Can Planting Vegetables in Vacant Lots Save Cleveland?

[n2doc]

By Danielle Venton August 2, 2011


Backyard vegetables can fight crime, improve health, and boost the economy.

By transforming its vacant lots, backyards and roof-tops into farming plots, the city of Cleveland could meet all of its fresh produce, poultry and honey needs, calculate researchers from Ohio State University. These steps would save up to $155 million annually, boost employment and scale back obesity.

“Post-industrial cities like Cleveland are struggling with more and more unused land, these become sources of crime,” said Parwinder Grewal co-author of a study “Can cities become self-reliant in food?” published July 20 in Cities.

“I was motivated to show how much food a city could actually produce by using this land,” he said. “We could address global problems through this way of gardening.”


more
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/growing-self-sufficient-cities/#more-69383

[WCGreen]

1. I have a good friend who took over some lots in the inner city here in

Cleveland and is setting up a vineyard...

We just drove through one of the most blighted areas of the city yesterday and saw literally dozens of community gardens and small plots under cultivation. It's really cool. If Cleveland can hold together politically, i think we are poised to re-emerge as the Best Location in the Nation, the jingle they came up with back in the 60's to tout Cleveland.

[n2doc]

2. I Wish you luck. Cleveland has been down too long n/t

[liberalmike27]

4. Gardens

Just look so cool don't they. They kind of make a city look more balanced.

[WCGreen]

6. A whole lot better than empty lots filled with broken bottles and trash...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Vegetables aren't the only things that will grow there...

A sense of community, of belonging, will occur.

People will realize they have things in common with their neighbors, and they will unite to make a better city...

This is a terrific idea!

[formercia]

5. +1000 n/t

[WCGreen]

7. AMEN!

[bvar22]

8. Only if you get some rain,

and the daytime temp stays under 105F.

Otherwise, it is an exercise in futility.
This has been a HARD year for those of us who grow our own food.
:(

[eleny]

9. Fantastic!

Can you imagine how it would be if they expanded and planted orchards, too? We have a number of "volunteer" fruit trees on our place. The latest are a peach tree growing behind our storage sheds that was probably brought in by a squirrel that ate a peach from a neighbor's tree. And then there's some tart Manchu cherry trees who are a complete mystery to us.

Anyhow, fruit trees are easy and produce so much with little effort.

This kind of reminds me of early drawings of New York City when it was still full of farms.

Good luck to Cleveland. A city that never gives up.

[pscot]

10. No

Cleveland is doomed. As it should be.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

11. Oh, hush.

This is entirely inappropriate.

[pscot]

12. I'm sure you're right, Peggy

At my age I should probably have better impulse control. :hi:

[happyslug]

13. Reminds me of the story of Constantinople when the Turks took it in 1453

Constantinople had been the largest city in the world from 410 AD (When the Vista-Goths took Rome, which had been the largest city in the world since at least 100 BC), and 630 when Rome's population was reduced to zero when the Ostro-Goths vacated it as the Eastern Roman Imperial Army was about to re-take it, Rome, during the Italian Wars during the reign of Emperor Justinian changed hands five times in ten years. Constantinople had been clearly the smaller city till at least 410, even through Constantine had made his Capital at Constantinople since the early 300s. Rome appears to still be the larger of the two when the Vandals took it in 460 AD and sacked it for 60 days (The Vista-goths only held Rome for three days, both times the time of the "sacking" and what was to be "sacked" had been agreed to between the sacker and the Senate of Rome, notice NOT the Emperor, the Senate).

Anyway, by 630 Constantinople was clearly the larger of the two cities, China did NOT even have a city the size of Constantinople. The nearest competitor only existed after 700 AD and that was Baghdad, which when the Mongols took in 1260, said it was the largest city they had ever taken, and by then the Mongols had ALL of China.

Constantinople held the position of the largest city in the World till 1204 when it was conquered for the first time by a foreign Army when the Fourth Crusade took it (The Fourth Crusade is the only Crusade actually CONDEMNED by the pope AS IT WAS BEING ORGANIZED and later condemned again when it took Constantinople). Any way the Crusaders set up what is called the "Latin Kingdom" to rule the Constantinople, and it did rule it for about 80 years till the Greeks took it back.

I bring this up for the reports on Constantinople before 1204 are consistent, it was a rich, high populated and commercial city. In many ways like New York, London or Tokyo of today. On the other hand by the time the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, 250 years later, it was a low populated city which had become more a collection of smaller cities within the old walls of Constantinople. In a City that was packed with people as late as 1204, you had open fields, crops growing and animals grazing within those same walls in 1453. That is how far Constantinople went down by 1453.

Under the Turks, Constantinople did some recovery but did not reach its 1204 population till the affect of modern industrialization hit it in the early 20th century (Some reports say late 1800s, but we are talking about educated guesses so both may be right and wrong). For example Rome is believed to have matched its ancient population during the same time period, but only in the last 20 years has Rome's population passed Milan's to become the largest city in Italy.

I just bring this up, for such a decline has happened before, Constantinople is just the best example of it and we hear of the same condition in Rome during the Middle ages, where thousands of people lived in ancient times, by the Middle ages and until relatively recently grazed sheep or crops grew. I see the same for Cleveland and other Urban cores, crops being grown then rebirth as a place for people to live.