Yesterday, we brought you our remarkably unscientific (seriously, it was written by this guy) list of the 10 cities most likely to get hammered by climate change. Today, we thought we’d give you the bright side, such as it is: the 10 towns to which we’ll all be flocking as the rest of the world goes to hell. You’re welcome. (Hey, we don’t call Grist “a beacon in the smog” for nothing.)

Seattle, Wash.

Seattleites are already used to everything being wet all the time, so a little flooding shouldn’t be a big deal – and that’s good, because in addition to the rising seas, climate models call for even more rain in Seattle. Higher tides and a redrawn coastline will require coastal cities to adapt, but unlike a lot of U.S. burgs, Seattle is taking it seriously, developing a comprehensive climate action plan and working to bolster food security and general resilience for changing times. Plus, while models foresee flooding, they don’t project the hipster inundation to reach Portlandic levels. And in a worst-case scenario, the Space Needle serves as an escape pod.

Homer, Alaska

Any town named after one of the Simpsons could probably stumble through a climate apocalypse on blind luck alone, but when it comes to climate change, Homer has been preparing like a Flanders. The town of 5,000 developed its first climate action plan way back in 2006, and has become a regional leader in renewable energy. It has also drawn the long straw in many climate models, which predict lower levels of sea-level rise and a longer growing season for the Kenai Peninsula. Sounds like a great place to grow Tomacco!

Detroit, Mich.

Lets talk straight for a minute. Detroit has been dealt more than its share of shitty hands, but if it can survive The Motor City Madman, Detroit can handle climate change. The Great Lakes may shrink, and Michigan may be drying out, but things could be looking up for Detroit’s urban farmers, and there are a lot of them. Combine that with a push to grow back the city’s trees, and the decay Detroit has faced could turn into a huge opportunity to reinvent itself in this warm, new world. Detroit also has more robocops per capita than any other major American metropolis, which has got to bode well for The Future.

Lancaster, Pa.

You want to talk low carbon footprint? You wondering who’s ready for a post fossil fuel world? I’ve got one word for you: Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Home of the Amish. The Amish’s small farms provide a model for low-impact agriculture: Livestock feed is grown on site, topsoil is maintained, and crop diversity is encouraged. Dutch Wonderland is also there, and since it’s Dutch and a wonderland, I’m assuming the owners have built plenty of dikes and the place is full of pancakes.

Nappanee, Ind.

You don’t want to live in Nappanee, I don’t want to live in Nappanee, but Nappanee is the home of Gulf Stream Coach, Inc. — not the Gulfstream that makes private jets, the Gulf Stream that makes trailers for FEMA. The company should do a brisk business in warmer times. After Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans, FEMA hurriedly bought 145,000 trailers at no bid prices. Sure, they might have had a slight formaldehyde problem, but nothing is perfect. At least FEMA brought them. It was a little different story after Superstorm Sandy laid waste to Long Island.

Cleveland, Ohio

Forbes called Cleveland the most miserable city in America. After all, it’s home to one of America’s most flammable rivers and the Browns. But Cleveland may be better able to weather climate change than any other town. It’s got huge agriculture potential, has just developed a climate action plan, and already has some of the best people in the universe (seriously, visit, it’s amazing) and a library covered in tiny adorable bronze people. Plus, the river water really isn’t all that flammable any more – which is not to say you’d want to drink the stuff.

Leadville, Colo.

If the climate shit impacts even more vigorously with the change fan than we thought, you’re gonna want to be far above the raging seas. But forget the Mile High City. With an elevation of 10,152 feet, Leadville, the highest incorporated city in the U.S., is almost two miles up! And while Denver faces drought, wildfires, sprawl and, most terrifyingly of all, rabbits, Leadville has a pair of lakes, a subarctic climate, and a total land area of only 1.1 square miles. Residents are also apparently already really into biking. We just have to keep sea-level rise to 10,151 feet or less.

Nashville, Tenn.

Nashville should be sitting pretty. It’s a nice, safe, 597 feet above sea level and a few hundred miles from the coast. It’s got plenty of fresh water and a 47 percent tree canopy (above the 40 percent generally considered healthy). Plus, Al Gore lives there, and he must know something. Nashville also has the Grand Ol’ Opry and if any business is going to thrive in the face of global catastrophe, it’s country music. When a country star’s dog runs away, it’s good for a gold record. How many do you think they’ll sell when that dog bursts into flame? Seriously, Nashville is set.

