Resident Relocation in the Context of Neighborhood Decline Memory and Context, Constraint and Opportunity
Robin Boyle
Department of Urban Studies and Planning Wayne State University
Detroit, Mi 48202 October 2010
“A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.” Raymond Chandler (1888–1959).
Population Decline [1960 – 2008]: –45 % (est.) Foreclosed Homes [2009]: 78, 000 (est.) Vacant Residential Properties [2009]: 66, 400 (est.) Vacant Land [2009]: 10, 350 hectares or 28 % of the city (est.)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Unparalleled sub regional household movement, endemic racial discrimination, economic restructuring, central city population decline, and physical decay is part of the narrative that is the City of Detroit, today. But as the city faces wrenching decisions about its future, attracting the headlines of ―hollowing-out‖, ―downsizing‖, ―rightsizing‖, and more, it is important to understand that what occurred in Detroit, Michigan in the mid/late 20th century not only scarred a city it also shaped memory for a generation of residents: black and white, rich and poor, city and suburban. It is this memory and context that both frames and challenges vision and detailed prescription for the city as a whole and for its individual neighborhoods.
This paper will provide detail for this narrative, focusing on citywide policies and plans that have emerged to address decline and shape the city of tomorrow. To explore constraint and opportunity, specific city neighborhoods will be used to illustrate a range of neighborhood interventions, including household relocation, that are being tested, some even reaching modest implementation.
Introduction
In many respects, Detroit was the quintessential city of the 20th century: a city that grew up fast and fell apart, almost as quickly. This is a place that, during the first half of the past century, grew in terms of population and economic power from being a small trading center, situated on the Great Lakes, to that of a city of almost two million people and a justifiable claim to being a city of truly global significance. This is also a city that, in sixty years, went from being one of the most diverse and multi-ethnic in the nation to a place that by 2000 was 90% black, and, in metropolitan terms, highly racially segregated
from its suburbs. This is a place that, in the 1940s, was a teeming central city: the ―Arsenal of Democracy‖, and a city with a distinctive medium-density, single-family residential structure.
Yet by the end of the century, Sir Peter Hall, in his sweeping review of urban society,
“Cities in Civilization, writes that Detroit:
―has become an astonishing case of industrial dereliction; perhaps before long, the first major industrial city in history to revert to farmland‖ 1
. Table 1 below charts the precipitous decline of the city:
Table 1 Detroit Data
Indicator 1960 1990 2000 %Change Absolute Change
Total Population 1,670,144 1,027,974 951,270 -43 -718,874
White Population 1,182,970 222,316 116,599 -90 -1,066,371
African-American Population 482,223 777,916 775,772 60.1 293,549
Total Population 18 and over 1,122,738 725,916 655,561 -42 -467,177
Total Households 514,837 374,057 336,428 -35 -178,409
Housing Units 553,119 410,057 375,096 -32 -178,023
Vacant Housing Units 38,302 35,970 38,668 1 366
Land Area 138.7 138.7 138.7 0 0
Density Per Mile 12041.4 7411.5 6858.5 -43 -5,183
Jobs in City 642,704 412,490 345,424 -47 -297,280
Total Budget Expenditures (in 2000 $) 1,914,474,527 2,565,846,591 2,934,487,072 53 1,020,012,545 Property Tax Revenues (in 2000 $) 692,204,080 198,393,891 213,200,000 -69 -479,004,080
Income Tax Revenues (in 2000 $) Tax enacted 1962 371,017,000 376,000,000 N/A N/A
Table 2 below summaries the more recent data on the city:
Table 2: Selected Demographic Indicators for City of Detroit (1950 & 2005)
1950 2005 Percent Change
Total Population 1,849,568 890,963 -51.83%
Housing Units 522,429 371,826 -28.82%
Jobs/Employment 758,774 342,241 -54.89%
Property Taxes
(2005 dollars) $611 million $245 million -59.90%
Emptiness: the state of knowledge
It is no surprise that the primary goal of a city's redevelopment strategy is to return vacant property back to productive use. It is also no surprise that the re-use of vacant parcels of land focuses on their revenue-generating capacity. Harnessing their economic potential, ideally, would be the optimum choice considering the fiscal structure under which cities operate; development is a fiscal imperative. But when the current state of some of the nation's cities–especially those in the industrial heartland of the Midwest– is objectively assessed, is (re)development, in its traditional sense, even an option? Taking a
dispassionate view of declining cities, formally or informally, it is difficult to ignore the magnitude and variety of these vacant spaces and the challenges they pose. There is a lot of space to "fill", and as John Accordino and Gary Johnson suggest, "Vacant and
abandoned property is a symptom of central city decline that has now become a problem in its own right."2 Is it realistic for Detroit, a city of 139 square miles, with some 28% of the city composed of vacant parcels, close to 75,000 abandoned buildings and with a deep fiscal crisis , to organize itself to take the necessary actions to assemble parcels, entice a private developer and truly affect physical and social change. Although this may be feasible under some circumstances, the process of stimulating and executing
development in the underserved, deteriorated areas/neighborhoods that define much of the city landscape is a Herculean task. Development can be a challenge even when all the elements are in place. For all of the efforts to cut governmental red tape, facilitate land assembly and write-down land costs, there are still significant obstacles to re-using vacant land in any capacity. These decaying urban environments define the landscape in many US cities and therefore severely hinder the potential for development.
