Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City by John GallagherMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Written in 2010, this book precedes a lot of the positive changes in Detroit over recent years. Still it is much more hopeful, considered and objective than, say, Detroit: An American Autopsy. Wide in scope, the book considers Detroit's long history and the arc taken by post-industrial cities from the American Rustbelt to Turin, Italy. Turin provides a surprising template for what Detroit can do, as do successful programs in Philadelphia, Youngstown and the Genesee County Land Bank. The author explains well the issues with urban farming - getting land and operations into the 50-500 acre scale as well as the intriguing fact that this was already successfully done with Pingree's Potato Patches during a time of financial duress in the late 19th Century. This read has a lot of ideas and background for its slim volume and is worth reading by anyone interested in the possibility Detroit now represents - what to do about all those square miles! - or urban revitalization in general.
Also, I learned a new word: phytoremediation for using plants, especially spinach, to leach heavy metal from soil and make it safe for edible harvests.
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