BBC World News: Urban farming bid to revive Detroit

The woes of the auto industry have decimated Detroit, leaving behind miles of waste land and abandoned homes. Now one of the area’s richest men is hoping to revive the region with a farm centred in the urban environment. Katty Kay has been to meet John Hantz who hopes his $30m (£18.9m) investment will improve the neighbourhood and spur development. Watch Katty Kay talks to John Hantz here.

The city was built for two million but now has a population of only 800,00

By Katty Kay
BBC World News America, Detroit
Aug. 5, 2010

Excerpt:

John Hantz is soft spoken, meticulously polite and ferociously ambitious. For his latest plan, he has to be. This multi-millionaire, financial tycoon wants to turn destitute Detroit into the world’s largest urban farm.

Drive through Detroit and immediately you see the scale of this city’s problems. There are burnt out houses, piles of rubbish and empty lots on every block. Anyone who can seems to have fled.

The city was built for two million but now has a population of only 800,000. So 40,000 acres of Detroit now stand unused, home to weeds, broken glass, even pheasants.

Mr Hantz’s scheme is to take that land and turn it into a hi-tech farm, growing a mixture of vegetables, fruit and trees using the latest agricultural science and tapping into America’s growing obsession with local and organic food.

“One of the first things we will do is plant orchards, trellis orchards and what we want to do is more than beautification, we want to be about the learning around urban agriculture.”

In place of the trash piles and vacant lots he envisions rows of neat apple trees, indoor salad farms and acres of walnut groves.

He also hopes this beautification will help stem the urban flight by making Detroit a prettier place to live. That, in turn, could push up local house prices which have plummeted.

“I believe people will want to live next to this,” he says.

A long-time resident of the city, Mr Hantz is so convinced the scheme can help revive Detroit that he is willing to put $30 million of his own money into it. But can something that sounds so fanciful possibly work?

See the complete article here.