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I think that there are more experiments in urban agriculture being run in Detroit than anywhere else in the world.

http://www.michigandaily.com/news/urban-farmings-growing-pop...

Shrimp anyone? http://ns.umich.edu/new/multimedia/videos/22324-u-m-student-...

It is a really interesting outcome of the property value inversion there. Historically the margins on farming have been so low that you need massive scale to even come close to achieving profitability, and the capital cost of land generally rules out anything close to a major city.

But when land is available very inexpensively, the savings in transportation can be a bigger factor.

Add in the fact that Detroit has been a food desert. Lots of young engineers moving downtown and not a single supermarket in the city until the past year.

There are thousands of empty buildings and enough raw land to fuel dozens of farms as soon as the blighted houses are torn down. What has held up farming efforts is Michigan's right to farm law which never anticipated the rise of urban farms when it was written.

http://www.michigan.gov/mdard/0,4610,7-125-1599_1605---,00.h...

Some more background and recent history: http://grist.org/article/food-from-motown-to-growtown-the-gr... https://www.guernicamag.com/features/food_among_the_ruins/

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