I moved to Detroit almost 10 years ago, largely because I was interested in learning more about the city’s burgeoning community gardens. At the time, little media interest was being paid to Detroit or its urban agriculture movement, and it certainly was not a place folks were looking to for the future of city gardening.

Not long after my arrival, my sister hit me with a sucker punch of a question: “Don’t you ever worry that your work in community gardening is contributing to gentrification?”

I vehemently denied her charges, but in the back of my mind I had already been turning over the question, and feared that she might be right. Over the years, her question has stuck with me, and it seems especially pressing now, as development in Detroit is ramping up. Proposals for a light rail system, construction of a high-end grocery store, and the rehabbing of luxury lofts all have folks wondering where this will lead. Some see it as Detroit’s rebound, others worry that rents will begin to skyrocket and the working class will be driven out.

Looking at the Detroit landscape, there is still so much empty land, and so many vacant buildings, it can often be difficult to imagine gentrification even happening. I’ve met people who say “a little gentrification would be a good thing for Detroit.”

I disagree.

There are things that can and need to change about the city, but change in a neighborhood is often organic — one group of people finds themselves in better economic situations and moves on. Gentrification is systematic; it involves the displacement of people against their will. City governments use economic incentives to attract higher-income people and the businesses that cater to them. Rents and property taxes go up, and those who have historically lived in a community have no choice but to move elsewhere.

Gentrification should not be confused with community development — or neighborhood improvement, through organizing and hard work by the members of that community. Places like the South Bronx, Harlem, the South Side of Chicago, and the Mission District in San Francisco have all been improved drastically by hard-working neighborhood activists only to see them increasingly vulnerable to gentrification as conditions improve.

Urban agriculture can be a force for good in under-resourced neighborhoods. It can provide job training, access to healthy food, and it has also recently been linked — in one study at least — to reduced crime rates. But many of the people of color I have known and worked with say it also inevitably attracts young white people, which — while not necessarily the cause of gentrification — is often a sure sign that it’s on the way.

Detroit’s Birdland garden before it was bulldozed.

Frank Donner was part of a garden in Detroit which was recently bulldozed to make room for a parking lot. The garden was started around 2003, and over the years Donner saw major changes. “The garden stabilized some vacant land, attracted the eye of people passing by who were interested in flowers and fruit trees,” he recalls. It also served as a community gathering spot. “There were a lot more people stopping by and asking questions.”

The same garden before it was paved over to make a parking lot.

The business that would eventually take over the garden’s lot opened in 2005. It was at times supportive — it was willing to provide water to the garden — but, Donner says,”I don’t think the owner ever really got what we were doing.” When he started seeing “white women in sports bras jogging in the evening,” he knew that the neighborhood was well on its way to being gentrified. It wasn’t long after that the lot was bought by the business next door and the hard and painful task of digging up fruit trees, grape vines, and other perennials began.

There are many factors that can cause a neighborhood to change, and the community garden was only one of “a variety of reasons the neighborhood was ripe for gentrification,” adds Donner. For one, it was conveniently located near downtown Detroit. He points to another garden, called the Georgia Street Garden (on the east side of Detroit), as an exception.

“Georgia Street is doing a lot for the community but is never going to contribute to gentrification.” It’s also located far away from the central business district, from good jobs, and from the area’s major highways.

Karen Washington is an urban farmer from the Bronx who helped start the community garden across the street from her house — The Garden of Happiness — in 1988.

“You had people who wanted to take back their community and got together and turned those empty lots into gardens. For me it was the first community organizing experience, going into these lots, cleaning them out, and starting to grow,” Washington explains.

Initially, she says the community garden movement was a means to take pride in and feel a sense of ownership in low-income neighborhoods. While growing food was important, it was secondary to the desire to push drug dealers out, stop illegal dumping, and create a little beauty in areas that were battling blight and absentee landlords.

Washington points to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bushwick and Park Slope, which have both seen a great deal of gentrification in recent years. “As the complexion of the community changed, so has the complexion of the community gardens.” Rather than seeing these gardens as a cause of the shift, Washington sees it in reverse. “Gentrification was the cause of seeing more of a white presence in the community gardens,” she says.

But the shift away from community gardens toward scaled-up, more food-focused, often for-profit urban farming is a different story.

“You have this new yuppie group coming in that is gung ho about urban agriculture … but the movement wasn’t about urban agriculture, it was about survival, taking back our communities,” she says. “Now you have people coming into gardens that have established histories, that were built on the backs of people who made it safe for you to come in, and you’re gonna talk about urban agriculture? You cannot leave out … the history and the legacy of the elders who were there long before so you can do whatever you wanna do.”

Washington makes an important point. In recent years, the media seems to have shifted the spotlight from community gardens to urban farms. We see an increase in portrayals of young, white urban farmers on rooftops using expensive hydroponic systems. Because there’s often a profit motive, it’s easier to justify the land use to city officials and developers because it can mean jobs and economic development, thus bringing new value to that land, and making those communities ripe for gentrification.

