Finding the Potential in Vacant Lots “A vacant lot may be a lot of things: an eyesore, a dump, a symbol of American industrial decline. But one thing it is not is vacant. When we leave a yard behind, the bulk of the biomass does not follow us in a U-Haul. Put another way, a dandelion is unmoved by foreclosure. It lingers where it pleases… ‘Right here is kind of a mix of plants that probably existed as people’s landscaping,’ said Mr. Ormiston, a naturalist with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. ‘This here looks like somebody’s ornamental rose that has just kind of persisted’… a concrete pad hinted where the buildings might have stood. If the pair of fawns grazing across the street knew anything more than that, they weren’t saying… One abandoned yard is a mess; 20,000 abandoned yards is an ecosystem. At this scale, Cleveland’s vacant land begins to look less like a sign of neglect and more like an ecological experiment spread over some 3,600 acres. As it happens, a team of local scientists has designated this accidental landscape an Urban Long-Term Research Area…Ultra-Ex scientists are studying bird and insect populations, watershed systems, soil nematodes and urban farms. Along with its sci-fi name, Ultra-Ex advances a forward-looking mission: to document the ecological benefits that vacant lots might provide and to redefine the land, from neighborhood blight to community asset. jmoening: Scientists are studying vacant lots to document their ecological benefits and recast them as community assets rather than urban blight. (via NYTimes.com)

Finding the Potential in Vacant Lots

“A vacant lot may be a lot of things: an eyesore, a dump, a symbol of American industrial decline. But one thing it is not is vacant. When we leave a yard behind, the bulk of the biomass does not follow us in a U-Haul. Put another way, a dandelion is unmoved by foreclosure. It lingers where it pleases…

‘Right here is kind of a mix of plants that probably existed as people’s landscaping,’ said Mr. Ormiston, a naturalist with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. ‘This here looks like somebody’s ornamental rose that has just kind of persisted’… a concrete pad hinted where the buildings might have stood. If the pair of fawns grazing across the street knew anything more than that, they weren’t saying…

One abandoned yard is a mess; 20,000 abandoned yards is an ecosystem. At this scale, Cleveland’s vacant land begins to look less like a sign of neglect and more like an ecological experiment spread over some 3,600 acres.

As it happens, a team of local scientists has designated this accidental landscape an Urban Long-Term Research Area…Ultra-Ex scientists are studying bird and insect populations, watershed systems, soil nematodes and urban farms.

Along with its sci-fi name, Ultra-Ex advances a forward-looking mission: to document the ecological benefits that vacant lots might provide and to redefine the land, from neighborhood blight to community asset.

jmoening:

Scientists are studying vacant lots to document their ecological benefits and recast them as community assets rather than urban blight. (via NYTimes.com)