Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA – Interest is growing in a proposal to put greenhouses on vacant lots in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority executive director Terry Gillen says the city has become an active urban farming community, and putting temporary greenhouses on vacant lots is one way of providing local farmers with much needed land and residents with more fresh produce.
A pilot project will be tried this spring, putting greenhouses on a couple of vacant lots to see what issues are involved.
If the trial works, Gillen says, the program could be expanded.
The greenhouses would not be permanent. Gillen says if the land were needed for redevelopment, the farmers would simply pick up and move to another plot.
What a great idea.
As long as this would only make immediate, productive use of otherwise vacant, idle, unsaleable urban lots, why not?
It beats trying to force people off their land and/or subsidizing a bunch of new development claptrap by wealthy politically-connected developers.
Someday we might even locally-grow medicine with such facilities...
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