Detroit

Can Detroit's Suburbs Survive The City's Rebirth?

Pete Saunders — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 01:33:38 -0400

I've written quite a bit about Detroit's recent history, particularly the Motor City of the last ten years -- Kwame Kilpatrick and the aftermath of his corrupt administration, the subsequent bankruptcy and emergence from it, the binding of local government, business and nonprofit forces in creating a new template for leadership, and the very real rebound that Detroit is currently experiencing. Detroit is indeed booming, but it's not growth generated by external forces. The city is in the process of regaining favor by losing its stigma.

Detroit's not gaining in population; in fact, it's still losing people, albeit at some of the lowest year-to-year levels seen over the last 60 years or so. The Detroit metro area isn't gaining people either. In 1970 Metro Detroit had 4.5 million people. In 2016 it had 4.3 million. But the metro area is nearing the completion of a major economic transition as it moves from a manufacturing-dominant economy to a more mixed modern economy, and the transition is bearing fruit in gains in metro gross domestic product. Neighborhoods near downtown are showing improvements hardly imagined in my lifetime, as the Detroit Reclamation Project continues to gather momentum.

And that's exactly it: in a city and region that aren't gaining new residents, there's a transfer taking place. Suburban offices that left the city are returning downtown, and former suburban youth are pining for the Midtown/Corktown/Riverfront urban lifestyle. Yesterday's announcement that Ford Motor Company bought one of Detroit's most iconic ruins -- a building vacant for nearly 30 years -- so that it can move its mobility division from suburban Dearborn into a now-booming part of town is emblematic of what's happening. It's a great thing for the city.

But there's something else going on that rarely gets mentioned. Detroit's suburbs are unsettled right now. Unlike most other metro areas, Detroit's suburbs doubled down on suburbia in a major way, and never envisioned a future where the city would even begin to make a credible comeback.

Can Detroit's suburbs co-exist with a redeemed Detroit?

To understand the question, it must be put in the proper context. People don't understand the extent of the withdrawal from Detroit. Beginning in the 1970's the business elite and the white middle class didn't just leave Detroit, they divorced it. L. Brooks Patterson, the long-time county executive of suburban Oakland County, just north of Detroit and one of the most affluent counties in the nation, famously echoed the sentiment of many suburbanites in a New Yorker interview four years ago:

“I used to say to my kids, ‘First of all, there’s no reason for you to go to Detroit. We’ve got restaurants out here.’ They don’t even have movie theatres in Detroit—not one.” He went on, “I can’t imagine finding something in Detroit that we don’t have in spades here. Except for live sports. We don’t have baseball, football. For that, fine—get in and get out. But park right next to the venue—spend the extra twenty or thirty bucks. And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, __under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That’s just a call for a carjacking.”

And this:

"When I asked him how Detroit might fix its financial problems, he said, “I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, ‘What we’re gonna do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.’”

The economic and social withdrawal from Detroit by the business community and the white middle class was about as complete as it could be. In many ways, Patterson's prediction did indeed come to pass.

Because the withdrawal was complete, there were things that developed in the Detroit suburbs that typically happened in comparable urban cores. Southeast Oakland County, which includes the suburbs of Ferndale, Royal Oak, Hazel Park, Oak Park, Madison Heights and others, became the default "gentrifying hipster" spots of metro Detroit. While the stigma placed on Detroit was alive and well, these communities developed much in the same way we see in other urban cores nationwide.

A tool I often use to get a sense of the economic and social demographic makeup of a neighborhood is ESRI's Tapestry Segmentation Model. ESRI has identified 67 distinct market segments across the economic and social spectrum, from high-income to low-income, from those living on sprawling estates to those in cramped apartments, from those who travel frequently to those who never leave the neighborhood. Enter a zip code, and it can summarize some of the dominant economic and social characteristics of that zip code. Here's what it says about the largest segment in Royal Oak's 48073 zip code, called the "In-Style" segment:

"We are professional couples or singles with no kids and strong work ethics. We support the arts, travel, and extensive reading. We focus on home maintenance and improvement. We use our phones to check for the best prices and redeem both print and mobile coupons."

Or the "Emerald City" segment in the same zip code:

"Young, mobile, well-educated, and well-employed, we are more likely to rent in low-density, urban neighborhoods throughout the country. We go online for professional networking, online dating, and blogging. We buy natural, organic, or environmentally-friendly products."

That definitely sounds like the demographic that's been behind the "back-to-the-city" movement in cities nationwide. It's just that, in the Detroit area, it happened beyond the city limits (by the way, if you haven't tried ESRI's Tapestry Segmentation Model, I really urge you to give it a test drive).

