Farming in the middle of the Motor City – a patch of green in the Rust Belt
Decades of industrial decline and urban flight have made Detroit the poster child for the deterioration of cities in the United States’ Rust Belt. Between 1950 and 2010, the city’s population fell 60 per cent from 1.8 million to roughly 714,000. But among the thousands of abandoned homes and decaying neighbourhoods, two novice farmers, Donnie and Fred, have been trying to bring about a different kind of revival than one might expect in the capital of US auto-making – agriculture. The French director Nora Mandray’s short documentary 3 Acres in Detroit follows the hardworking duo as they attempt to transform an abandoned home on a three-acre plot into a small farm and greenhouse, finding seeds of hope in the troubled city’s urban blight and overgrowth.
Director: Nora Mandray
Producer: Hélène Bienvenu
Website: Detroit, je t’aime
videoTravel
Retracing Mark Twain’s path, a filmmaker sets out to understand the mighty Mississippi
28 minutes
videoChildhood and adolescence
A neglected Dominican sugar town, as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old local
11 minutes
videoThinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
16 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
videoEconomics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
videoEnvironmental history
In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests
13 minutes
videoSocial psychology
What happened when a crypto scam swept over a sleepy town in the Caucasus
18 minutes
videoMeaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
videoEarth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes