downtown detroit is turning into the farmlands the suburbs paved over and here i am wishing this would become a trend, without all the poverty of course.
i hate to start all these entries the same way, but … i read a great article the other day! i found it in the july issue of harper’s; a story recounting rebecca solnit’s interpretation of what is currently going down in downtown detroit. she starts by painting a picture of a city that: 1) once boomed, attracting millions of workers to fuel local industry; 2) then emptied as white folks fled to the countryside; and, 3) is now reverting to a natural state, where green is taking over concrete and steel, and people are able to grow their own food, listen to the crickets nights, and otherwise touch earth, breath clean air, and look off towards a horizon.
her narrative is intriguing, because it works to highlight the incredible opportunity facing those who still call (downtown) detroit (i.e., not the suburbs) their home. unlike any other city on the planet, detroit is greening, and not in some superficial way that sees city councils buying more hybrids but driving just as much or more; people recycling but never reducing their consumption habits; and new greenies buying their organic coffee in disposable cups, and groceries in plastic bags.
no, this greening is of a literal kind, with trees, grasses and flowers overtaking abandoned homes and concrete foundations. this greening leaves neighbourhoods with the earth necessary to grow a good majority of their food (in the summer), and with the space and biodiversity necessary to allow residents to truly interact with and get to know the planet that supports us.
detroit is the inverse of everywhere else. while every other ‘green city’ in the world consists primarily of a concrete core (with touches of green) and ravenous suburbs left free to expand relentlessly (and thoughtlessly) outward eating up bundles of biodiversity, downtown detroit is opening up, letting the floodgates of biodivesity spill its abundance right back into its heart.
solnit asks (with poorly concealed desire) if this could be what all north americans cities can expect as the oil dries up. she suggests that detroit might be living through first what all of us will be made to endure at some future date. difficult to predict, but i agree that those fine people living in downtown detroit have a unique opportunity to put prinicples of sustainable development to the test, and there are indications that they have already begun leading the charge.
it could be that detroit is the only place that could possibly lead the way … after all it was here that north america was shown the new way to model society — the model T society. … so detroit, why not save us from our zealousness and show us yet another option, this one designed to get us out of the mess that is north america today, where economies and social structures aren’t ashamed to benefit local communities, and where we are able to see that small too is beautiful at times.
c.