J. Terrance Farris outlines these issues in his paper, "The Barriers to Using Urban Infill
Development to Achieve Smart Growth". His study is a concise and frank assessment of
the practical barriers to urban in-fill development, ultimately resulting in advice to "encourage higher-density, quality development at the metropolitan edge and exurbia while selectively choosing relatively limited infill opportunities, which vary by market."3 Some of the barriers he discusses are land assembly and infrastructure costs,
unwillingness to condemn, excessive risks, difficulty of finding developers, regulatory policies and political constraints, just to mention a few.
In addition to simply attracting development is the issue of thoughtful planning. How much thought, foresight and coordination are invested in a project so that it results in quality development rather than disjointed, piecemeal projects. Is there thoughtful reflection on what elements would stabilize the area or is it the "take what we can get" mentality that can dominate desperate urban areas and the fragile neighborhoods that extend throughout the entire city? Is simply filling in the blanks successful urban redevelopment?
2
John Accordino and Gary T. Johnson, Addressing the Vacant and Abandoned Property Problem, Journal of Urban Affairs, Volume 22, No. 3, pgs 301-315, 2000.
3 J. Terrance Farris, The Barriers to Using Urban Infill Development to Achieve Smart Growth, Housing
The vacancy aspect of the urban crisis has been receiving ever more attention. One product of this dilemma is the fashionable Shrinking Cities ―movement‖. This movement is a grassroots response to the vacant lots that litter the horizons of cities all over the world, from Detroit to Berlin to Manchester. It is a response to the reality of population loss and the implications it has for the well being of a city. This project, which focuses mainly on examining the changing nature of the post-industrial city and alternative uses for the vacancy that persists, seeks to fill in the gap between policy and reality.
According to Phillip Oswalt, Chief Curator of the Shrinking Cities Initiative Project in Germany,
"Shrinking cities are different. Confronted with them, our inherent ideas and concept of action breakdown. … It is hardly possible to manage the impact of shrinkage in terms of urban development, and it creates a large number of
problems. New types of city are arising and we have neither the precise concepts with which to describe them nor any idea about how and by whom, they could be used."4
As has been demonstrated in many papers and publications prior to this one, the growth model is often the only framework for understanding the city. Yet "shrinkage" has been happening for decades. Bradbury, Downs and Small refer to this in their 1981
publication, Futures for a Declining City: Simulations for the Cleveland Area,
"Metropolitan areas in the United States were characterized for many decades by growth in population and employment. Only recently have many begun to suffer
declines in these variables. It is therefore not surprising that social science
research has produced much greater understanding of the growth processes than of those forces causing urban areas to shrink. The result is a severely limited ability to evaluate policies designed to cope with or to counteract shrinkage. Yet such policies are increasingly vital in the United States, where many metropolitan areas and a majority of large cities are experiencing population losses."5
This passage reveals several insights. First, shrinkage is, in the scope of things, a relatively new phenomenon. Second, although it is an unprecedented obstacle, government officials, policymakers and the private sector have had nearly 25 years to look critically at this phenomenon and react to it. Although population has been leaving the city since long before 1981, the psychological, not to mention social, fiscal and physical, effects of emptiness did not fully play themselves out until later. Third, despite the warning and trend-forecast 25 plus years ago, cities continue to operate within the growth framework and seemingly refuse to take a critical look at the situation to produce an alternative that may provide a more adept and realistic solution for their predicament. Fourth, the 25 years that separate the above quotation and the present prompt the
4 Oswalt, Philipp, Shrinking Cities, Das Parlement, German Bundestag and German Federal Agency for
Civic Education, No. 37, September, 2003.
