I was stinking about all the talk of urban gardening and the garden city concept of which Detroit was an exponent in the late nineteenth century. Anyways, it seems that with the vast amount of mature treed lots, the city could redesign large swaths of its territory for farming but also botanical gardening as an added attraction. Imagine a large bike and pedestrian circuit with pavilions for food and refreshments for a good part of the year. The center of Detroit's region would be an oasis of sorts if the car culture were to take a sidestep and give way to the garden city. Since botanical work, the caring of flowers, shrubs and trees is labor intensive, and the city is overwhelmed by the cost of this, it would make sense to invest in relatively large portions of the city's vacant lots for this purpose. Beyond the touristic attraction, some fields could serve for production and sale of flowers and shrubs. This would also provide training, employment, and resources for [[budding?) horticulturalists. Some crops could yield benefits by helping to decontaminate the land just short of heavy metals and or chemicals such as pcb's.

As was mentioned in another thread, disused auto and other plants with large glazing could be transformed into greenhouses.

I noticed that there are a lot of great resource centers to help apply this on a vast scale such as the Matthei botanical gardens of UofM, the Belle Isle Botanical Society, the Cranbrook House and Gardens, the Fisher mansion in greater Detroit. There is the WJ Beal BG and Horticultural Demonstration Gardens in East Lansing at MSU. We could axe Whitehouse to send a few tulip bulbs from beautiful Holland. I could send some dandelion seeds which I have a lot of. Would they spread?