The reclaiming of Detroit

Wildlife, plants creep back into the vacant places in Detroit

[COMMENTARY] Sometimes in Detroit I get the sense that nature is reclaiming the land. Green leaves are growing unchecked everywhere: around buildings, in empty lots. Vines are creeping into abandoned buildings and climbing around them, inside and out. Songbirds chirp from trees with vigor usually reserved for state parks – and speaking of birds, it’s not unusual to see a pheasant or a peacock run across the road, especially in the morning.

And just when you think the natural growth is never tended, small corn and pumpkin shoots peek out of the ground in neat rows in a back yard, a little reminder that hope remains.

Some neighborhoods seem altogether abandoned by the city, by the state, perhaps because the population has dropped by more than a million since the peak of the auto industry in 1950. And after the 1967 riots ravaged Detroit, families moved out by the thousands, leaving 40,000 lots vacant, many of which are still marked with abandoned buildings, according to the Detroit Department of Pubic Works. Sometimes these lots are auctioned off by the city for a meager bid of $250.

But when a place is left to its own devices, people turn back to the basics needed for survival: water, food, shelter — and utilities if you’re lucky. There’s a surreal blend of urban and rural life out in the sparsely populated neighborhoods in Detroit.

The carcasses of old factories hollowed out after years of decay tower over unruly green growth, creating a counterintuitive sight. In a junkyard of gutted cars, rusted metal and fragments of abandoned industry, nature is growing over it all.

In the empty lots where houses once stood, the soil nourishes fast-growing weeds, turning land back into chunks of prairie-like flora that carpeted the ground before the French fur traders ever landed in the area. When I see this, I see the potential for farms and gardens, for a green revival. I see Detroit’s opportunity to be at the forefront of an urban farming or a green energy movement that would perhaps put it on the map for energy alternatives — and create food and jobs for those who have been left out of the economic picture for years.

When I go into my back yard, I know that others see what I see. In fact they saw it years ago. That’s why the three vacant lots in the back are bordered with peach, plum and apple trees. It’s an urban orchard back there, with young trees weighed down by an abundance of premature fruit gearing up for an August harvest. It seems that my landlord, Paul Weertz, an urban farmer whose work has gained the attention of national media including the New York Times and O magazine, had the right idea more than a decade ago.

And in the middle of the vacant lots, inside the border of fruit trees, a garden grows full of potatoes, corn and alfalfa. There are chickens and rabbits cooped up on the side of the house, and the crow of a rooster echoes into the overgrown alley. I can go back there and forget I’m in a city. I’m on the farm, in the city, and when I tell my friends who’ve never seen it, they say: “A farm in Detroit? You’re joking, right?”

Joking I am not. It’s a vision of hope, and it captures the city’s potential, a beautiful sight.

Sandy Gordan, a man who grows corn in his back yard near the famed outdoor art environment known as the Heidelberg Project, has a similar vision. He wrote in an e-mail:

“If these decaying neighborhoods could sustain themselves with their own food, and recycle old abandoned houses into barns/farm houses, then with a reliable water supply, it would transform these empty lots into something productive, especially with food prices rising amid a global food crisis.”

So it looks as though many have are already stopped fighting off the green wave that’s been washing over some of the vacant spaces in Detroit. They’ve been planting gardens, fruit trees, and basically recycling the land for a new, greener purpose. Is this the future of Detroit?