5 Katherine L. Bradbury, Anthony Downs, and Kenneth A. Small, Futures for a Declining City, Academic
question: Have urban growth policies been effective in countering this decline, especially in cities facing the full-front of economic restructuring?
Bradbury et al.'s work forecast population loss. It also encouraged policymakers to explore ways in which our cities could cope with these impending losses. Restructuring is no simple task, but alternatives to current policies need to be examined, and
re-examined. It is important to ask: Is countering this extreme vacancy with development the only option? Is it realistic to think that a city, such as Detroit, that has lost over half of its population in the last decades will, with a little prodding, regain it? There is a
literature that documents an increase in urban living, even in cities that have been losing population for decades – Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and more. Those areas that already have some market value, commonly centered on downtown residential
construction, may see an increase in development, but what about the neighborhood on the far east side of the city that is currently off the radar, so to speak. The percentage of the city affected by this influx is likely to be very small, and the trickle down effects of CBD investments have never been known to reach the outlying neighborhoods.
Restoring this vacant land would be an ideal scenario, but many of these parcels are less than ideal, providing little in the way of incentive for developers and showing no sign of redevelopment opportunities anytime soon.
This discussion does not purport to have the answers. It is a survey of the current state of understanding and actions in regard to coping with the emptiness that fills cities, in
particular Detroit, presents a thesis that challenges the dominate growth-perpetuating policies, and requests that some thought be given to policy making that will help cities adapt to shrinking, their true reality, rather than growing, a seeming impossibility. It hopes to elicit a response of alternative approaches to address the vacant land dilemma and the realities that face cities, their continual decline and possible regeneration, in whatever form it may take.
Emptiness: defining the terms
The plethora of literature on urban affairs and urban planning issues has yet to solidify a set of terms with which we can consistently and concisely refer to vacant land and its varying states. A review of the terms associated with vacant land does yield some binding and meaningful definitions. "(Functionally) Obsolete", "Blighted" and "Brownfield" are technical terms that represent the present state of a vacant parcel. They also indicate what challenges to revitalization efforts exist. But these are only three of several terms that are frequently utilized. Of the terms reviewed are vacant, abandoned, brownfield, derelict, blighted, obsolete, fallow and others. As terms that are frequently used in varying contexts, there is a general understanding of their varied meanings and implications, but no consistent meaning on which land professionals can rely. An
example of our semantic dilemma is the technical definition of Brownfield; not only does it describe those parcels that truly are contaminated as a result of past activity, but also those parcels that are "perceived" to be contaminated. (EPA website) This subjective appropriation of a technical term alludes to the lack of vocabulary and familiarity with the very land we discuss. If this potential ambiguity exists with a codified, technical
term, those terms that do not have a place in the descriptive vocabulary can produce a more convoluted picture and impede efforts to revitalize.
Even the most prolific authors on this subject state,
"No formal or standard definition of vacant land exists. The U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on the use of land….The Census also does not measure abandonment. However, the common designation of vacant land often refers to many different types of unutilized or underutilized parcels-perimeter agricultural or uncultivated land; recently razed land, derelict land, land with abandoned buildings and structures; brownfields and greenfields."6
For the purpose of their research on quantifying the amount of vacant land in US cities, Bowman and Pagano presented to their subject cities the following as a working
definition,
―Publicly or privately owned land that is unused, abandoned, or supports
abandoned, derelict, boarded up, partially destroyed or razed structures. This land serves little productive or positive function and may be considered a public
nuisance. Vacant land does not include designated open space/parks or agricultural land.‖7
The variety of circumstances that characterize the vacant lots that plague our cities do indeed reflect distinct states of abandonment, decay, dereliction and, needless to say, vacancy. The lack of a solidified terminology may reflect where policy analysts, academics and development professionals are in the process of dealing with and understanding the empty spaces that are ubiquitous in many of our nations' cities. Clearly, a littered parcel tucked between two structures is very different from a recently annexed greenfield site and they should not be referred to, consistently, in the same way. These terms do describe the differences between parcels and the vocabulary should be utilized to accurately illustrate these nuances. Using appropriate, descriptive terminology referring to uniform definitions will help distinguish an abandoned lot from an
undeveloped greenfield and help us better understand, and help improve, the state of our cities.
Emptiness: How empty?
