Counter-Sprawl

An article in today's Free Press discusses options for remaking the city of Detroit via recourse to the 89 square miles of vacant land within its borders. Schemes for rebuilding Detroit into a major metropolis with the size and density of population it had in the 1950s are no longer realistic, say some urban planners, possibly informed by the failures of such efforts attempted over the last forty years. A better prospect, in their view, is remaking Detroit as a "leaner, greener city," with the vacant lands (some of which now support extensive grasslands, complete with populations of pheasants and coyotes)used for parks, forests, or even commercial farms.

It's an exciting idea, one which, according to some gives Detroit "a chance to invent an entirely new urban model." There's something satisfying about the notion of the old urban cores reversing the sprawl that began in them. Of course, any such project would face massive obstacles, not least the immediate human problems of poverty, crime, and dysfunctional governance. A few months ago, Harper's, ran an article by Rebecca Solnit exploring a similar concept that was stunningly underattentive to these issues. Presumably, locals would take them more seriously than roaming journalists.

Yet residents would face other, less tangible hurdles to creating a garden city. A geographer quoted in the Free Press observed that people are often resistant to the idea of "downsizing" cities. Which is an understandable reaction in a culture where bigger is usually better, and where communities typically measure their success by growth in population, business activity, and tax revenue. The "growth" already underway in Detroit's vacant spaces has inspired some to imagine a new destiny for the city; perhaps Detroit's response to its green potential could inspire a wider re-definition of growth in cities and suburbs.

That isn't the only new thing the undertaking might show us. Detroit is hardly the first city to envision integrating extensive natural spaces within and beside its built environments, though most that have done so have been relatively affluent, white communities. Would a viable green city sprung from one of the nation's poorest and most heavily African American communities look different?

I'm not sure how much the answer to that matters, but I hope one day it comes.