Can anything good come out of Detroit?

Detroit is well known as the city of the car. It was the place of the first Ford assembly line and the home of GM motors. As a result it has suffered terribly from car-related diseases like a city/suburb split between black/white and poor/rich. And now, with the oil crisis followed by the sub-prime crisis in housing, and the financial collapse, the city is in freefall. Average house prices are around $5000. There is no longer a rush hour, because there is no rush and few cars. Whole streets are being pulled down and some see the inner city reverting to nature. Is this a sign of the future for our cities? Or is there a better story to be told?

Back in 1893, America was again in a financial crisis and Detroit had just elected a new mayor. Hazen Pingree was a brave soul, originally a cobbler, who had been reluctant to enter politics. With the recession, he had tried to spend public money as a way of keeping people in work, but the financial problems were country wide and Detroit could not buck the trend. Around ten per cent of people were unemployed and in serious danger of starvation.

Then Mayor Pingree had an idea. He looked around the city and saw hundreds of vacant plots of land, which had been bought by developers, but could not be built on because of the recession. And he thought, we could grow our own food, right here in the heart of the city. He went to the churches and asked them to have all their sales and auctions and the like to raise a fund for seeds and tools. And to kickstart the fund he sold his own thoroughbred Kentucky horse.

When they saw what was happening landowners one by one began to give permission for growing to take place on their land.

And so the people went to work. Teams of people working each patch of land and sharing the harvest. They ate well that winter. And other cities were impressed and followed suit. Urban Agriculture had been born.

Back in today’s Detriot, as the city collapses, something similar is happening. One project called Goodwill Deconstruction is actually pulling dilapidated houses down, by the street, and replanting the inner city with food. This project works with alienated people some of whom have been trashing the city, but who now have found purpose to their lives.

Detroit’s car history was recently featured in the BBC2 documentary Requiem for Detroit, now sadly disappeared from iPlayer.

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