According to the recent survey conducted by Anne Bowman and Michael Pagano presented in their 2004 publication, Terra Incognita, approximately 15% of our nation's cities lie vacant.8 This is a decrease from the last national study, conducted in the 1960's,
6 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource, The Brookings
Institution, 2000.
7 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies,
Georgetown University Press, 2004.
which resulted in a 20.7% figure.9 As suggested in the above definition of vacancy, this fifteen percent figure consists of widely varying types of land, ranging from undisturbed open space to abandoned, contaminated brownfields. A comparison of the data shows that growing cities contain more vacant land than their non-growing counterparts, a reality that requires a more in-depth look. Of the four regions, the South and West averaged the highest levels of vacant land relative to total land area, 19.3 and 14.8 percent respectively. The Midwest comes in at 12.2 percent and is followed by the Northeast with 9.6 percent.10 A more detailed breakdown of regional characteristics is illustrated in Table 2.11
The Amount of Vacant Urban Land Table 2.
Average Average % of Median % of
Average Average Vacant Vacant Land Vacant Land
No. of Population City Area Land Relative to Relative to
Census Region Cities 1995 (acres) (acres) Total Land Area Total Land Area
Total Survey 70 346,639 64,426 12,367 15.4 12.7
South 23 326,167 103,869 20,011 19.3 18.0
West 30 274,183 47,232 10,349 14.8 7.8
Midwest 11 240,798 59,433 5,904 12.2 12.4
Northeast 6 1,345,612 55,122 5,004 9.6 9.7
The vacancy numbers do not necessarily look alarming. In fact, they seem to suggest an accurate picture when considering the growth patterns of newer cities in the south and west, although Pagano and Bowman indicate a caveat when looking at regional averages, "It should be noted, however, that the averages mask wide variation in the proportion of vacant land across cities."12 Table 3 13 illustrates these differences.
9 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, (2004), pg. 26 10 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, (2004), pg 27 11
Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, (2004), pg. 27
12 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, (2004), pg 28 13Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, (2004), pg. 212, 213
Intra-Regional Comparison Between Cities and Percent Vacant Land Table 3.
Ratio of No. of
Vacant Abandoned
Vacant Land to No. of Structues
Population City Area Land Total Land Abandoned per 1,000
City State Region 1995 (acres) (acres) Area (%) Structures Inhabitants
Jacksonville FL South 711,933 485,488 16,726 3.4 2,800 0.0039 Tallahassee FL South 140,643 49,542 19,756 40 - - Inglewood CA West 117,300 5,664 40 0.7 5 0.0426 Fontana CA West 104,201 23,040 13,824 60.0 - - Chicago* IL Midwest 2,896,016 146,176 10,000 6.84 4,000 0.1381 Aurora IL Midwest 120,000 23,680 5,920 25.0 20 0.1667
New Haven CT Northeast 123,000 12,800 700 5.5 524 4.2602
Stamford CT Northeast 110,000 24,320 3,648 15.0 - -
*Illinois was used to represent the Midwest although Detroit or Philadelphia might have better exemplified the disparate amount of vacant land in the region.
Unfortunately, data about their vacant land was unavailable.
In addition to wide intra-regional variation, there is an inverse relationship between vacant land and abandoned structures.14 Those cities identified as having the least amount of vacant land reported the highest number of abandoned structures and vice versa. It is not necessarily surprising to find a high proportion of abandoned structures in the Midwest and Northeast; this is not at all contrary to the perceptions and images we have of more dense, previously industrial cities. This adds to further illustrate the variation in the type of vacant land that dominates in particular regions. Overall, these aggregate and city level figures are extremely helpful and necessary for creating a context; but further separation by type and characteristics of vacant land would provide more depth to our understanding and comparison between cities and the particular challenges, or opportunities, vacancy presents. Bowman and Pagano recognize this and state, "These regional extremes are noteworthy, suggesting that the issue of vacant land is far from uniform throughout the country."15
Unpacking these data for the use of understanding the depth of the vacancy problem reveals the obstacle suggested in the above Bowman/Pagano quotation. Growing cities, by virtue of annexation, have available to them acres and acres of developable land which registers as "vacant", and therefore equivalent, to the smaller, derelict inner city parcels in a study like that of Pagano and Bowman. For the purpose of this our discussion, we are mainly concerned with the amount and characteristics of vacant land in established, inelastic cities that face significant challenges in (re)using their vacant parcels.
