Via the Rustbelt Intellectual blog:

“In the postindustrial era, nature is reclaiming parts of nearly every old Rustbelt city. Deer and foxes inhabit Philadelphia’s vast Fairmount Park system. And scrubby lots are reverting to grass and weeds. Nature’s reclamation of the city isn’t quite as dramatic in the City of Brotherly Love as it is in Detroit and Cleveland, where large-scale abandonment has resulted in the return of the prairie. On Detroit’s once densely-packed East Side (a far cry from Gabor’s East Side) pheasants have reclaimed vast tracts of open land.

It’s all to easy–and oversimple–to describe this process as one of urban decline. A better phrase is urban transformation. Brownfields are becoming greenfields, rubble strewn vacant lots are becoming gardens, and many cities now have neighborhood-based agribusinesses. Urban farmers are remaking parts of most Rustbelt cities.

It’s fitting that Philadelphia, America’s first city, is on the cutting-edge of reconciling farm and city. Community groups and activists have set up farms in such unlikely places as the site of the former Mill Creek housing project in West Philadelphia, on the ruins of an old factory in Kensington, and on the grounds of two local schools (which provide mint to a high-end candy maker). Urban farming is not going to solve the problems of massive disinvestment and deindustrialization, but it brings life to left-for-dead urban spaces and provides produce for urban residents who would otherwise be left to fend for themselves in understocked neighborhood grocery stores.”