Burlington, Vt.

Living in Vermont is no picnic. The trees are the wrong color, maple syrup addiction runs rampant, 66 percent of the population is named Daryll, the locals live in constant fear of a PHISH reunion, and upon turning 30, Vermonters are forced to leave their loved ones to toil away their few remaining years in the Ben & Jerry’s mines. But Forbes magazine called Vermont the greenest state in the union. Burlington is small and adaptable, the city has a comprehensive climate action plan, and once you get there, there’s plenty to do even if the skiing goes. You’ll just have to live with all the flannel.

San Francisco, Calif.

I know what you’re thinking: Wasn’t San Francisco already destroyed by MegaShark? Well, the city survived – barely — and now boasts a climate action plan and a fetish for green tech, and may be one of the most sustainable cities in the world. Yes, it’s on the coast and that means trouble, but San Francsico’s ocean beach master plan acknowledges the inevitability of rising seas and includes a managed retreat from the most threatened areas. Besides, we’re pretty sure even the rising Pacific would run out of steam climbing Nob Hill.

One-year-old tabby cat MJ’s bike courier owner considers her an “indoor cat,” but he also considers a mohawk and a handlebar mustache “appropriate head accessories” so he may just be a generally confused person. Because MJ, who rides around Philly on her owner’s shoulder, is clearly at heart an outdoor cat who thrives on feeling the wind in her fur.

MJ’s human, Rudi Saldia, is a little cagey in this interview about whether he deliberately trained the kitty to be a bike fiend, or whether she expressed interest in taking a spin. If he did it on purpose to groom MJ as a conversation starter and YouTube star, we have to admire his savvy, because it worked — MJ and Saldia are now appearing in a commercial for GoPro cameras, which Saldia uses to film himself and his passenger. Saldia claims, though, that he originally made his YouTube videos only to prove to his mom that MJ liked to cruise around on his shoulder.

The town I grew up in had a cat who would ride around on the back of a motorcycle (we called him Motorcat). So this stuff is not new to me. But Motorcat wore a helmet, and I’m a little concerned about MJ. “We’re always safe out there,” Saldia assured the AP, but we think he should look into one of these:

The Night Heron was an invitation-only bar built illegally inside a Chelsea water tower in New York City that was open for just a few weekends this spring. Despite the arcane, timepiece-based invite process, Atlantic Cities and The New York Times both made it there. Here’s how a guest would find her way to this spot, according to Atlantic Cities:

The entrance tickets … are in the form of a pocket watch — which can only be obtained as a gift — with a reservation number and instructions inside advising against high heels and to be ready for a bit of climbing … After squeezing through a trap door, you are welcomed into a candlelit wooden cylinder outfitted with a bar, drink tables, and chandelier, all made from upright piano parts. You sip an aromatic amber concoction made by a dapper proprietor and survey this cedar jewel box, seemingly constructed by a pauper of exquisite taste.

Here’s what that felt like:

All this was possible because, even in a city of gentrifying neighborhoods and investment, there are still building owners who don’t pay much attention to their property.The New York Times reports:

Mr. Austin located a suitable water tower by scouring Buildings Department records for violations with egregious scaffold fines. That can indicate a neglectful landlord, he said, which meant it might be a vacant building ripe for adopting as one’s own.

At Atlantic Cities, Dan Glass suggests that the project shares roots with urban exploration, but N.D. Austin, the organizer, has a different way of describing this project: “transgressive placemaking.” We call it an awesome way to have a few illicit drinks with friends and then break your neck getting back down.

Here at Grist, climate change is our bread and melting butter. But this month, we’re feeling especially hot and bothered. As part of our in-depth look at the warming planet, we’ve compiled a list of the U.S. cities that we think will be in the hottest water as the mercury rises — in some cases, up to their foreheads.

A quick note about New Orleans: It’s hard not to include a city that’s already lost so much, but the Big Easy’s new $14.5 billion, state-of-the-art levee system is finally up-and-running just eight short years after Katrina. Some warn that the new system, designed to stop a once-in-a-century storm — the kind that seem to be coming about every other Thursday these days – is already out of date. But it’s better than nothing, especially when compared to the rest of the country, so we’re giving New Orleanians credit as most-improved. That said, here we go!

Phoenix, Ariz.

The founders of Phoenix spotted a particularly dry stretch of desert and thought, “You know what this place could use? Golf courses.” Unfortunately, this town of 4.5 million has been getting hotter by almost a degree a decade since 1961;  in 2011 Phoenix had 33 days over 110. In heat like that, air conditioning is a life-and-death issue, and that A/C runs on America’s electric grid. That’s scary enough, but the power on that grid comes from dams on the Colorado River — the same shrinking river that wets Phoenix’s enormous whistle. Then again, Phoenicians named their town after a bird that periodically bursts into flames, so they must have seen this coming.

Louisville, Ky.

The only major American city getting hotter faster than Phoenix is Louisville, where the temperature has risen a sweltering 1.67 degrees per decade since 1961. A big part of Louisville’s problem is the startling lack of trees. Trees shade a mere 10 percent of the urban center, just a quarter of what experts say the town needs. Imagining the Kentucky Derby when it gets too hot for horses is bad enough, but if global warming takes our bourbon, shit gets real.

Honolulu, Hawaii

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Shocker alert: As sea levels rise around the globe, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific might not be the ideal place to pitch your beach blanket — and because of the oddities of sea level rise, Honolulu could be looking at even more water than other coastal cities. At least climate models predict fewer typhoons, so that’s good for Honolulu, right? Wrong. The ones that hit will be bigger and last longer (that, I believe, is what she said), and paradise is square in the crosshairs. The only thing hotter than a Hawaiian Tropics sunscreen ad may be the actual Hawaiian Tropics.

Miami, Fla.

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Like everywhere else on the Atlantic seaboard, Miami faces stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg. If sea levels rise according to projections, Miami’s aging sewage system will be utterly destroyed, and the city’s famous South Beach neighborhood will be underwater in a few short decades. If Miami Vice were set in the year 2050, Crocket and Tubbs wouldn’t be driving a Ferrari down Ocean Ave. — they’d be rowing it through a heaving sea of human poop. For their sake, I just hope cocaine floats.

Barrow, Alaska

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You wanna talk tough? The Inupiat people have been living in Barrow, one of the most unforgiving parts of the planet, for 1,500 years. Have you seen Thirty Days of Night? They fought off a whole army of vampires – and not the pretty-boy Twilight kind. But climate change is a more frightening enemy. The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet: Barrow’s ice is receding so quickly that the Mythical Northwest Passage has dropped the “Mythical” sobriquet, and traditional native foods are disappearing. The only thing thriving? Scientists, who arrive in droves to study the catastrophe. I wonder if climatologists taste like seal?

San Diego, Calif.

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You know that giant statue of the sailor kissing a nurse on the San Diego waterfront? Good thing it’s 50 feet tall: They might be able to keep their heads above sea level. San Diego is a Navy town, but Coronado Island, across the water from downtown, will be underwater in most climate change projections. Die hard San Diegans may stay if Coronado goes, but the Navy may jump ship taking with it the 100,000 sailors and marines based there. Here’s hoping the town fathers have some tricks up their sleeves, because visiting Ron Burgundy reenactors won’t be enough to float that economy.

New York, N.Y.

In a 1949 Marvel comic, pointy-eared, sometimes-super-villain Submariner flooded the New York City subways, bringing the city to its knees. In 2012, that villain was Superstorm Sandy. Climate models predict larger and more frequent storms pummeling the Eastern Seaboard, and the world’s capital, built in a marsh over a system of thoughtfully placed tubes, makes it a hurricane playground. A proposed state-of-the-art levee system could save the city from future storms, but the price could be as high as $29 billion. Are we really expecting Congress to cough up $29 billion for climate change? More likely, the hipsters in Greenpoint will have to find some retro snorkels, slap on couture hip-waders, and double-wax their handlebar mustaches against a style-crushing tide.

The Entire State of Texas

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Devastating droughts caused by rising temperatures have Texans’ ten gallon hats running on just a couple of quarts. Ranchers are struggling statewide, and farmers who once grew melons and cotton are looking to get by on algae. Meanwhile, ever more powerful hurricanes are a growing menace. And then there are the biblical plagues. It’s a veritable perfect storm for perfect storms. Yes, Texas, we know everything is bigger here, but can you build a wall big enough to keep out climate change? Can you shoot a hurricane? If any state could, it would be you, but let’s face it: One way or another, you’re getting messed with, big time.

