Detroit is an interesting case of how a shrinking city becomes useful for some investors.
IIRC, I was looking up the prices of various lots, and many homes were $1000! Now, I don't live anywhere close to Detroit, but the idea of spending maybe $10,000 to $100,000 for dozens or even hundreds of houses is interesting.
Developing for humans may be a problem: Hundreds-of-thousands of people have left Detroit, leaving the city in the state that it is in today. But the houses and infrastructure (roads, water, electricity) may be useful for some niches, even in a "ghost town" situation (Or perhaps: more of a "ghost suburb" situation. Neighborhoods with shrinking populations will naturally have weaker schools, causing more people to leave, causing taxes to go up on the remaining people, causing more people to leave, etc. etc. Its a bad death-spiral effect).
I think I recall an article about how one writers group was buying up neighborhoods to station writers-circles, effectively creating a community of writers imported from around the country to one location, so that the writer-circle can leverage each other as an author support group.
I haven't heard of this Bee Farm thing, but I would have expected that sort of thing to be better in a more rural community.
In any case: redeveloping all of that land and making it useful (as opposed to broken down neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure) is a big question for Detroit... and investors / businessmen. There's probably a lot of opportunity there.
You also become responsible for any unpaid property taxes, because they are attached to the property rather than to the person who owned it when the debt was incurred.
From my understanding, there's also a caveat that you have to live in the home. Or have a tenant or something similar. I think it has (had?) something to do with preventing outside speculators from holding properties while the structures become (further) dilapidated and/or collapse.
> I haven't heard of this Bee Farm thing, but I would have expected that sort of thing to be better in a more rural community.
Well, first, bee colonies have been shown to be more productive in urban environments than in rural environments.
Secondly, there are acres and acres of open green land where Detroit used to be. It's unusable for brownfield development or cash cropping because of soil contamination, but could conceivably be used for pasturage or bee foraging. I image any problems have more to do with rent-seeking politics than technical issues.
> I haven't heard of this Bee Farm thing, but I would have expected that sort of thing to be better in a more rural community. Rural areas are often green deserts.
I’m not so sure. Suburbia where I am has a lot of plants, and abandoned sections likely have even more. That’s a shelter from weather and a food source.
My suburban hives averaged way more than industry averages (65kgs each) and they are suburban. Good beekeeping wasn’t why.
Similar situation to Berlin after the fall of the wall.
What happened here was that new college grads, artists, punks, and people generally looking for a cheap place to live moved into unrenovated apartments...
And now it's a tech hub and haven of cheap living ;)
IIRC, I was looking up the prices of various lots, and many homes were $1000! Now, I don't live anywhere close to Detroit, but the idea of spending maybe $10,000 to $100,000 for dozens or even hundreds of houses is interesting.
Developing for humans may be a problem: Hundreds-of-thousands of people have left Detroit, leaving the city in the state that it is in today. But the houses and infrastructure (roads, water, electricity) may be useful for some niches, even in a "ghost town" situation (Or perhaps: more of a "ghost suburb" situation. Neighborhoods with shrinking populations will naturally have weaker schools, causing more people to leave, causing taxes to go up on the remaining people, causing more people to leave, etc. etc. Its a bad death-spiral effect).
I think I recall an article about how one writers group was buying up neighborhoods to station writers-circles, effectively creating a community of writers imported from around the country to one location, so that the writer-circle can leverage each other as an author support group.
I haven't heard of this Bee Farm thing, but I would have expected that sort of thing to be better in a more rural community.
In any case: redeveloping all of that land and making it useful (as opposed to broken down neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure) is a big question for Detroit... and investors / businessmen. There's probably a lot of opportunity there.