DETROIT-Businessman Matt Allen crosses Warren Ave. in lower east Detroit and wades into a neighbourhood.
Houses and a high school once cluttered this block. Now, there is nothing but calf-high grass and a few scruffy trees as far as you can see. He is looking for houses.
"On that block there is one," he says, pointing to a white clapboard house with a green Ford parked out front. Its tires are gone, its back window smashed.
"On the next block there is none. On that block there is none. On that block there is none. On that block there are three."
Behind him, a rust-coloured cigar factory slumps empty, its windows broken. A few blocks down there is a store, but it's boarded up. A man sits with a pit bull on the steps of a dilapidated house next door. Its windows are covered with plywood.
"You'll see a house over there that looks pretty good. But look closer. There's a hole in the roof," Allen says.
A whisper of sidewalk peeks out from beneath the grass. A brown hawk flies overhead.
If you couldn't see the letters "GM" on the top of a tower in the distance, you'd think this was the country. But it's central Detroit - the equivalent of Leslieville in Toronto.
"From McDougall to Chene St., from Warren all the way to Forest Ave., this is 35 contiguous acres and there are five structures on the whole thing," Allen says. "See what I'm saying? It gets real easy, real fast to do the math."
The math adds up like this - Detroit was built for 1.8 million people. Now, half that number live here. Every third house is gone or empty. The former residents are not coming back.
Instead of building yet another flashy casino, Allen is pitching a radical - and highly contentious - solution. Empty whole parts of the city, dig up the concrete, yank down the light poles, and reclaim what was here before a guy named Henry Ford moved to town: farmland.
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From Motown to Hoetown
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By Catherine Porter
The Star - MI, Sept 26, 2009
Straight to the Source
