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etables might be grown more extensively in urban spaces.
<br />In recent years, a new "urban agriculture" movement has
<br />taken root. There have been scattered efforts to use farming to
<br />revitalize the vast vacant properties in former industrial zones,
<br />knit together broken communities, slow suburban sprawl, and
<br />provide people with fresh food. Some people have begun to look
<br />beyond traditional community gardens to wonder whether
<br />urban farming could sustain economic redevelopment. While
<br />suburban encroachment has long eroded the rural way of life,
<br />a trend may also be working in the reverse direction, with agri-
<br />culture creeping slowly into places where conventional wisdom
<br />says fruits and vegetables do not belong.
<br />HL THE LAST CENTURY, AMERICA'S
<br />.-ban areas were closely tied geo-
<br />uphically to their sources of food.
<br />griculture was by necessity a local
<br />iterprise before the advent of canals,
<br />frigeration systems, railroads, air -
<br />ies, and Eisenhower's interstate high-
<br />way system —all of which made it
<br />progressively easier to transport
<br />perishables long distances. In 1850,
<br />a large majority of Americans had
<br />a hand in agriculture. Today, only R F�
<br />two percent of the population farm'`��_'i, =-x
<br />or fish for a living, despite the fact':, t.
<br />that 100 percent of us eat.:"
<br />Marc Linder and Lawrence;,
<br />Zacharias point out in their book Of
<br />Cabbages and Kings County that
<br />Kings County (largely Brooklyn)
<br />and Queens, N.Y., were until 1879 '
<br />ranked the nation's second and first
<br />counties in vegetable production.
<br />The produce went directly across
<br />the East River to Manhattan. Even-
<br />tually displacing these small, peri-�' f
<br />urban farms was a "
<br />rocess "rigged
<br />P gg
<br />in favor of congested land devel-
<br />opment and its quasi - universal ��s
<br />effects, the authors write. New .
<br />York and other cities thus forfeited
<br />numerous other possibilities for
<br />balanced population growth, more
<br />diverse and integrated- self -suffi-
<br />cient urban economies, interurban
<br />public transportation and less costly '
<br />environmental pollution controls."
<br />Our way of producing food subsequently centralized to such a
<br />degree that a single Lamb Weston French-fry plant in American
<br />Falls, Idaho, processes as much as three million pounds of
<br />potatoes a day, and Florida has turned the orange into a $1.2
<br />billion -a -year industry.
<br />To those who wonder if farming could be brought exten-
<br />sively into a former urban environment, Detroit presents an awe-
<br />some opportunity and challenge. The city has 40,000 vacant lots.
<br />Its population dropped below a million in the 2000 US. Census,
<br />to half of what it was 50 years ago. Detroit's undoing can be read
<br />from the air, as you descend into Metro Airport. Woodward
<br />Avenue, I -94, and I -75 run through it like giant surgical scars.
<br />People say that Detroit is a divided city, one black, one white, but
<br />from a few thousand feet up, I saw a lot of green downtown.
<br />Interrupted by the street grid, large empty spaces bled into each
<br />other, broken only here and there by buildings.
<br />"In Detroit, about 40 percent of the city territory is vacant,"
<br />says Jac Smit, who runs a national organization called the
<br />Urban Agriculture Network, which lobbies local governments
<br />for local food systems. "Detroit has sufficient space to provide
<br />all the food necessary for the people living there. What you need
<br />4 Q * JERRY KAUFMAN, MADISON, WIS.: Vt,. HAVE, -: _3 :, "A'N'), JPJN P .rf';';" AREAS INi Trl f., _AIIT t._Ai• D.'
<br />Charles Wilson, who writes frequently about
<br />ecology and history, lives in New York City.
<br />60 PRESERVATION
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