14 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, (2004), pg 26 15 Anne O'M Bowman and Michael A. Pagano, 2004, pg 28
This, of course, requires tremendous administrative effort on the part of the city in order to provide accurate data - administratively speaking, a barrier in and of itself. How the data compares to other, similar parcels in cities in distinct regions and circumstances throughout the country would be useful comparative data, but we must first begin by revising the definition used to collect vacancy rates so we can more accurately compare and define the "resources" and "opportunity" available to each city and confidently categorize them as such. Vacant land is continually presented in the literature as untapped "opportunity" and "resource"; in some places it is difficult to see this obstacle as opportunity, although in theory it may be true. The "opportunity" argument is a response to both the parallel economic threats that can occur should a city reach its build-out state and therefore cut-off their fiscal lifeline (parallel to the opposite situation-extreme levels of vacancy) and the potential growth and revitalization that can rise from the ashes, so to speak. Vacant land on the outskirts of Phoenix is obviously in a better position to be perceived as "opportunity", in the eyes of those who can make it happen, than is the abandoned parcel in the volatile neighborhoods of Detroit’s east side. None of this, though, is any surprise.
Alternative Approaches to Addressing Emptiness
Are there alternatives to the growth model, of seeking ways to stimulate the land and property market and ―fill the blocks‖? The standard urban policy and urban planning literature offers meager pickings. Nonetheless, there are some conceptual models that offer approaches to managing decline, in contrast to simply rediscovering growth. A first set of models clearly recognize the scale and damage inflicted through urban decline but then seek to reverse that decline through implementing a series of short, sharp fiscal shocks to the urban system, reducing the costs of living, working and investing in the city. Writing in the Brookings Review, Ned Hill and Jeremy Nowak begin to address policy options for cities that, in their view have ―nothing left to lose‖ 16
. Based on a detailed study of the fiscal and environmental condition of Camden, NJ, they suggest that radical action is needed to ―reconnect this city to its regional economy‖. They offer four prescriptions: dramatic reductions in municipal taxes (to improve the city’s competitive edge), reform of the city’s administration, land assembly and renewal of infrastructure and, last, expanding the earned-income tax credit to get low-income families back into the labor force. Clearly the first of these policy ideas–radical reform of the tax structure (abolishing all business taxes and shifting taxes from property to land)–is controversial but the other prescriptions are tried, tested and, as is well documented, often found wanting. Moreover, Hill and Nowak never give the reader a sense of what Camden seeks to be, or might be, in the future. They consistently refer to ―reconnecting the central city to the regional economy‖ but never define what this means. One is left to presume that they seek to find ways of making the city more competitive, with the end-product being a functional place that will grow, that will replace the characteristics of decline with the conditions of (relative) prosperity.
Their model is not particularly novel, employing policy mechanisms of the sort proposed earlier by Anthony Downs 17 and others. Moreover, as illustrated through the Camden case study, their solution involves intervention by a series of external actors, not least the State and federal government. In essence, this approach is similar to the original (and quite radical) concept of the free enterprise zone, initially suggested by Peter Hall in the 1970s and by Rayner Banham even earlier 18. In sum, while they recommend some policies for Camden that run counter to conventional wisdom, their ideas are still wedded to a model of urban change that envisages the rebuilding of the central city. The growth mentality lives on.
In contrast with policy models that address chronic urban decline through a growth prism, there is only a short reading list, and few examples, of actively planning decline, for designing smaller places and communities when larger centers fail. Library and web-based searches produce a wealth of sources and citations that address urban dereliction, brown fields, neighborhood decay, economic decline, environmental problems and much more, but, again, policy prescription is uniformly growth-oriented. The purpose of this discussion paper–and subsequent research–is to begin a debate about how to downsize a city, or to give it a less provocative term, how to manage urban contraction.
It is critical to explore spatial and physical vision (or visions) of the ―contracted city‖. Accordingly, urban contraction first requires a commitment to forward planning–
including the need to establish priorities for the future allocation of land and examine the implication of land use decisions on service delivery. Here there are some models to look at. Writing for a US House Committee in 1977, the urban economist Wilbur Thompson argued for ―land management strategies for central city depopulation‖, based on a proactive city relocation plan 19. In the same report, New York City Housing Director Roger Starr also introduced concepts of ―planned shrinkage‖. The Canadian academic geographer and planner, Larry Bourne has more recently engaged in a similar review but reached the conclusion that planning for a reduction in services in declining city areas only serves to hasten disinvestment 20. Bourne’s work makes it clear that planned shrinkage has significant political ramifications and will be extremely difficult to implement. Hence, while vision is critical, as important is the capacity (in political and organizational terms) to effect change 21.