South Paris, Maine

Climate change would seem to be the last thing South Parisians had to worry about — they already live in South Paris, land of the disappointed tourist (“South Paris? I love buttermilk baguettes, Y’all! Wait, Southwest Maine?”). But South Paris is also home of the company that makes Flexible Flier sleds, and sledding sans snow isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds. South Parisans might not be too worried about climate change, but as in Findlay, Ohio, where they make winter tires, and Batavia, Ill., where they make snow shovels, business-as-usual will cease to exist, and soon.

Park City, Utah

Visitors to Park City should probably prep for disappointment. Climate models predict the complete loss of Park City’s famous snowpack by 2100 – surely a painful notion for a town that once hosted Winter Olympic events. There is hope, though. Maybe tourists will keep coming for the 3.2 beer, or the odd chance of meeting an Osmond. Runners up for this spot include Vail, Colo., which might lose skiing, but will still have I-70, so people can stop by on their way east to Kansas City; and Columbia Falls, Mont., which may need a new motto, as “Gateway to Glacier National Park” loses its spark without the, y’know, glaciers. How does, “Gateway to Columbia Falls Aluminum Company,” look on a bumper sticker?

DON’T MISS: The 10 cities that will be sitting pretty in a warming world.

Los Angeles got a new mayor this morning: City Councilmember Eric Garcetti beat City Controller Wendy Greuel, a fellow Democrat, more handily than expected in a historically low-turnout race (a pathetic 19 percent of L.A. voters cast ballots). He takes office July 1.

Garcetti, a Rhodes scholar and L.A.’s first Jewish mayor, has big shoes to fill: Will he carry on current Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s celebrated efforts to combat L.A.’s image as a smog-choked, car-worshipping, freeway-entangled sprawlsville?

So far, the signs point in that direction. Some have criticized Garcetti for being too friendly to business interests, but he sees working with developers as a necessary component of the smart-growth strategy he’s pursued to revitalize once-blighted areas of Hollywood, Echo Park, and Silver Lake, his home turf.

Villaraigosa did not endorse a candidate in the race. But Garcetti earned the support of the Sierra Club, which called his environmental record “unmatched”:

He authored the nation’s largest green building ordinance, the nation’s largest local clean water initiative, and legislation making L.A. the nation’s largest city with a solar feed-in-tariff. He nearly tripled the number of parks in his district by finding innovative ways to create 31 new neighborhood parks. He led the effort to pass the plastic bag ban and Low Impact Development Ordinance.

In an interview with Zócalo (in which he also revealed that the chupacabra fills him with terror), Garcetti said the toughest political fight he’s endured was a failed campaign to create veloways, bicycle lanes along the freeway: “Probably would have been a really bad idea for asthma and health to have bike lanes alongside five-lane freeways … It’s a wonder I’m in politics.”

But he’s still a big backer of bike culture. At a mayoral forum last year, Garcetti pledged his commitment to CicLAvia, a recurring event that closes miles of L.A. streets to cars. He said he hopes to make it a permanent monthly tradition. At the same forum, “Garcetti thanked cyclists for introducing bike culture, urban farmers for introducing community gardens, [and] business owners for repurposing dead alleys” and “reiterated his commitment to the human experience, pointing to mass transit as an opportunity to embrace geographical equity so that bus riders in South L.A. have the same opportunity to enjoy public art, comfortable transit stops, and shade as other passengers.”

So far, so good to our ears.

Amtrak fans in the House of Representatives have finally stumbled onto that age-old marketing principle: “If you want people to use a service, fill it with animals.” (I assume that’s what they teach in marketing school, and if they don’t they should.) Four House members have introduced a bill that would require all Amtrak trains to have at least one car that accommodates animals. Technically all the animals will be in kennels, but I’m going to cling to my fantasy of being whisked through the countryside in a pile of cats and dogs.

The idea behind the bill is that people would make more use of Amtrak if they could bring their furrier family members. “My dog, Lily, is part of our family and travels with us to and from California all the time,” said Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), one of the bill’s cosponsors. “If I can take her on a plane, why can’t I travel with her on Amtrak, too?” Wait, there are Republicans in on this thing? Wait, THREE of the cosponsors are Republicans? OK, well then maybe the idea behind the bill is that Amtrak is a liberal commie conspiracy preventing our freedoms of bringing dogs wherever we want. That’s fine by me, as long as the end result is that pets can go by train.

