In Detroit, residents began turning vacant lots into urban farms, and today the city says it has more than 2,200 gardens and farms

Some Detroit neighborhoods now grow food on land that used to sit empty for years: rows of tomatoes, a beehive or two, chicken coops, residents out tending garden beds between other errands. None of it started as a citywide program. It grew out of individual decisions, one lot at a time, that empty land was better used for growing food than for leaving it to sit. None of this started as a citywide program. It grew out of people deciding that a vacant lot next door was better used for growing food than left empty. According to the City of Detroit's Office of Sustainability, the city now counts more than 2,200 gardens and urban farms within its borders.

If you grew up hearing about Detroit mostly through headlines about factory closures and population loss, this part of the story rarely got told. But it started with residents, not a large government program.

The history behind Detroit's urban farming movement
Detroit’s practice of growing food on unused land dates back to the 1890s, when Mayor Hazen Pingree urged residents to plant potatoes on idle lots during a rough economic period. Fast forward to the 1970s, and Mayor Coleman Young's Farm-A-Lot program brought the idea back. Then came 2008. The financial crisis left thousands of Detroit properties sitting empty, and urban farming picked up in a way it hadn't before.


What changed is that the city eventually built a framework around what residents were already doing. Detroit passed a formal urban agriculture ordinance in 2013, laying out clearer rules on zoning, land use, and permits. Then, in 2023, it went a step further by creating a dedicated Urban Agriculture Division, which now operates within the Office of Sustainability. Its job is to help growers navigate land access, water, and food policy, rather than leaving them to figure it out on their own. That backing appears to be one reason the movement continued to grow.

How to start an urban farm or garden in Detroit
Curious about starting your own plot? The process is straightforward. The city's Urban Agriculture Division holds office hours where staff walk residents through permits, zoning, and land use questions directly. According to the City of Detroit's Office of Sustainability, the city is also working with a coalition of agriculture groups, known as the Water Consortium, to make water access for farms and gardens easier across Detroit, since installing water taps has historically been one of the trickier parts of urban farming. If you want to scope things out before committing, the city keeps a public dashboard of permitted farms and gardens so you can see where the activity already is. Support and land access may help first-time growers stay involved longer.

Detroit's 2,200 gardens and farms, by the numbers
That 2,200 figure isn't a rough guess. It comes straight from the city's own urban agriculture division, which tracks gardens and farms as part of its land access and food policy work. Researchers have also examined how much vacant land the city has available for agriculture. According to Michigan State University's agriculture extension research, a public land-grant university program, Detroit has roughly 9 square miles of publicly available vacant land. Their estimate suggests that a few thousand acres of that land, if farmed well, could supply a meaningful portion of the fresh fruits and vegetables residents need. Those numbers help illustrate why city planners see empty lots as potential sites for growth.

The researchers estimated that 2,000 acres could produce up to 75 percent of Detroit’s vegetables and about half of its fruit for 900,000 people, but Hamm said scaling that up would require roughly 700 new farmers. They also warned that larger city farms would face soil quality and contamination issues, making bioremediation and statistical sampling essential before food could be grown safely at scale.

Why Detroit's urban farming movement matters for food access
Detroit is not the only city dealing with limited food access, not by a long shot. The U.S. Department of Agriculture describes a food desert as an area with limited access to affordable, nutritious food, especially in lower-income neighborhoods, and the agency has worked with cities nationwide to close those gaps. Parts of Detroit have long fit that description. Detroit's response has included a growing mix of farms, markets, and community programs. Farms like D-Town Farm, run by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and networks such as Grown in Detroit have turned scattered garden plots into something closer to a real food supply chain, complete with farmers markets, cooking classes, and CSA shares for families who sign up.

The bottom line
The development of urban agriculture in Detroit did not stem from any policy imposed from above; it resulted from people using available spaces for planting even before such policies existed. With more than 2,200 urban gardens and farms, Detroit's urban agricultural movement is one example of this process.