Soft Path/Cross Disciplinary Solutions/Locally Grown Food

Don, thank you for the link to Agriburbia (http://agriburbia.com/) in your comments on the last blog posting. This is an interesting company that helps communities and individuals implement locally grown food, thereby increasing the standard of living and making the community more sustainable.

Agriburbia also illustrates several Human Life Project® concepts.

1. Promote "soft path" solutions (http://www.rmi.org/) in which smaller, local systems (farming in this example, but could apply to water use, energy production, etc.) are used in place of larger systems. A larger system such as the Hover Dam infrastructure for storing water can have a more negative impact on the ecological system, for example, compared to a series of strategically placed smaller projects.

2. Creative cross disciplinary solutions are essential to solving complex problems such as food supply. While harder to conceptualize and get approval to implement, these solutions can have a greater positive impact on the community as a whole. (For those with engineering backgrounds, think of system engineering vs. component engineering.)

3. Many great solutions are emerging to make better use of limited resources. The Human Life Project® defines The MORE Factor as Mobilizing Ownership in Resource Effectiveness. New technologies and ideas like Agriburbia offer tangible solutions for communities to conserve on water, energy, and land. Communities that plan for future growth will experience the freedom to meet, even exceed, the challenges of providing for humanity.

Don's Original Posting:

http://humanlifeproject.blogspot.com/2010/03/urban-renewal.html#comments

Urban Renewal

Many cities have initiated a variety of steps to renew the inner city. Baltimore was able to pull off a respectable renewal of their waterfront area in the 1990s with the completion of Camden Yard and the Ravens football stadium (http://www.mdoe.org/urbanrenewinnerharb.html). The 16^th Street Mall and LoDo redevelopment in Denver is another success story. Most of these initiatives revolve around replacing or renovating buildings. Detroit's idea of urban renewal is quite radical, replacing buildings with high tech farms.

Article supporting Farming Detroit: http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/29/news/economy/farming_detroit.fortune/index.htm?cnn=yes

Article against Farming Detroit: http://www.fastcompany.com/1571975/farming-the-city-in-order-to-save-it-demolishing-density-in-detroit

Article Farming Detroit: http://www.guernicamag.com/spotlight/1182/food_among_the_ruins/

If this idea moves forward, Detroit should consider adopting the Zero Waste Zone concepts that Atlanta has implemented (Zero Waste Zone Blog Entry). In particular, the idea of composting the waste food from restaurants and using this as fertilizer for the urban farms.

What do people think about locally grown food vs. dependence on importing food from other states or internationally?

It seems like all other ideas to revitalize Detroit (for example the casinos) have failed. Do people think that farming could help bring jobs back to Detroit, bring families back to Detroit, and be beneficial to the community?