Also in Oakland County, two major office centers, one in Southfield and the other in Troy, developed as Detroit collapsed. Interestingly, both emerged close to the hip burbs of southeastern Oakland County -- Southfield is a 10-15 minute drive to the west, Troy is 10-15 minutes to the north. Businesses were able to tap into a young and educated talent pool rather easily.

Today, however, Detroit's young and educated have more options. The Seven Point Two -- the weird name (it's the area in square mile terms) given to the collection of neighborhoods that comprise Detroit's Greater Downtown -- is becoming attractive to the people who for years headed to Royal Oak or Ferndale. The conveyor belt pattern is familiar to many -- graduate from college and live in a cool neighborhood with tons of entertainment options, settle into a less-cool but just as entertaining neighborhood as you mature, and find a suburban area with nice schools as your kids reach school age. Same in metro Detroit as elsewhere -- it just started in the suburbs.

But because metro Detroit's population growth has been flat for more than a generation, there's very nearly a zero-sum cause and effect here. The city's loss decades ago was the suburb's gain. Today's city gain is coming at the expense of the suburbs.

It may be that Ferndale, Royal Oak and the rest of southeastern Oakland County inhabit that second step on the conveyor belt, becoming the less-cool but still entertaining spots, relative to the burgeoning hot spots in the downtown/Midtown/Corktown areas. I see that as having a ripple effect through other suburbs -- the Birminghams and Bloomfield Hills and beyond.

This could also force some real soul-searching for the office centers in Southfield and Troy. Much like the city did 60 years ago, it could be said that they took the growth for granted and expected it to last forever. If businesses choose to move downtown to be where the talent pool is choosing to go, what will that mean for them? Ford's move into the Michigan Central Station building will tell us a lot.

Lastly, I didn't even mention the middle-class and working-class suburbs of western Wayne County, the Downriver area, or Macomb County, the ones that have been extremely reliant on manufacturing workers living in small Cape Cods until they were able to upgrade to bigger homes even further from the city. They will have to do some soul-searching as well.

Again, I stress that this is, in a sense, Detroit simply reclaiming what it lost as it acquired its stigma over the last 60 years. It's settling into a position familiar to other cities nationwide. The economic and cultural divide between the two was too great. For better or worse, the city's rebound has the ability to equalize them. The suburbs just better be ready.

This piece originally appeared on The Corner Side Yard.

Pete Saunders is a Detroit native who has worked as a public and private sector urban planner in the Chicago area for more than twenty years. He is also the author of "The Corner Side Yard," an urban planning blog that focuses on the redevelopment and revitalization of Rust Belt cities.

Photo: A scene from Main Street in downtown Royal Oak, MI. Suburbs like Royal Oak may have benefited from Detroit's troubles, but will they be able to compete with a resurrected Motor City? Source: patch.com

More on Bifurcating Chicago and Detroit

Pete Saunders — Wed, 30 May 2018 01:33:38 -0400

(Note: this past Sunday I wrote a 20-tweet (!), 657-word (!!) tweetstorm that was largely a response to some things from about a month ago. Yeah, I can hold onto a grudge. Anyway, here I'm offering an expanded version of the content from that tweetstorm, but also some elaborations that can provide more clarity and nuance. -Pete)

So last month I wrote a blog piece suggesting that the patterns of revitalization in Detroit and Chicago might be converging. The piece was in response to another piece written by Urbanophile Aaron Renn, in which he noted the factors behind the demographic challenges posed to Pittsburgh and Chicago. In the comments section, I said that Chicago was facing limits to revitalization that weren't readily recognized, while Detroit, in the early stages of its rebound, had fewer such limits. I suggested that perhaps there was a convergence between the two. Ultimately, I said, both cities were moving toward extreme bifurcation.

At least, that's what I thought I was saying. I took some flak from Chicagoans in particular who took exception to the Detroit/Chicago comparison. Their criticisms came in two forms:

1) You're crazy. There's no way Chicago and Detroit are comparable in any way.
2) Only a third of Chicago is struggling. The wealthiest third is booming, the middle third is stable.

Using the convergence framing that I did, and in the way I used it, the criticism was likely warranted. Chicago is far wealthier a city than Detroit is, and comparisons are almost irrelevant due to that fact.

This point was brought home by one commenter in particular who made a very valid point: I did a neighborhood typology for Chicago that splits the city into one of six community types: gentrified; gentrifying; frontline; stable prosperous; transitioning; and isolated. I even did a tidy table that shows how the community types compare with each other in a range of demographic factors. Some people disagreed with some aspects of the typology, but this particular commenter was disappointed I didn't do one for Detroit.

The commenter was right. I didn't do one. I tried to develop one for Detroit but there are no neighborhood or community-sized comparables in Detroit to Chicago's Community Areas in Detroit. Zip codes come closest but still miss a lot of nuance, so I chose not to use them.

