Community Gardens Replace Abandoned Houses
One way residents are filling the city is with community gardens. One of them is managed by Harry Ryan, a retired electrician and real estate agent who lives in Flint's old east side. Just across the street from his home, where five houses used to stand, the land bank has helped him plant a sprawling community garden, which provides free fruit and vegetables to this part of the city.
Ryan says growing food one of the benefits of a plan to shrink Flint. "I look at it like this: Something has to be done with this abandoned land. So, I think, [in] every transition there are going to be negatives, but look at the positives. This was a junk pile," Ryan recalls.
"Now people are eating from it. I know there are complaints, but we do not have the 230,000 people [anymore]."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106492824
East Piper Avenue now has its sidewalk back, along with a vegetable garden, a grassy expanse where a children’s playground will be built, and, close to one of those abutting abandoned houses, a mix-and-match orchard of 18 young fruit trees.
“This is a Golden Delicious tree,” Mr. Ryan says, reading the tags on the saplings. “This is a Warren pear. That’s a McIntosh. This is a Mongolian cherry tree. ...”
In many ways, this garden on East Piper Avenue reflects all of Flint, a city working hard to re-invent itself, a city so weary of serving as the country’s default example of post-industrial decline. Nearly every day its visitors’ bureau sends out a “Changing Perceptions of Flint” e-mail message that includes a call to defend the city’s honor:
“If a blogger is bashing Flint and Genesee County, go post a positive message. If there is an article about the depressed economy in Flint, go post something uplifting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/us/19land.html?_r=2
FLINT, Michigan -- Every summer, Carolyn Meekins watches with pride as neighbors and church members descend on the gardens she helps maintain on 11 vacant lots on the city's north side.
"We tell them to come pick what you need, so there's no way of measuring how much we actually produce. People just drive up with their bags and pick," Meekins said of the Urban Community Youth Outreach garden and greenhouse project on Philadelphia Boulevard. "We're starting to get enough seedlings now that we can share them, too."
Growing the vegetables and flowers is the easy part. But just ask Meekins what the group went through to build a simple greenhouse with donated materials.
It's a three-year tale of permits, reviews, site plan requirements and endless rounds of meetings with the city Planning Commission.
"In the end, what was originally a gift wound up being a $20,000 hoop house with no heater," Meekins said. "There were a lot of times we really wanted to give up."
Resolving issues such as this are at the heart of Flint's new urban agriculture collaborative, made up of individuals and organizations working to put a green lining on the city's gray cloud of vacant land.
http://blog.mlive.com/get-healthy-in-genesee/2009/07/flint_to_consider_ordinance_ch.htmlYes we can.
= new reply since forum marked as read
