When I was a kid, back in the 50's, just about every vacant lot in this small town (600 Pop.) was either a garden, or if much bigger say like a whole block or so, was a small hay field, corn or soybean plot or fenced w/livestock on them.
I used a neighbor's old AC tractor to plow many of them back in the day. That is until he sold it and my Dad got an old David Bradley walk behind with a sickle mower, cultivator, one bottom plow and a snow blade. I used the heck out of that rig including letting it pull me uptown on my ice skates to the rink to push the snow off after a storm!
Now, most of these formerly vacant properties either have newer houses on them or are still vacant grassy plots, some of them, still a block or more square. The city, the the following years, had banned livestock within the city limits, and maybe even hay or other farm crops by now for all I know.
I can point to only 3, maybe 4 folks in this whole town now, not counting my son and I, that have decent size gardens. I know, because I usually till them in the spring. They're a few others, but they are TINY, just big enough for a few tomato plants is all and some of them are raised beds, hardly a garden as we used to be familiar with.
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