Detroit Urban Farming Update (Grand Rapids: how much, home, neighborhoods)

[michigan83]

Interesting article: Commercial farming to start in Detroit with 1,000 trees | Detroit Free Press | freep.com (http://www.freep.com/article/20110808/BUSINESS04/108080324/Commercial-farming-start-Detroit-1-000-trees?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE - broken link)


I really don't understand why the city is so reluctant to let this happen. I get the impression that the city leaders are still a little out of touch with reality. Let me get this straight... people want to come in, clean up polluted, trash-filled, unused land, and use it to grow crops/trees, and you are resisting? What do you think is going to happen? Do they expect to wake up tomorrow it will suddenly be the 1950's again? Maybe the leaders are too disconnected from farming to even understand the positives. I don't get it.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by michigan83

Interesting article: Commercial farming to start in Detroit with 1,000 trees | Detroit Free Press | freep.com (http://www.freep.com/article/20110808/BUSINESS04/108080324/Commercial-farming-start-Detroit-1-000-trees?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE - broken link)


I really don't understand why the city is so reluctant to let this happen. I get the impression that the city leaders are still a little out of touch with reality. Let me get this straight... people want to come in, clean up polluted, trash-filled, unused land, and use it to grow crops/trees, and you are resisting? What do you think is going to happen? Do they expect to wake up tomorrow it will suddenly be the 1950's again? Maybe the leaders are too disconnected from farming to even understand the positives. I don't get it.

Well yeah, kind of.

I mean, I don't care how much vacant land there is in the city of Detroit, the city is still a fundamentally URBAN culture and mindset. I would imagine it is very difficult to comprehend the very concept of urban farming. Its still probably very weird to people.

I agree with you they absolutely that it is an absolutely great thing to make use of the vacant land by planting trees and crops, especially where it was residential blocks, and not on contaminated land where industrial buildings sat.

But I can kind of understand how people might have a hard time accepting that. It really is thinking outside the box.

[detwahDJ]

Detroit isn't the only city considering this. Chicago is doing it, among others. It might be informative to keep track of similar projects in the other cities, getting ideas, monitoring their success, comparing the govt policies and solutions/failures.
Two Chicago Urban Farms Among Top 10 in America
The web is full of this info.

[Giesela]

Done right this could be the sort of innovative living that is really special and becomes a byword...and a draw....Detroit shouldn't let it pass them by. I talked to a peer from the east coast for the first time in awhile and he said they had a trip to Detroit and all he could talk about was all the abandoned property and how empty it seemed.

[detwahDJ]

Opponents say it doesn't generate taxes. Why doesn't it generate property taxes like any other land ownership?

[magellan]

Originally Posted by detwahDJ

Opponents say it doesn't generate taxes. Why doesn't it generate property taxes like any other land ownership?

It doesn't generate AS MUCH taxes as a lot with a home on it. But if the land is currently vacant???

There are a couple of neighborhoods in Grand Rapids (west side particularly) where people are holding out this strange belief that it will somehow someday return to the 1950's, even though the housing stock is old, was not well built when it was built, and will probably never be a big draw for families with kids ever again. Developers have proposed project after project of mixed use, medium density housing, only to be turned away.

Same thing with urban farms, urban chickens, etc.. A lot of people are stuck in the city they once knew that is never coming back (the way they remembered it.)

[detwahDJ]

^ Yeah, I was thinking that. Also can the tax rates for this type of land use be "tweaked" upward without destroying incentives. This would require a balancing act to be sure.
I'd sure like to know what's on their mind for this...
Re Grand Rapids: you're talking about the old working class area of - say, Bridge Street?

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Detroit could end up being the way some of our Bay Area burbs were back in the 1950s - 1970s. Sort of a crazy quilt of hop scotch development with farms mixed in. It was sort of cool, but I do have memories of being shot at with salt guns when we took it a bit too far with the trespassing!

[Retroit]

The City of Detroit should be giving away land to anyone who is willing to make productive use of that land. Even if the city doesn't make money from giving the land away, they will save money in the long run from not having to maintain that land. And if the new owners don't take care of it, the city can fine them or ultimately take back the land. So it's no loss to the city.

I found this to be laughable:

Critics worry that commercial farming represents a land grab by corporate interests or can lead to problems from farm trucks creating noise and pollution in neighborhoods.

Oh my, we can't have people coming into the city to make a profit! And heaven forbid we have trucks driving around! Just imagine how that would destroy the high quality of life in the city.

On the other hand, I don't see how you can plant 1000 oak trees on 3.5 acres. If they plan on letting these trees grow to maturity, they are going to be awfully crowded. I'd say 50 trees would be more reasonable.