Back to the Land in Detroit?

The city of Detroit has gotten a lot of attention recently, most of it lamenting how far its fortunes have fallen. Time magazine has even sent reporters to live in a Detroit neighborhood for a year, covering it as if it were a foreign country — which, in a sense, it is. Foreign at least to the American self-image of infinite growth and expansion.

Detroit’s population has plummeted. Huge swaths of land lie vacant. Houses have gone feral.

But Streetsblog Network member Planning Pool sees the city’s radically distressed circumstances in a different and admittedly rose-colored way — as an opportunity:

Photo by x3nomik via Flickr.

Detroit’s strength is in its weakness. By that I mean the city affords
many opportunities to artists, entrepreneurs, urban homesteaders, and
people who do not want typical 9-to-5 lifestyles. Large, vacant
commercial space can be rented out to start-ups at basement sale
prices. People can buy homes and land for almost nothing, grow their
own food, and form communities of similarly-minded people. Imagine if
residents were given financial or technical assistance to build farms,
solar panels, micro turbines, grey water systems, vermiculture compost
systems, and other household-level or block-level amenities that local
government can no longer afford to provide. Not only is the government
relieved to pursue more pressing problems, like education and crime,
but people are empowered to run their own communities. In turn, people
are relieved of having to join the 9-to-5 workforce – with no mortgage,
no car payments and insurance, little -to-no utility payments, and a
small food bill from farming, people can use their time to invest in
their community or take risks, like starting new companies or producing
works of art.

The writer of the post cops to “youthful optimism” (who’s going to provide that “financial and technical assistance”?) and her vision is pretty extreme. But so is the situation on the ground in Detroit. Your thoughts?

More news from the decaying industrial frontier: The fine blog Rust Wire has a piece on young Buffalonians who are returning to their native city with some bright ideas.