Las Parcelas, a community garden in the Norris Square neighborhood of Philadelphia, began with brushes and paint, rather than shovels and seeds. Plans for the space began in the 1980s. It was not until a summer day in 1992, however, that a “massive multi-agency, anti-drug raid” in “The Badlands” (so called because of the area’s […]
Detroit was still a burgeoning industrial center in 1918 when John and Elizabeth Crews ended a journey “through six states seeking a home” and settled in the city. As part of the Great Migration, when African Americans began moving to Detroit in large numbers from the South for employment opportunities and an escape from Jim […]
When mayor Hazen S. Pingree (1840-1901) began his term, he did not plan to make Detroit a garden city. An influential reformer on many fronts, he became a major proponent of vacant lot cultivation during the economic crisis of 1893, which left him searching for solutions to help unemployed laborers in the city, many of […]