MSU proposes urban agriculture project in Detroit

[corktownyuppie]

Part of my worry is that it's a way for all the urban farmers to get their foot in the door in a big way. It starts with MSU's 100 acres, which will develop a sense of normalcy around the idea of giant farms inside of Detroit. It can snowball from there, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing.

Let my preface the rest of my position with a statement that I hate urban sprawl. I hate it. I am opposed to it. And, frankly, I think it's a major public policy error. I also believe in free markets, but -- in my opinion -- most public sprawl requires public investment to subsidize it. Unfortunately the public electorate makes the same mistakes with public spending on infrastructure that it does with employee benefits, pension, and healthcare.

It doesn't make sense for us to triple our geographical and infrastructural footprint while keeping the population constant.

If you're a free market believer and state that people should be able to live where they want, I agree with you. Let's change one thing. Every 10 years, a region-wide governmental body decides what transit, roads, and infrastructure will be funded. Then let the builders and buyers do what they wish. Instead, we've people moving outward every 10 years for cheaper land with bigger houses. Which is fine, except they leave behind a city equipped to pay on those 30-year bonds or 30-year pensions they were supposed to be paying back. And then they demand that a newly formed municipal body borrow more money to build more roads when they get there.

It's ridiculous.

Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to reverse the urban sprawl that has taken place over the last 50 years, all we can do is stop it or slow it down.

All in all, urban farming just sounds philosophically like an easy way out to me. Rather than hold ourselves accountable for Detroit's downfall and do some real soul searching, we instead want to revert large chunks of Detroit into some kind of weird subsistence agriculture experiment. Sure, it'll bring food sources closer to Detroit, but it will also put larger spaces between the residential and commercial areas of Detroit and the rest of Metro Detroit.

Detroit is not going to go back to what it was in 1970 anytime soon. The only real sustainable vision for the city in the near future is to concentrate its population into dense, viable areas. 700,000 people people can not pay for the expenses of a city designed for 2 million. It's like asking 3 people to pay for the expenses of a 9-bedroom apartment.

And out of those 3, 1 of them is below the poverty line.

Knowing that we're not going to "re-fill" these gaps in population density, we have to choose what we want in those gaps. Right now, we are choosing blight. MSU is offering to turn that blight in positive revenue production. At minimum, you get rid of blocks of crack houses.

I'm sure many are open to other proposals, as am I. But if your vision is that L Brooks Patterson all of a sudden acknowledges the short-sightedness of his ways, dis-invests in Southfield and Troy, and then encourages businesses to go back into the city...then fine. How long are we willing to wait for that to happen, and what will do in the meantime?

Here's my problem with it: what makes Detroit, which was historically a dumping ground for industrial contaminants, especially well-suited for farming? I just don't see what competitive advantage Detroit offers over traditional rural areas. It will be cramped in comparison to a normal rural area and it will be based in a market that for various reasons has been unable to support the amount of grocery stores/fresh produce stores you'd expect for its population level.

Sure, MSU can afford to stay long-term in weak markets like that, but what about private entities?

Well, first thing is that we have the transportation infrastructure advantages as well as access to fresh water. I'm not a farmer, so I don't understand the business at all. I do know that most urban areas formed because of their access to water and ports. We have an advantage in shipping, as do probably most urban areas.

Second, the whole point of research is to find new technologies and competitive advantages that did not previously exist. It's obvious that Detroit [[or any urban area) can't compete with rural areas for farming based on what we know right now. If they did, then there would already be farming all over the city.

Look at Ann Arbor. So much of the research spills out into the community because new findings generate new opportunities which generate new findings which generate new opportunities.

Your points about soul searching are not bad ones. I do agree that the current model of continual expansion is not viable. But proving that point and changing that mindset is a long-term vision...and then what will it produce? "You're right, we shouldn't have expanded this way." Ok, so now what?

Any way to attract long-term capital -- especially from higher education...whose research budgets and missions are considerably less cyclical than the private sector -- should be welcomed.