Then I saw this by Data Driven Detroit:

They did a residential neighborhood typology similar to mine, but at the census block level. Here it is at closer inspection:

Here's how Data Driven Detroit characterized their typology work:

Generally, the darker brown areas reflect residential areas that are more active, have higher population density, fewer vacant lots, fewer properties owned by banks, investors or the city, and less population decline.

Orange tend to have more challenges to the stability of the neighborhood such as higher rates of housing vacancy or bank ownership or population decline. These areas are stable neighborhoods, but require more intervention than brown areas to retain that stability.

Yellow areas have even greater challenges to neighborhood stability. Generally, blocks depicted as yellow have less existing housing than a brown area. These areas would require more intensive stabilization to be considered "traditional residential".

Light green blocks are primarily residential areas with higher percentages of vacant lots or lower occupancy than traditional residential areas. Compared to dark green areas, the light green areas have quality housing stock, mixed with vacant lots.

The darkest green blocks are least active, with less density, more abandonment, and a high concentration of vacant lots.

Generally speaking, their analysis shows large amounts of vacant land (dark green) adjacent to the largely non-residential downtown, neighborhoods in various stages of transition beyond the city's zones of abandoned land, and areas of relative stability on the city's northeast and northwest sides. Keep in mind, however, that this typology is more about physical condition, and less about economic conditions. And, economically Detroit does lag Chicago, so stability there looks different from stability in Chicago. For those who know both cities well, the Pembroke neighborhood where I grew up on Detroit's Northwest Side might be a stable, black middle class area that's comparable to Chicago's Chatham, but it's not stable or prosperous in the way that maybe Portage Park is.

The point I was trying to make about Chicago and Detroit is that I view both cities are pioneers of a brand of revitalization/gentrification that might be unique to the Midwest/Rust Belt. Both cities, and many others in the Midwest/Rust Belt, had development patterns that were impacted by their response to the Great Migration in the early part of the 20th century, and they impact development patterns to this very day. Most Rust Belt cities, from Buffalo to St. Louis, gained significant numbers of black residents between 1910-1930 and again from 1950-1970, as blacks moved away from the Jim Crow South and toward the opportunity presented by plentiful manufacturing jobs. The near universal response by all of the Rust Belt cities was to "carve out" a section of town for blacks to live in, and leave it alone. This caused dramatically different development patterns than in today's "superstar" cities, which generally received far fewer black migrants (Boston and New York, to some extent, while Washington, D.C. is a notable exception. Most West Coast cities received even fewer black migrants).

I see Chicago as the leader here in adopting its pattern of segregation, and Detroit is following the same pattern. Chicago "gave up" much of the west and south sides for the new black arrivals and established other places in the city or suburbs. Detroit essentially "gave up" the entire city limits to its black residents and sprawled outward into suburbia. Ever since blacks emerged in Rust Belt cities, the response by white residents has been to move elsewhere -- and avoid the place you left with a passion.

This has created an interesting dynamic as both Chicago and Detroit entered the New Urban Future that took hold maybe 25-30 years ago. Chicago was able to make the switch and accommodate the mostly white, upper-middle-class-led revitalization of parts of the city because, in accordance with development practice, revitalization almost exclusively took place within formerly poor and working-class white ethnic neighborhoods. Detroit, however, was very late to that party, in large part because its poor and working-class white ethnic neighborhoods had already disappeared. In neither city was their much of an effort to touch neighborhoods with people of color.

Chicago

On to today. Chicago's inventory of former poor and working-class white ethnic enclaves has effectively run out. Developers face a choice: expand outward into neighborhoods with larger numbers of people of color, or build more densely in already hot neighborhoods. With some exceptions (Humboldt Park, parts of Pilsen), developers are choosing the latter.

This has serious ramifications. Building more densely in hot neighborhoods sounds good on the surface, but developers are likely approaching a ceiling (financial and physical) in those hot neighborhoods. Land acquisition costs go higher and higher. Development review and approval receives heightened scrutiny from city planners and elected officials. NIMBY residents organize against new development. And the price of housing has to go up to account for the additional headaches the developer receives. I think it's bringing revitalization efforts overall in Chicago to a halt.

At the same time much of Chicago is hollowing out. Blacks in particular are leaving the city in droves, especially on the west and south sides. Black population in Chicago fell by 17 percent between 2000 and 2010, and another nine percent from 2010 to 2016. Overall, Chicago's black population is down 24.7% since 2000 -- nearly 260,000 -- and showing no signs of slowing down.

