Orchards for Detroit

Michael Score gazes at the ramshackle houses and weed-ridden vacant lots in decrepit Detroit neighborhoods and envisions a solution to the Motor City's woes: Apple orchards, Christmas-tree fields and other large-scale commercial farms replacing acres of abandoned slums.

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The non-profit SHAR Foundation calls its plan Recovery Park. Sponsored by a coalition of more than two dozen non-profit partners as well as businesses and universities, it aims to farm 2,000 acres in 15-to-30-acre pods.

Gary Wozniak, chief development officer for SHAR, aims to establish for-profit farming via a worker-owned cooperative system, much like Spain's famed Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa.

- Melissa Preddy

Orchards, greenhouses could fill abandoned streets of Detroit (Associated Press