It won’t surprise you to hear that, as a young white person who manages an urban farm, I’m still left wondering about my role in gentrification. The projects I’ve worked with don’t seem to have increased property values and forced people out of the neighborhood, but I can’t say the same for the impact of other current, or proposed future, projects. Could my work contribute to a neighborhood that is one day filled with luxury lofts, rather than the rehabbed houses and affordable housing it needs? And are those concerns a reason not to act, to try to make a difference in the first place? Probably not.

I moved to Detroit not because I had answers, but because I had questions. I moved not into one of the hip neighborhoods, but what I would call “real Detroit” — far off the beaten path for any New York Times photographers; a middle class/lower income African-American neighborhood. My wife and I were some of the only white folks around. I had neighbors who spent hours schooling me in the history of the neighborhood, Detroit, urban farming and gardening, racism in the community, and much, much more. I spent what felt like months just exploring the city, volunteering at community gardens, sharing tea on stoops and meals with all sorts of folks while listening to their stories.

Over time, Detroit became home. I found myself more invested in the work, and developing more of a leadership role in the urban farming world. This opened me up to criticism. People I greatly respected started questioning the proliferation of white people in leadership roles in the Detroit “food movement.” I admit to recoiling a bit, feeling defensive, but it would have been wrong not to face these critiques. So I listened to my critics’ concerns, and talked with them about how I could address them.

In recent years I’ve worked to make changes at the organization I work with — Earthworks Urban Farm — based on the feedback I heard; we moved our focus toward social justice, and reevaluated our decision-making and hiring processes. We worked to develop a residents and business association that we work closely with. We developed partnerships with groups that were actively promoting justice as their work, and learned more from them. I became a part of a group that sponsored anti-racism trainings in Detroit, and became active in a white anti-racist group. (While gentrification by definition is an issue of class, as long as wealth inequality falls along racial lines, race will be an important piece of the puzzle. Hipsters and artists have often been implicated in gentrification, and while both groups are often diverse in race and class, they are not the beneficiaries of the economic changes of gentrification. The land developers, landlords, and banks are the ones who really benefit, and those groups are most often white.)

Earthworks and I still have a lot of work to do, but we’re doing what we can to make sure urban agriculture is more than just a catalyst for gentrification. We’re rooting our work in the history of growing food in Detroit, and our values are deeply grounded in social justice. We might not be perfect, but we are trying, and that gives me hope.

Are you working in urban agriculture and want to promote social justice too? Here are some suggestions you might find helpful:

• Learn the history of the community you are working in. Understand how it was developed, which indigenous communities lived there before, and what polices shaped it and changed it.

• If you are not from the community you are working in, I recommend spending more time listening — really actively listening — than talking.

• You don’t have to take credit for good ideas to see them enacted. And even if you have some good ideas, don’t assume those ideas haven’t been tried before, or that no one else has had them.

• Seek out established leaders and support them.

• Accept criticism graciously and don’t immediately defend yourself. Take it in and evaluate it slowly.

• Find mentors you trust to help guide you in your work.

Photo: Patrick Crouch

Q. You haven’t always been an urban farmer. What did you do before this?

A. I worked at Detroit Public Schools. I started out with the Head Start Center and then I went to the middle school, to the Ed Tech, [which is] now the Computer Lab. I started farming because they laid me off and didn’t call me back. Farming is not making a living, it’s just keeping food in my freezer. I try to sell some so I can get some more equipment, so it will be easier for me to farm.

Q. What neighborhood are we in? What is it like?

A. This is the northeast side — near the city airport. It’s surrounded by graveyards on three sides and then the other barrier is the railroad track; we are surrounded by railroad tracks, and sometimes those trains stay for like 30 minutes, so you are trapped; ain’t no way out.

Q. How long have you lived in this neighborhood?

A. Let’s see. I came here when my son was 4, so about 36, 37 years.

Q. So you’ve seen a lot of changes.

A. Yeah, when I came it was beautiful — there were grocery stores in the center, like in the middle of the neighborhood, but when the city came though here and bought everything up, they said [they were going to] enlarge the city airport. They bought up three and four blocks of houses and then left the rest of them there. They came in and ruined our neighborhood, and said they ran out of money and left us over here like that. I’m still here and I’m gonna stay here, ’cause I don’t want to go somewhere and start all over again. I don’t think I’d be able to pay for another house, and this one is already paid for. There was like 66 houses on this block, and now [there are] about six that people live in, and three need to be torn down, and the rest of it is empty. That’s where I’m putting my farm on, all the lots. [Editor's note: some are calling this practice "blotting." Here's a recent NPR story on blotting in Detroit.]

