Vision: Urban Gardening and Green Economy Flourish in Detroit

Photo Credit: di the huntress

On February 16, Michigan's Governor Snyder signed into law a sweeping emergency financial management bill, one that will give him wide powers to appoint financial managers across the state. Cities in financial distress will be assigned emergency managers, who will have the power to suspend collective bargaining, terminate city employees, even dissolve local governments completely -- whatever is deemed necessary in the pursuit of a "balanced budget."

Critics have called it the most undemocratic legislative measure in recent United States history.

The plan, Gov. Snyder claims, is a response to the very real budget problems facing Michigan. Many cities across the state face default. Add to that high unemployment, cities in disrepair, and the collapse of vital industries, and the situation can rightly be deemed an emergency.

Perhaps no city is more emblematic of the challenges facing the state than Detroit. The city has an annual budget deficit of $155 million, and long-term debt totaling $5.7 billion. Less than half of its students graduate high school. There are parts of the city where streetlights don’t come on at night and trash goes uncollected.

Detroit is hurting, for sure. All the statistics about lagging graduation rates and economic stagnation can be implied in single photograph of an empty street, the cinders of an abandoned home that has been burnt to the ground peeking through the snow.

But Detroit has another story, fighting to be noticed against the widespread perception of decay and downturn. It’s a narrative about an urban gardening mecca and a cultural cornerstone, a city where solar panel installation classes also teach demand side economics and relaxation techniques. Look closely at Detroit, and you’ll learn lessons with implications far beyond the asphalt capillaries of the Motor City.

As Detroit social justice activist William Copeland says, “The problems we face in Detroit are being mirrored all around the world: privatization, land grabs, issues of food sovereignty, the struggles for community stability and self-determination.”

And the solutions don’t lie in budget cuts or emergency financial managers.

The Alternative Solution

It is noon at the D-Town Farm in Detroit, and sunlight muscles through the clouds. Used tires double as flowerpots, multi-chromatic blooms pushing through the giant rubber rings spaced throughout the garden. Volunteers tend the plants as a staffmember leads a group of city students on a guided tour, describing the growing habits of the tomatoes and the workings of the brightly painted compost bins. Everywhere are signs of vibrant renewal.

The two-acre farm in Detroit is a project of the Detroit Black Food Security Network, a national leader among the dozens of urban gardening organizations in the city. Use of reclaimed materials, cooperative purchasing, community gardening -- principles at work in Detroit’s urban gardens are found in similar efforts across the country. But Berkeley or Portland this is not. These gardens have different roots.

Ron Williams, founder of Detroit’s alternative weekly Metrotimes, and Dragonfly Media:

“What people have to understand is that the urban agriculture, neighborhood economic development and justice work happening in Detroit is not a lifestyle choice, it is dead-on self-determination activity for survival by the residents of this devastated city.”

Necessity is a cruel mother, but certainly an efficient one.

The greater Detroit area is the nexus of an entire host of progressive enterprises, notable for both the diversity of its participants and the diversity of its projects: the East Michigan Environmental Action Council, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Centro Obrero de Detroit, Global Exchange, South East Michigan Jobs with Justice, the Greening of Detroit, and the Sierra Club.