My earlier posting on “agriburbia” – saying “Agriculture is the new golf” and reporting on an in-the-works development near here that will feature farm fields instead of a golf course or – brought an e-mail with this link to a story from the online Detroit Free Press.
It seems some visiting urban planners, noting the enlarging areas of disinvestment in the Motor City, have proposed that eventually the city will resemble clusters of villages surrounded by farmlands. Back to the future, indeed.
Does anyone know of any urban land that has successfully reverted to farmland?
I asked a soil specialist some years back about the feasibility of turning abandoned big-box stores and their huge parking lots back into farmland and was told that, unfortunately, the development scrapes away the topsoil, which takes centuries to create. Maybe with enough chickens and livestock one could replenish the soil?