Standing on a path of broken concrete, dirt and grass, Anya Sirota stops. It doesn’t look like much, but in Sirota’s view, the footpath has a big part to play in the future of the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit.
The pathway was the alley between two streets of houses and many vacant lots. It took Sirota and her team two weeks to make it passable.
“There was about two feet of sediment that had accumulated for years. You couldn’t see the drainage. You couldn’t pass,” she said.
Sirota, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and her partner, Jean Louis Farges, run Akoaki, a design studio in Detroit. The team has been working with the urban farm for nearly four years to develop a vision and “guiding plan” to make it self-sufficient and sustainable.
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Image via University of Michigan.