This communication explores the hypothesis that structural urban decline can open a space for the development of alternative urban strategies. It will do that through a careful analysis of urban decline and its consequences in Cleveland, Ohio. In so doing, we will pay a special attention to the role of an important actor, yet often neglected: the financial sector, particularly its role in the formation of the hyperghetto of Cleveland - the Eastern neighborhoods of the inner-city, which have face an acceleration of the process of abandonment since the foreclosure crisis. Then we will question the role of urban decline in the emergence of alternatives to neoliberalism. By analyzing the rise of a "degrowth coalition" promoting urban agriculture as a viable use of the vacant land in the hyperghetto, we will demonstrate that the spectacular release of "designed space" offers new opportunities to "lived space". In other words, we will explore the hypothesis that the logic of political, social, and economic abandonment, and the availability of cheap urban land, can to some extent be a breeding ground for the emergence of policies and practices that move away from the neoliberal model. This assumption allows us to re-examine the classical vision of cities doomed to spread relentlessly to the detriment of their agricultural hinterland, but also to question the possibility of a future widespread in the world of the model of American "Do It Yourself City ".