Vacant land and buildings are among Detroit’s most valuable assets for its future.” The statements sounds like a real-estate commercial parody, but it comes from the most widely cited development plan for Detroit, the Detroit Future City Strategic Framework (DFCSF).

How could anybody consider vacant lots and abandoned buildings assets? For years, vacancy, dressed as blight, has been the bogeyman of Detroit. But in the mid-2000s there began to emerge another, pastoral idea of the city. According to this vision, capitalism — and people — had left. Detroit was a non-enforcement zone. All you had to do was move in to the vacant land, start your own urban farm, and use that to build community.

Some began referring to Detroit as a new frontier, with one particularly enthusiastic Craigslist Portland poster encouraging his other Portlandians to come with him on a “Michigan trail.” The Detroit left, for their part, did take this opportunity to expand urban farms and improve food access through locally grown produce.