Agrihoods Bring Urban Farming Opportunities to Empty Spaces in Detroit

Ideas We Should Steal: What's Good in the Agrihood?

Detroiters are transforming empty acreage into an urban farming community. Could it work in Philly?

Dec. 28, 2016

I of Detroit's biggest problems is pretty simple: Information technology's just too big. Built out during the industrial boom, the city has lost more than 400,000 residents since 1990, and more than 200,000 since the mid 2000s lonely.

And what have those departed Detroiters left behind? Vacant space. In 2012, it was estimated that xl of 139 square miles were vacant; an untold number of buildings are similarly unoccupied. And the metropolis is doing everything information technology tin to fight the scourge of vacancy, from pilot programs encouraging folks to come to the city and live for free in a business firm of their choosing—if they patch it up, of course—to simply knocking downward rows of abandoned homes. Detroit is open to any and all ideas—and that'southward where the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) comes in.

Using iii acres of vacant space in the city, MUFI has created a farm-to-tabular array agricultural community, which volition generate fresh produce for more 2,000 households virtually the operation. Aside from farming space, the "agrihood," equally it'south known, features a massive three-story building that will hold events for MUFI, as well as serve equally its part space and commercial kitchen. The setup will feature intern housing, and the outfit will exist operated past community members who will work part or total time in the agrihood. The land features greenhouses and growing rows, and volition help MUFI in its mission to supply local schools and nutrient pantries with fresh produce.

"Agrihoods are the integration, in cities specially, of food production, free energy efficiency and affordable housing, recreation and community spaces based effectually farming. You have food, healthcare and didactics. Some other manner of describing an agrihood is as a 'permaculture village,'" says Paul Glover.

In instance you lot're wondering about the fundamental deviation betwixt an urban or community farm and an agrihood, it's simple: where an urban or customs farm offers an opportunity for people to supply themselves and their neighbors with fresh produce, an agrihood focuses on making a farming outfit the very middle of a small community, the way manufacturing used to exist.

Philly is no stranger to the notion of urban farming. Earlier this year, The Citizen profiled Urban center Farms' mission to bring vertically grown vegetables to the Philadelphia market; and we've written about many of the city's urban farms, and farmers' markets. Hell, you could say that the city itself was founded as a massive agrihood, because that William Penn wanted every Philadelphian to accept an acre of state for this metropolis to be an agrarian, orchard-focused wonderland.

But MUFI'southward goal to build an unabridged neighborhood around a single farm isn't one that's been accomplished in recent retentiveness in Philadelphia, if non for lack of trying. Paul Glover, a one fourth dimension Greenish Political party Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate who founded the Philadelphia Orchard Project, has been pushing the thought for a couple of years now. He even made a push to acquire a forty-acre lot of country in Logan Triangle for the expressed purpose of creating Philadelphia's kickoff fully committed agrihood, and his intentions dwarf those of MUFI's three acre lot. If Glover had his way, he'd squeeze the following into those 40 acres: an fleet of affordable "tiny" houses, 100 greenhouses and 500 fruit trees. He likewise vows that the Logan Triangle project would take employed 50 percent of the agrihood's residents. The country option for the 40 acres in Logan Triangle has since been transferred to a major developer, but Glover is optimistic that neighborhood pushback volition become him a clamper of the country for his project, called LOAM. He is as well looking at a five acre parcel in Northward Philadelphia on which to potentially create a seize with teeth-sized version of his proposed agrihood, and he claims that he was offered a one-acre bundle by a Pennsylvania state representative.

"Agrihoods are the integration, in cities particularly, of food production, free energy efficiency and affordable housing, recreation and community spaces based around farming. Yous have food, healthcare and education. Another way of describing an agrihood is every bit a 'permaculture village,'" says Glover, who is calling for increased spending on urban farming and agrihoods in Philadelphia, and non but on vacant country parcels. Similarly uninhabited in Philly are thousands of usable buildings that could exist converted into greenhouses or vertical farms; Glover says that in that location are 700 warehouses and factories in Philadelphia lonely that could be renovated for such apply.

Ryan Kuck, executive manager of Philly's massively successful Greensgrow Farms, says that there is definitely value in the concept of agrihoods, but rankles at what he sees as the novelty of the concept. "Agrihoods are zero new," he says. "It'south a concept and a term that comes from the evolution of how cities see themselves as sustainable and healthful places to live."

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Kuck says that the top selling point of such agrihoods would be the fact that they help legitimize the usefulness and utility of accommodating for green spaces in modern urban planning. "Even thirty years ago, in that location were 500 community gardens and lawn plots without support, and we lost a lot of those developments by not prioritizing how light-green spaces play a function in how we shape and plan for cities," Kuck says. "In some ways, the term 'agrihood' is a little chip irrelevant to me, but if it gets people thinking almost planning and galvanizing them in the time to come, that's smashing."

Philadelphia is abode to twoscore,000 vacant buildings and more than 42,000 vacant lots; Philly'southward population has been on a steady incline since 2000, and many thousands of Philadelphians lack easy access to fresh food. This urban center has all the tools to focus on creating its own agrihoods, and while they won't abolish hunger or entirely do away with food deserts, they're a adept place to offset. Detroit, more than anything, is existence creative in its handling of its vacancy crisis, bringing everyone from farmers to artists to professional person millennials to live in and repair uninhabited housing and country parcels; it'due south welcoming change and development to neighborhoods that desperately need information technology. Instead of lambasting the existence of like properties in Philly and using them almost exclusively as urban-bane b-roll stand up ins, let's make something out of them.

Let'southward make them abound.

Photos from The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative via Facebook

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/agrihood-michigan-urban-farming-initiative/

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