Detroit City's Challenge-Do they have an answer?

I was recently reading an article in the Fortune Magazine of January 18 2010 that I thought had an interesting pitch on city regeneration. It appears that nearly 2 million people used to live in Detroit. Now there are fewer than 900,000. David Rothwell, CEO of Business Leaders of Michigan says "The big challenge is, What do you do with a population of 700,000 that can accommodate three times that much?" The city has enormous amount of abandoned land nearly 40 square miles in a 139 sq mile footprint that is easily  bigger than San Francisco, Boston and Manhattan combined. One solution being seriously considered is farming. The American Institute of Architects has come to this conclusion in a recent report: "Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale". It might be worth watching how the city of Detroit tackles this one! 

It appears already that a wealthy resident of Detroit; Mr John Hantz has started a small pilot scheme of 50 acres. One advantage might be that the distribution costs would be lower with the production being closer to the population. 

Simon