Altered Land

Recently the Farmland Report reminded us that our most productive land used to sustain our growing populous is continuing to be swallowed up by new developments, roadways, malls etc.  The rate at which we are losing this land is staggering, an acre of farmland per 60 seconds.  That's pathetic.  Especially in a country that is in need of it's local agriculture, in need of trimming some obese fatness.

But what could be the flip side of this coin?  Are we building future shrinking suburbs?  Are we building a structure that will one day cradle the agricultural diversity our country needs?  Detroit is a common example as are numerous other rust belt cities who are demolishing vacant and foreclosed houses at an astonishing rate.  The ideas for these new vacancies?  Take the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative's concept called Biocellar published in the school's third series of "urban infill" titled Water|Craft.  Here is an idea that promotes reusing houses and their valuable foundations for environmental education, food and crop production, soil and compost production, and fish hatcheries.

I can imagine that common aerial that we see of suburbia, lawn, driveway, cookie cutter house multiplied by 10^100.  They are stale, they are boring, they are susceptible like a mono-culture.  I could easily believe that, just as Motown lost hundreds of thousands to a flailing economy, these suburbs could become vacant lots where economic shifts and environmental changes sent people look for the new American Dream.  And I can also see, from what we are learning now, that these divisions could become beautiful tapestries of crops.

In effect, the suburb is much like a living system, it grows out into our mono-culture fields, makes all kinds of shapes and eventually in some cases fails to take hold and dies.  Its physical structure is left behind and the opportunistic creatures amongst us move in.

In 20 to 30 years we may see the work that came from the fine students and professors at Kent State during this time and realize they paved the way for biological diversity in the most unlikely places.



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