Of course, there are rules. (This is Congress!) You’d have to pay extra for your buddy, and you’d have to be taking a trip of less than 750 miles, and your animal would have to stay in a kennel or crate, and the kennel would have to conform to Amtrak carry-on luggage rules. That means people like me, who have 90-pound dogs, would still be SOL. However, there is NOTHING in the bill — I checked! — that prevents you from sitting in the animal car when you don’t have an animal along. And there is nothing that explicitly prevents you from heartily bribing dog-toting passengers to let Fido out of his kennel to give you kisses. Which means my dream of riding the rails covered in dogs might come true after all.

Farragut Square is a classic, austere Washington, D.C., park with much landscaping and statuary but few amenities for actual people. It does at least have a lot of benches, which come in handy during the typical weekday. Come noontime, hundreds of local office workers swarm, blinking, into the sunlight, desperate for sustenance, and run headlong into bounteous providence: a veritable armada of food trucks.

It varies by the day, but Farragut typically has among the densest truck congregations in the city. When I visited last, in the space of 50 feet I could choose between a half-dozen curries, steak sandwiches, tacos, Korean barbecue — and kebabs, lots of kebabs.

But these trucks may not be here for long. The D.C. City Council is currently considering new regulations that would curtail, potentially drastically, the number of trucks allowed in much of the district.

It’s a familiar story. Similar fights have unfolded in several other cities. But this time some Big Name Conservatives have spied an opportunity to get young, urban voters onto the anti-government bandwagon. (Mitt Romney losing 18- to 29-year-old voters by 24 points would tend to focus the mind.) As they see it, these humble taco-delivery systems are just the thing to demonstrate the tyrannical, hungering grasp of Big Government.

“What they need is for people to see this and say, ‘I’m on the side of the people that the government is messing with,’” none other than Grover Drown-The-Government-In-The-Bathtub Norquist told National Journal.

D.C.’s proposed rules would deem certain places (like Farragut Square) “mobile vending zones,” with a to-be-determined number of slots allotted for trucks, which would be given out in a lottery. Truck operators who lose the lottery would be forced to park at least 500 feet away from these zones, and only in metered spots with 10 feet of unobstructed sidewalk. Given the layout of these zones, this would effectively ban food trucks from almost all of downtown D.C.

There are some good reasons to update these regulations. Food trucks now are technically regulated under the “ice cream rule,” for example, which says that they can only operate with an active line of customers — and many have thus racked up a boatload of tickets.

But notably missing from the discussion is any rationale for restricting the supply of food trucks. The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (the local restaurant lobby) is a major supporter, as local restaurateurs would like as little competition as possible. Kathy Hollinger, the association’s president, told the Washington Examiner she would like to see a maximum of two to three trucks on each side of a block. (To be fair, several prominent D.C. restaurant owners did sign a letter in support of the trucks.)

However, the restrictionists have stirred up a backlash from, among others, a few of those coveted young people. A recent city council meeting to was jammed with food-truck supporters, partly organized through the trucks’ social media outfits. (Red Hook Lobster, for example, sports over 25,000 Twitter followers.) Even students from nearby George Washington University took a break from their Versailles levels of wretched opulence to mobilize in favor of the trucks. “These proposed regulations will halt a growing sector of the D.C. economy and damage the choice of GW students,” Ryan Counihan of the GW Student Association said at the meeting.

This would be easy to mock, but the thing is, Counihan has a point. D.C. really is a morass of goofy regulations in some areas, and not just with the trucks. The combination of NIMBY politics, the 1910-vintage Height Act, the city’s notoriously dysfunctional zoning process, and a hyper-aggressive historical preservation movement has made it extraordinarily difficult to build new housing in the district. As a result, D.C. is one of the most expensive cities in the nation.

A bit of good old deregulatory fervor in this city would be a nice counterweight in favor of new businesses and more housing, not to mention the salutary effect a bit of political competition might have in a city that usually runs more than 90 percent Democratic.

Unfortunately for Norquist and his brigade of newfound food truck enthusiasts, they’re running into the social headwinds of a party shot through with knuckle-dragging troglodytes. Young people are disproportionately diverse and overwhelmingly pro-gay marriage, but the GOP recently had a very public fight over whether immigration reform would leech $6.3 trillion from the economy by letting in a bazillion useless parasites, and nominated a man for Virginia lieutenant governor who said there was a “direct connection” between being gay and pedophilia. (He also fought desegregation.)

