the fledgling film industry, some green manufacturing, and a resurgence in autos will bring back some of Detroit's oomph, but as it stands, all that would do is stop the bleeding.
All that space will still remain empty. I'm not sure what you mean by "backup town." There's no housing there.
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