17 Downs, Anthony A New Vision for Metropolitan America. Washington DC: Brookings, 1994. 18
See a discussion on the dissemination of Enterprise Zones by Karen Mossberger The Politics of Ideas
and the Spread of Enterprise Zones. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000; and an earlier
study by Barnekov, T., Boyle, R. and Rich, D. Privatism – Urban Policy in Britain and the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
19
Thompson, Wilbur, R. ―Land Management Strategies for City Center Depopulation‖, in Subcommittee on the City of the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, How Cities Can Grow Old
Gracefully. Washington DC: Urban Land Institute, 1977. 20
Bourne, Larry, S. ―Reurbanization, Uneven Urban Development, and the Debate on New Urban Forms‖.
Urban Geography, 17 (8): 690-713, 1996.
21 This point was forcibly brought home to the author during discussions with Dave Blaszkiewicz, an
Clearly demographic targets, land use and infrastructure plans, social planning, fiscal analysis, etc. will all be important, but as critical will be a need to develop a sense of value and worth for this contracted place. By worth, it is crucial that stakeholders: residents, businesses, city officials and politicians (local and external) all see the value in managing space that is no longer in immediate ―productive use‖. It is too easy to view redundant land simply in terms of ―urban‖ parks or some other type of open space, but clearly in cities where there are acres of dereliction and abandonment then Hall’s concept of returning land to agricultural usage begins to take on meaning. To date, there are few models that describe how to return urban (developed) land to rural or fallow uses. There are many examples of using brown fields for managed open space, for small urban horticulture (neighborhood farming), for temporary and permanent landscaping, for tree nurseries and permanent urban forestry 22 but few examples of returning whole sections of mature city to ploughed fields. The closest examples of a large-scale return to rural use can be seen in the coalfield areas of northern Europe where the entire infrastructure of mining, including mining villages, was removed when the pits and mines were abandoned.
[See appendix for a table that summarizes the options for ―shrinking cities‖] Interestingly, it was a Detroit city official in 1993 who made one of the few public suggestions that severely declining urban neighborhoods–those with only a remnant of population and structures–be ―mothballed‖ to better service the remaining residents 23. This was indeed a rare pronouncement of urban triage. The suggestion was to move the remaining residents from the most devastated areas in the city, re-house them in stronger neighborhoods and fence-off and/or landscape the vacant tracts. It should be noted that the official concerned, Ms. Donaldson, did not recommend any future use for the mothballed areas. Her proposal was met with outrage from city officials and
representatives of community groups, accusing Ms. Donaldson of ―giving up‖ on the city. Her model was simply too radical, ran counter to other media announcements (based on results of the 1990 census) that the city ―was on its way back‖ and rekindled fears of a return to the neighborhood clearances of the urban renewal program of the 1950s. Despite her suggestions being picked up by a number of newspapers across the country, and coverage in the UK’s Economist, the ―mothball‖ idea quickly died.
Ms. Donaldson was the die shortly after her pronouncement but some 17 years later her prescriptions are front and center in Detroit. For the challenge facing Detroit is that its geographic size, 139 square miles, is the same as it has been for over a century, with half its 1950 population and a massive legacy of abandoned commercial structures. This point emphasizes possibly the city’s greatest challenge — the massive amount of abandoned and vacant land and housing. The city’s housing units has decreased by 28.82 percent, likely as a result of a combination of planned demolition, unplanned destruction of units (e.g. fire), and abandonment. According to Data Driven Detroit, roughly one in three
22
Both large-scale temporary landscaping and urban forestry can be found in the UK and especially in Germany.
23 Donaldson, M.F ―Mothballing: The Answer to Urban Decline.‖ Unpublished proposal. City of Detroit:
parcels are currently (May, 2010) vacant lots or abandoned homes. One of the most interesting findings of the Data Driven Detroit’s parcel survey is that high concentrations of vacant residential parcels are located in the ―middle‖ neighborhoods of the city). Much of the more viable and ―stable‖ neighborhoods and housing are located near the fringes of the city, separated from the traditional downtown/Central Business District by high percentages of vacancy and barren space.
