Monthly Archives: April 2012

A City of Missing People

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in decline, Detroit, incremental change, Jobs, ruins

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Detroit's Michigan Central Station

Tourists usually pick a place to visit that’s the best at something. New York and Chicago have their skyscrapers. Orlando has its amusement parks. Detroit has decay. My wife and I stayed there a few days last summer and, honestly it was just sad. Detroit was built for 2 million people but only 700,000 people live there now. It’s a city of 1.3 million missing people. Detroit has this endless supply of buildings–wonderful buildings–that nobody uses. That’s what really gets to me about this city. All the lost potential, wasted effort, abandoned beauty. The world’s biggest ghost town.

I just saw  Detropia, a film that explains the problems of Detroit through a collage of lives, no narrator. It doesn’t get overly nostalgic and it’s not a movie of “ruin porn,” although you can’t tell Detroit’s story without ruins. Detroit’s strategy is to invest in its best places and try to build outward again. Some young people are moving downtown and that’s probably the best way for the city to start over. The problem is, the city can’t really afford to invest in itself anymore. It’s spread out over 140 square miles and it just can’t support its current population with this massive infrastructure footprint. When there’s block after block with one house where there used to be 20, how can you afford to maintain the streets, water and sewer lines, the police and fire departments, or even to plow the snow?

The thing that builds a city, millions of people making individual decisions, has been the undoing of Detroit. It’s become a repository for the state’s poor, and when they’re lucky enough to find more work, they leave. It’s a logical decision. The city is so far gone, so disappeared, that I’m afraid no matter how much the economy recovers, pretty soon it just won’t be a logical place for anyone to live.

Corktown neighborhood

Grand Army of the Republic Building, built for Detroit's Union Civil War veterans

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Why Your City Should Support Local Food

09 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in cities, farms, local food, sprawl

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photo by Josh Jackson, nautical2k via flickr

Farmland has value, just not in small packages. As agricultural profit margins have gotten thinner and thinner, farm operations have had to become more productive and farms themselves larger and larger. So, as far as agriculture goes, small farms aren’t worth so much. And, all this cheap land on the edge of so many cities has helped fuel our suburban sprawl. It’s happened in every metro across America — cities are expanding faster than their population, taking up more acres for each person. Even cities that haven’t seen population growth have grown in overall area.

Cities lose when development moves outside their boundaries. They have to keep up with their infrastructure and maintenance costs — their roads, water and sewer lines, plowing snow — but they lose their tax base. It costs the same amount to resurface a road no matter who’s paying the property tax. Local governments around the country have tried to preserve rural areas and farmsteads, usually by purchasing land or development rights. All of this is, to say the least, expensive. But, we’re seeing a better way to help our rural areas. Instead of trying to catch up with the value suburban development pays for farmland, another tactic is to make farmland more valuable. Local food trends are already leading the way.

More and more people are interested in getting their food from local organic farms instead of the “1,000-mile Caesar Salad,” shipped from across the country. Local organic food is a little less efficient and a bit more expensive. Better for smaller farms. (Cage-free eggs are really tasty; they cost $5 a dozen, too.) Cities and towns surrounded by rural areas should try to make farming more profitable — set up farmers markets, promote their city’s connection to its countryside, set up local food networks with restaurants. For those lucky enough to have joint city-county governments, give farmers more choices. Make it easier to add B&Bs or wedding reception halls. The more people that can make money farming near our cities, the less likely it is our cities will spill into our farms.

Washington, DC farmers market