Q. How many lots are you farming now?

A. It’s like 28 lots.

Q. What are you growing on those lots?

Photo: Patrick CrouchA: Across the street I have my strawberry lot. I try to plant by lot. I have a collard green lot, a kale lot, an okra lot, an eggplant lot, green bean lot. I had a corn lot, but it didn’t work so well. Right now I have a garlic lot, I had a tomato lot, cucumber lot, squash, cabbage, broccoli, watermelon, cantaloupe. I like flowers, so I planted some of them. I had potatoes, mustard greens, turnip greens.

Q. That’s a lot of food!

A. Well, if it comes up it’s a lot, but I give some to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen. I sell some at Eastern Market, and Wayne State Market, but the cabbage does not sell so I don’t take cabbage there. (I still have about two of 300 pounds of cabbage I need to harvest.)

Q. So how much money are you making in a season?  

A. I was trying to reach for 3,000, but I only made it to two something. I have to add up the last bit; I haven’t got my last check. Every year I try to up it; the first year I made 1,000. The second year I went 2,000; this year I was trying to go for $3,000.

Q. So 28 lots, $3,000 — that’s a lot of work. Aren’t there easier ways to make money?

A. Well, I’m not doing this just to make money! I’m doing this because I love it. I love to see things grow from seeds.

Q. Do you come from a farming family?

A. Yeah, I grew up in a family that sharecropped, you know, the old-fashioned way. Near Orangeburg, S.C., but we lived out in the country, out close to the swamp. When our house burned down, a guy offered that if my dad worked for him, then we could stay in his house for free, because he had another house …The first year we worked our behinds off, we farmed 300 to 400 acres of cotton, plus the wheat, rye, oats, and corn. When you sharecrop you do the work, you get half the crop, and you split the cost of the fertilizer. After the first year we didn’t make nothing! After that first year, he would just take a bunch of cotton and hide it in the woods, or we wouldn’t make a dime. My mother always canned and had a lot of food so she always had like 500 jars of tomatoes, corn, squash, everything. She kept enough food to eat, and even had enough to feed the neighbor[s' family], and he had 12 kids.

I think that’s the best time of my life, because we learned how to get food out of the woods, like all kinds of berries; gooseberries, blackberries, raspberry, strawberry, plums, and these little black berries we called sparkleberries.

We would collect hickory, walnuts, and pecans. My mama would make us get big five gallon buckets and crack them and she would make fruit cakes. She would add a little dried fruit, but mostly it was nuts. They were good.

Q. So why did your family move up to Detroit?

A. They didn’t, just me! I came for one summer to stay with my aunt, and somehow my daddy talked them into having me stay, saying it’s better for me, and I don’t have to work. But I thought work was fun then.

Photo: Patrick Crouch[My aunt] had a store and I would work there before school and after school. Then I met my husband and he would walk me to school every day; he was there when I got out of school to walk me back home. That was nice because at the time it was the riot.

When we got married and moved to this neighborhood, we were the second black family on the street. It was so beautiful, there were houses everywhere, an apartment building down there, a restaurant, barber shop, hardware store, a bar, a steakhouse. There was a greenhouse with lots of flowers and plants, and a welding shop. We got along real well on this street until Devil’s Night started. Then they started lighting fires. We would stay up just about all night watching for fires, cause the houses were so close together, and the next day we would sleep. Mostly the teenagers would start fires. We had a nice big garage that you could drive your car into, with an apartment upstairs. They burned that down, and the one next door. Then people started moving out, and I didn’t blame them.

Then the [General Motors] Hamtramck plant closed and the rest of the people moved out because they lost their houses. They would pay somebody to burn it down to get insurance money, and they’d take the money and go. My husband got laid off for about a year, but they called him back. After that people just started moving out one by one until just about everyone was gone. All the younger people are gone, one or two older people are still here. Me and the girl next door and the people down the street are about my age, some are a little older. The rest are gone. I’m not gonna try and run with the rest of them, I just want to plant some food. Every time a house comes down I try to dig it out and plant some food, so that’s how I started.

When I first came over here I had a garden in the backyard, and when people started moving out, I started one lot, then moved on to the next lot, and I kept at it. Three years ago I started the lot where the greenhouse is. It still has a lot of rocks, and I’m still trying to get the dirt better. I’m trying to get more leaves and grass so I can make a big compost pile.

I found out that tomatoes will grow anywhere. I don’t care what kind of dirt you put tomatoes in, they will grow. String beans and okra will grow anywhere, and lima beans and peas, but they are slow-growing.

I’m really hoping the city will give me some answers. I want to buy the land, but I don’t know.

Q. What’s next for the farm?

A. The big plan is to have them let me close everything down and plow it all up. I want to go clear down to the five-acre park at the end of the street. You can’t really make too much with beans or peas unless you have an acre or more. I had one lot with lima beans and I [harvested] about 100 quarts off the one lot, and I would have had more if I had planted earlier.