Continuing the grand tradition of outreach failures, the conservative Washington Times columnist George Farrell speculates that the food trucks might be a haven for terrorists. There’s a sure way to get their patrons on your side!

In any case, though the latest version of the new regulations looked like they would leave the trucks’ business model largely intact, the furor over them may delay their deployment yet again — and it has already been more than a year since the city council decided to update things. The council has until June 22 to vote, though according to DCist’s Benjamin Freed, who has been covering this story religiously, the odds don’t look good for making that deadline. After all, if there’s one thing in character for D.C., it’s accomplishing nothing.

Climate change is expected to boost homicidal heat waves in Manhattan, while cold snaps in the densely packed borough should become slightly less deadly.

Researchers from Columbia University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention used climate models and two emissions scenarios to project seasonal patterns in temperature-related deaths in Manhattan. In all 32 of the scenarios developed by the researchers, the spike in summertime heat-related deaths was forecast to more than outweigh the decline in deaths caused by cold weather.

The study was published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Monthly analyses showed that the largest percentage increases [in deaths] may occur in May and September,” the scientists wrote.

From Climate Central:

The study found that heat-related mortality may rise 20 percent by the 2020s, and in some worst-case scenarios, it could increase by 90 percent or more by the 2080s, and the net temperature-related mortality, which includes the drop in deaths related to cold weather, could jump by a third compared to current levels. …

Some other studies have claimed that as heat wave-related deaths increase, they will be offset by a reduction in cold weather-related deaths, keeping the net change in mortality low or possibly even resulting in fewer temperature-related deaths per year. This study, however, finds the opposite to be true.

Extreme heat is already the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S., killing an average of 117 people per year during the 2003-2012 period. Hot temperatures can contribute to cardiovascular disease, aggravate respiratory illness, and cause heat stroke, among other life-threatening conditions.

Even a small amount of global warming can have a large effect on weather extremes, as recent studies have shown.

City dwellers can expect to be hit particularly hard by the heat waves that are growing in frequency around the world, as The Guardian reports:

Last year, the hottest summer since record-keeping began in the US, saw a string of days on which the temperature hit more than 37.7C (100F) in a number of US cities.

The week-long heatwave killed 82 people, according to figures compiled by the Associated Press.

In large metropolitan areas, such as New York, the impact of those temperature extremes are compounded by densely built-up areas. Cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St Louis have also recorded sharp rises in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes during heatwaves, according to the draft of the National Climate Assessment, which was released last year.

“Urban heat islands, combined with an ageing population and increased urbanisation, are projected to increase the vulnerability of urban populations to heat-related health impacts in the future,” the assessment said.

Hot enough for ya?

Have you ever sat on the subway across from a hot guy or girl holding the book you just finished, trying to peek at their left hand and wondering whether it’s kosher to start a conversation? The organization that runs the subways in Prague has a plan that will end these awkward deliberations for good. The company, ROPID, “wants to set aside carriages on some or all of its trains for singles seeking a soul mate,” Reuters reports. It’d basically be like Amtrak’s quiet car, except instead of sitting in silence, everyone will be scanning the car like they would a bar on a Saturday night.

Reuters:

Spokesman Filip Drapal said the initiative was one of the activities the city-owned company hoped would lure people out of their cars and onto public transportation.

“We want to emphasize that public transport is not only a means of travel but that you can do things there that you cannot do in your car,” he told Reuters.

We’re predicting that this service will be most popular in the evening and on weekends, though if there are morning people out there who want to strike up a romantic relationship during their morning commute, more power to them.

Fueled by the recent fascination with all things DIY, community gardening — like brainstorming clever uses for Mason jars and eating like a caveman — has been popular lately. But on a large plot in inner-city Baltimore, gardeners have been working the land for almost 25 years. The Duncan Street Miracle Garden, a lush rectangle crisscrossed by grape arbors and trellises, sits in a desolate patch of East Baltimore where 44 rowhouses once stood. On a recent spring day, the blue sky was visible through the empty shells of neighboring buildings and birdsong competed with police sirens.