Not surprisingly, this urban condition, and the mortgage and foreclosure crises of 2008, challenged the incoming Mayor (Bing) to publicly address at least the possibility that realigning city services for a much reduced population would also need a radically different land use pattern across the city. In May of 2010, Bing announced the start of a Strategic Framework Plan (later re-named ―Detroit Works‖) – a comprehensive
assessment of city conditions, development of a holistic vision and recommendations for economic, social and land use change across the city’s 139 square miles.
Reshaping an Industrial City–Detroit 2010 – The Impact of Memory
Writing in the fall of 2010, work has just begun on this planning project but quickly there have been vociferous reactions against policy discussion or specific suggestions that might embrace household relocation. The very hint of neighborhood clearance and household relocation rekindles bitter memories from Detroit’s past.
Throughout the 20th century, forced household relocation and the attendant dismantling of the neighborhood have a long and troubled history in Detroit, Mi. Set into a context of endemic and organized racial discrimination, particularly in terms of housing, household relocation particularly impacted the Black community. The federal Housing Act of 1949, introduced what became known as ―urban renewal‖, under Title 1 of that legislation. In Detroit, urban renewal was the principle mechanism used to (i) clear slums – notably on the city’s inner east flank, (ii) clear blighted property to build-out the downtown for industrial and commercial development – on the inner west side of the city and (iii) enable the city to acquire property and land for ambitious redevelopment projects in the midtown/cultural center area.
Of these three interconnected renewal projects, the clearance of the predominantly Black community, on the city’s inner-east side, became a ―cause celebre‖. This redevelopment project was not merely infamous in Detroit, but became widely cited as one of the most pernicious uses of urban renewal in the US (Garvin, 2003). It is ironic that the Gratiot Park redevelopment project, later called Lafayette Park, is also recognized in
architectural circles as one of the most significant (and by certain measures, one of the most successful) ―Modernist‖ high-density residential projects in the country. Designed by Mies van der Rohe, the high-rise apartment buildings, town houses and neighborhood center were developed in a park setting, less than a mile from downtown and close to the Detroit River.
Despite is architectural merit, ―the major flaw was its effect on the original residents of the site. Like early clearance projects throughout the United States, the Gratiot Project
eliminated more low-income housing than it produced, and it abused and alienated Black inner-city residents in the process‖ (Thomas, 1997:56). Specific numbers of households impacted by the clearances have been difficult to determine but Thomas’s study of records identified 400 families (out of 1900) that were ―persuaded to move‖ and that by 1952, ―over 1000 families had moved from the site. As was widely reported, 60% of the dislocated households from Gratiot eventually were re-housed in public housing units, scattered across the city. But at least a third of the dislocated households were never traced‖. Sugrue (1996:51) stated that the city ―relocation office was understaffed and often unsympathetic to the plight of evicted households‖.
This Urban Renewal project set the stage for a two-decade long redevelopment program that re-engineered much of the downtown and inner-core of the city. Perhaps most obvious and having the longest impact on the city was a concerted program of property acquisition for inner-city freeway construction, beginning in the late 1940’s – ―a handy devise for razing slums‖ (Mowitz and Wright, 1962, quoted in Sugrue, 1996: 46). The destruction of what was then referred to ―Paradise Valley/Black Bottom‖ – and the Hastings Street business district – for the Chrysler Freeway carved a swath of property clearance that devastated this once-relatively prosperous Black community. The other freeway projects similarly cleared business and homes throughout the inner city, again often affecting Black neighborhoods, with large households, often living in over-crowded rental properties. ― The problem of expressway displacement persisted through the
1950’s. Public officials did little to assist families forced to move and … downplayed the human costs of highway projects. In 1958, the Wayne County road commissioner
predicted that little difficulty will be experienced by families facing displacement because of highway construction, even though the families on highway sites received only thirty-days notice to vacate and the commission made no efforts to assist families in relocation‖ (Sugrue, 1996:45).
The various phases of Detroit’s Midtown redevelopment, for the Medical Center, University City (Wayne State University) and the Cultural Center all included some measure of household displacement and relocation. And once again, because of the concentration of Black families in the inner-core, it was these households that took the brunt of redevelopment. For example, the Detroit Medical Center (DMC) Plan would impact 3400 families, most non-White. This plan also negatively impacted the Black community in terms of discrimination of patients and their health-care professionals. Moreover, there was fear that housing built adjacent to the DMC would once more exclude Blacks. As Thomas (1996) has recorded, neighborhood activism around this dimension of renewal did result in some plan modification to accommodate the needs of the Black community. Yet again the fear of forced relocation, without adequate housing replacement, only served to build distrust between the community and the major
institutions in the city.
