Image by Jonathan LaRocca for Guernica magazine.

by Mark Dowie
Guernica – a magazine of art and politics
August, 2009
Mark Dowie is an investigative historian living in Point Reyes Station, California.

Excerpt:

“There are more visionaries in Detroit than in most Rust-Belt cities, and thus more visions of a community rising from the ashes of a moribund industry to become, if not an urban paradise, something close to it. The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit, at least the ones who drew me to the city, were those who imagine growing food among the ruins—chard and tomatoes on vacant lots (there are over 103,000 in the city, sixty thousand owned by the city), orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores,

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