“I call it ‘God’s little acre,’” says garden manager Lewis Sharpe, 74. The garden is in fact nearly an acre, and it owes its existence to a core group of dedicated gardeners. In 1988, with Baltimore in the throes of the crack cocaine epidemic, a local men’s group cleaned up what had become a dumping ground after the city razed a stretch of crumbling rowhouses. The gardeners then convinced the city to close the alley to traffic. Decades later, it is dotted with trees, including a mulberry that Sharpe likes to nap under, and row upon row of flower, fruit, and vegetable plants.

A few — the “fruit cocktail tree” and the “strawberry tree” — do sound vaguely miraculous. But the biggest miracle is that the garden is here at all.

A chain-link fence surrounds the plot, though it does nothing to thwart the rats, the garden’s worst pests. Instead, it was built some years back to deter a two-legged nuisance: drug dealers. “At one time they was running through here with police chasing ‘em,” Sharpe says. “Now they ain’t got time to go over the fence. They go around it.”

Sharpe joined the farm in 1989, and as founding members passed away or began to garden less, he became its self-appointed manager. He — like famous Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen — grew up on a farm, in his case in rural Virginia. “During the summer, grandma got us up at 6 a.m. and gave us a hoe or a shovel,” Sharpe says. “We’d go out there and cut the rows, put the seed, put fertilizer down.”

Health problems have kept him from retiring to his ancestral home, so Sharpe has done the next best thing: create an urban facsimile. “It keeps me busy,” he says simply.

In Baltimore, at least, his work fills a unique niche. Sharpe and his fellow green thumbs — there are about 10 — grow much more food than they can eat, so roughly half of the produce goes to local soup kitchens and neighborhood residents. (Sharpe also plants string beans outside the fence for passersby to snack on.) Moveable Feast, a local organization that helps homebound HIV/AIDS patients, has a plot here, as does a neighborhood Baptist church.

Buy-in from organizations like these will likely help the garden to survive in the future, as will participation by younger generations. Anita Stewart-Hammerer’s children have been gardening at Duncan Street for five years, since they were 5 and 8 years old, respectively. “I met Mr. Sharpe at the garden and we hit it off,” Stewart-Hammerer says. She worked in community development for a local organization at the time. “He said to me, ‘I’m gonna make a farmer out of you.’” Stewart-Hammerer is now Sharpe’s right-hand woman, responsible for the paperwork — applying for grants, soliciting donations — that keeps the gardeners in mulch, tools, seed, and plants. (It costs all of $20 to rent a plot for a year.)

Devoted gardeners and some nonprofit support have sustained Duncan Street over the years, but until recently it was living on borrowed time: There was nothing stopping the city from selling the land and evicting the gardeners. Then, in 2010, Baltimore Green Space, a local land trust, purchased the garden from the city for $1 per lot. The trust — which owns three other spaces, including a horseshoe pit — protects the garden from the vagaries of absentee landlords, developers, and the city, if not the ills of the neighborhood.

Land insecurity is a perennial (ahem) problem for urban gardeners. In 2006, after more than a decade, one of the largest urban farms in the country, South Central Farm in industrial Los Angeles, was bulldozed by a developer who wanted to build a warehouse there. Sharpe gazes out over the many species he favors that take years to produce: figs, asparagus, apples, grapes. “We don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he says.

“It’s a much easier sell to a city to say ‘It’s a win-win, just give it to us for a dollar,’” says Baltimore Green Space founder and Executive Director Miriam Avins. “Instead of looking at, you’re not going to be getting taxes from this piece of land, think about how it improves property values around it.”

That could be one of the ironies here: Some research has shown that community gardens improve property values [PDF] and lower crime rates, which could, paradoxically, lead to development.

The land trust will be there to protect the garden should that happen, however, and it seems like a distant threat in this stretch of East Baltimore. In any case, Avins says, community gardens like Duncan Street often serve as an organic (a-a-ahem) remedy for a problem that should never have existed. “A lot of our neighborhoods don’t have green space,” she says. “It’s kind of like people are retrofitting their neighborhoods with what should have been there.”

Though there’s always plenty of work to do at Duncan Street, that hasn’t stopped Lewis Sharpe from hatching grander plans. He has adopted at least a dozen neighboring lots from the city — under the program, residents steward a piece of land for a limited time — in order to make sure the grass is mowed and litter picked up. And he’s gardening another swath of vacant land that borders Duncan Street. As he says of his love for watermelons, “I don’t like a little bit of something. I like a lot.”