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Detroit: From Motor City to Farm City?

ByAbby Quillen

Detroit is a sea of vacant blocks, abandoned factories, dilapidated houses, and boarded-up businesses. The Motor City’s population peaked at 2 million during its boom days in the 1950s. It’s now 900,000 and falling. The city has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. 47% of its residents are functionally illiterate. And its…

How to Share a Chicken (or Two)

ByAbby Quillen

Shareable.net published my article about the Eastside Egg Cooperative in Portland, Oregon. It begins: Foster Road in Southeast Portland, Oregon is lined with wrecking yards, auto body shops, gas stations, cheap appliance stores, and vacant lots. It’s not the place you’d expect to find a six-acre working farm or a ten-acre wetland preserve. But that’s…