It's no secret that America's onetime automotive capital, Detroit, has fallen on hard times. Over 60% of the Motor City's population has left since 1950, leaving behind some 677,000 inhabitants and between 20 and 40 square miles of vacant land.
Yes, somewhere between 20 and 40 square miles of vacant land. So what do you do with all that land where houses once stood and the remaining 677,000 suffer from what's euphemistically referred to as "food security"? Simple answer, you turn some of that empty space into farmland and you change the city's ordinances to allow livestock.
If upcoming code amendments pass the city's Planning Commission, Detroiters will be able to farm with livestock, including chickens, goats and rabbits. Imagine, you're driving down Gratiot and there's a goat, on the rubble of a collapsed crack house, next to a field of wheat.
Good idea, right? But there's a catch. You see, farming's racist. According to Kathryn Lynch Underwood, a member of Detroit's Planning Commission:
“You have people that may have come from the South and don’t necessarily have good memories of their experience in the South, so the whole agriculture, animal thing reminds them of something they wanted to get away from.”
The curiously named Lynch Underwood is black and so is around 80% of what's left of the Motor City's population. How many of these will be able to shake off their memories of being slaves on southern plantations and return to the land, is presently unknown.
Maybe hunger will help solve that dilemma.
Way to go, Detroit. You're obviously coming back, or not.
LSP
