What does it mean for urban life to see livestock grazing in post-industrial American cities?

Abstract

Until the nineteenth century, American urban dwellers cohabited with livestock and cities formed ecologically diverse spaces. In the late nineteenth century, a series of urban livestock policies coupled with industrial agricultural transformations displaced livestock to urban fringes and rural areas. These developments radically altered human–animal relationships in the urban context, limited economic opportunity and over time have shaped contemporary issues of food access and food justice within cities. Post-industrial cities in the United States, such as Detroit, are characterised by patterns of urban shrinkage and high levels of vacancy. Within this context, urban farming has emerged as a framework and movement to stabilise communities, address local food access and leverage vacancy towards new models of occupation. In 2013, the City of Detroit Urban Agricultural Ordinance was passed to formalise decades of community-driven urban agricultural practices. The ordinance provides guidelines for urban farms and gardens and for managing allied resources. Deliberation on urban agriculture and livestock ordinances continues today. While existing policies provide a framework for food-based development of neighbourhoods, they remain focused on the incremental scale of existing single-family housing and adjacent vacant plots versus larger assemblages that may participate in the production of new urban collectives and assemblages. Detroit’s current context presents opportunities to scale operations via new urban design typologies and socially integrated models that leverage vacancy to construct alternate, collective models of urban life. A speculative urban design proposition for Riverbend Farming Cooperative is presented and proposes a courtyard-based cooperative farming development incorporating permaculture and animal husbandry within a formerly residential superblock as an alternative model of urban development. Through this design speculation, the article reflects upon the social, economic and ecological potentials for cohabiting with livestock and illustrates opportunities and challenges for new models of community development balancing social, environmental and economic interests through new models of agri-urbanism.