Ecological Society

DETROIT'S DEPOPULATION AND RESURGENCE

Downsized Depopulated Detroit becomes a beacon of urban farming and sustainable living.

Detroit was at one time the fastest-growing city in the world. It has become one of the fastest to disappear. Spurred by a crisis in the auto industry, around a third of Detroit has fallen into ruin. Now community groups are taking over derelict lots for use as community gardens and small-holdings.

One-third of Detroit's land area has been depopulated, leaving "abandoned houses, vacant lots and vacant factories," according to a story in the Guardian UK. Swaths of razed house lots are being taken over by city residents and farmed in small plots for vegetables, fruits and bee-keeping. There's even a million-dollar 40-acre commercial farm near the downtown that has begun operations. Most of the food is grown cooperatively and is available to neighborhood residents for free at harvest time.

The coop gardeners are worried about the takeover of their plots by commercial farming and have formed their own coalition of cooperative gardens to protect their right to farm. Thus far the two business models are doing well side-by-side.

A short video by the Guardian interviews a cooperative farmer and a bee-keeper. The video is interesting because it encapsulates the growth and decline cycle of what was once a sprawling metropolis, and it shows that people can survive both ends of the cycle. The video can be seen on the internet at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/jul/11/detroit-community-gardens>

Detroit has become a model for dealing with urban de-growth and decline which some expect to be a common occurrence in other large US cities.

This Declaration was adopted by the Ecojustice People's Movement Assembly at the US Social Forum, in Detroit, June 2010

"Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world's largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatisation strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to Sustainable Communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life."

Source: Ecological Society blog, July 12, 2010 <http://ecologicalsociology.blogspot.com/> We are a group of faculty and students in the Sociology department at the University of New Brunswick.