Thomas, Sugrue and other writers on Detroit’s troubled history of urban renewal and household clearance, estimate that 9000 households, 85% Black, were dislocated from their neighborhoods during the 1950’s. By 1962, Thomas records that perhaps as many as 160,000 Blacks, one third of the then Black community in the city, was adversely
affected by renewal in the city core. Little wonder then, that some 30 years later, Detroiters, in particular Black Detroiters, retained a deep distrust of government and a fear that grand city plans would leave them less well-off than at present, and position held even by those living in the poorest and most isolated neighborhoods in the city.
Such distrust of public action, through planned ―improvements‖ was continued in the later decades of the 20th century. By this time the Mayor, Coleman A. Young, his senior administration and much of the City Commission was Black. Young was first elected to office in 1974 on a ticket of strengthening the economic condition of the city, bringing jobs to the city and his constituencies and rebuilding the African-American business community. Young built close ties with the Federal government, attracting significant shares of grant finance (such the then Urban Development Action Grants – UDAG) and then successfully used this leverage to forge partnerships with many of Detroit’s leading business corporations. Young used the machinery of government, in particular his economic development agency–the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation–to acquire private property, often using the police power of eminent domain, and transfer title to other private entities.
This process was most noticeably used to acquire land for what became known as the ―Poletown‖ plant, a new large automobile assembly facility for General Motors. Once again, there was extensive neighborhood clearance in both Detroit and the City of Hamtramck, a small separate municipality entirely surrounded by Detroit. Again records are incomplete but best estimates suggests that more that more than 460 acres were acquired, resulting in the loss of 1176 properties, affecting almost 3500 residents and in excess of 600 businesses. Four RC churches, one protestant church and one public school were demolished as part of the wholesale clearance of the neighborhoods. The
neighborhood was effectively destroyed through this process, adding to the civic memory of forced relocation and, in the case of Poletown buyilding the growing anger in the White community against Mayor Coleman A. Young.
Accordingly, the history of forced and ―encouraged‖ household relocation in Detroit, and the resulting neighborhood dislocation, is interwoven with separate Black and White memory of the city, and the affected neighborhoods.
Returning the situation in Detroit today (2010), perhaps the most contentious aspect of dialogues over the fate of open areas has been that concerning residents who remain in isolated houses scattered throughout these areas. As Ryan (2010) has suggested, ―involuntary displacement was the Achilles’ Heel of urban renewal, and its ghost powerfully haunts dialogues about rightsizing‖. Urban citizens who have persisted through decades of decline and abandonment are quite rightly incensed at prospects that they may be displaced simply for open space or wildlife habitat. In Ryan’s view ―there is no justification for such involuntary displacement; residents of mostly open areas who wish to remain there, surrounded by memory and a newly pastoral landscape, should do so. At the same time, minimal standards need be established that permit removal of city services to areas that are truly remote. But, as Ryan continues, ―residents of remote open areas need come to grips with understanding that living in these places will require
assumption of additional responsibilities, as the reach of municipal services recedes to the nearest street intersection‖.
Drawing Tentative Conclusions
Appendix
A Partial Listing of Activities Pertinent to Shrinking Neighborhood
Strategic Actions Programmatic Activities
Prevention and Information Affordable Housing Anti-Flipping Ordinance Code Enforcement Foreclosure Prevention Home Repair Grants
Landlord and Homeowner Training Nuisance Abatement
Property Maintenance Codes
Stabilization and Abatement Home Purchase Subsidies Lot Clean-Up
Renovation Grants and Loans
Rental and Point-of-Sale Code Inspections Slumlord Prosecution
Tax Delinquency Programs
Acquisition and Management Boarding-Up of Abandoned Buildings Demolitions: Emergency and Strategic Land Banking
Land Reserves and Trusts
Property Tracking Systems/Vacant Property Registration
Relocation Grants Side-Lot Sales
Tax Foreclosure and Acquisition
Re-Use Green Re-use of Vacant Lots
Immigrant Recruitment Neighborhood Plans
Sales to Developers (Bid Solicitation) Sales to Individuals (Lotteries)
Note: This listing is based on a review of the literature on neighborhood abandonment and the research done on eleven cities: Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Flint (MI, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington, DC and Youngstown (OH).