Since the black withdrawal from Chicago is largely driven by black middle-class residents, motivated by poor school quality, crime, a lack of amenities or services, or poor job or growth opportunities, increasing concentrations of poorer residents with fewer choices are being left behind. So it appears Chicago is possibly headed toward extreme bifurcation: dense, wealthy concentration on the north lakefront, the Loop and near south side, and vacant concentrations of poor residents on the west and south sides. There are (and will be) concentrations of middle-class neighborhoods that sit between the affluence and poverty, but they will exist in various states of transition, potentially improving -- or collapsing..

Detroit

Meanwhile Detroit is in the very early stages of its own rebound. I was there 3 weeks ago and saw evidence of positive change. If you're from the D it's welcome, maybe even a little overwhelming. If you're not from there, it's the kind of normal city redevelopment you see in most cities today. Detroit just hadn't seen it.

That's because what's happening there, in my opinion, is more redemptive than revitalizing. I've written about this before, and I think what's happening is that people who once turned their back on Detroit are now willing to return and give it another look. The economy is fine there, but it's not super-heated and bringing thousands of people and jobs. Detroit is going through an emotional recovery as much as an economic one.

That being said Detroit has some good things going on in the downtown/Midtown/Corktown areas, but very little outside of that prospering core. The map above shows where the trouble lies. Immediately outside of downtown are broad expanses that are as vacant as they are occupied. Beyond this "empty quarter" are a ring of neighborhoods in transition surrounded by an outer ring of more stable neighborhoods. The loss of manufacturing jobs has made Detroit a mostly black working-class city, with people working in the service industry or no job at all, struggling, without much economic impetus moving them forward.

Detroit's current rebound, however, means that significant change could be on the horizon. The influx of middle-class and affluent people that the city has witnessed over the last five years means that Detroit could eventually develop its own bifurcation features, like Chicago -- but with a twist. My guess is that the D will expand outward and build up its "empty quarter" until it comes up against the transitional neighborhoods in the secondary and tertiary rings.

In this context Detroit's "empty quarter" is an asset, for two reasons: 1) new visions of large scale walkable urbanism can be considered, remaking large swaths of the city; and 2) less displacement/disruption and resulting conflict. My guess on where that might happen? I'd say the east riverfront, Poletown East, Milwaukee Junction, North End, Virginia Park, Woodbridge, LaSalle Gardens, the Southwest Side. Areas with considerable vacancy, but just enough urban fabric to form the foundation.

It won't happen soon. There's not enough juice (or time) in this economic cycle for it to happen in Detroit soon. But I'd bet developers are already buying lots and placing bets on areas that will build out over the next 10-15 years.

Here's where things get tricky. I can foresee a future where Detroit's expansive growth on largely empty land outside of downtown will be hailed, but ultimately stalled as it reaches intact neighborhoods. Chicago's vertical growth will be pilloried for having little influence in poor areas.

All because both Chicago and Detroit are notable for their extreme avoidance of revitalization in black neighborhoods, a legacy of segregation patterns established by the Great Migration more than 100 years ago.

This piece originally appeared on The Corner Side Yard.

Photo: A block in Detroit's Virginia Park neighborhood. It has the kind of urban fabric that might be poised to return in the D. From modeldmedia.com

Chicago, Detroit and the Rust Belt Bifurcated City

Pete Saunders — Thu, 03 May 2018 01:33:38 -0400

So I got into a rather interesting discussion last week in the comments section of Aaron Renn's Urbanophile website in a piece he wrote about population transformation in Pittsburgh and Chicago. And it led to some, well, interesting points that deserve more comment.

First, let's start with what Aaron said that kicked things off. He noted recent American Community Survey data that shows that of the 53 metro areas with more than a million people, only four lost population last year. The two biggest losers were Pittsburgh and Chicago. In Pittsburgh's case, Aaron noted that the collapse of the steel industry led to a "lost generation" of currently middle-aged persons who fled the region over the last few decades, making the Pittsburgh metro area skew old. More people are dying than being born in metro Pittsburgh, and retirees might be a leading cause of large net domestic outmigration. Pittsburgh's saving grace, however, is its surge in young adults with degrees. It's increased by 52% since 2000 (I'm assuming he's referring to the 25-34 age cohort), tops among Midwestern cities. It's great news for Pittsburgh, but the surge has yet to be strong enough to counter larger demographic trends. Yet.

Aaron noted that Chicago's demographic situation is quite different. He notes it here:

Chicago’s population problems seem to be driven by three factors, which are different from Pittsburgh:

1. The continuing loss of black population, especially in the city but also in the region.

2. A collapse in Mexican immigration (which had been Chicago’s biggest source of new immigrants).

3. A significant migration loss from people making less than $75,000 per year, and especially less than $25,000 per year.

Aaron's analysis of the upscale class reaction to Chicago's demographics is spot on. He's right; most residents of Chicago's upscale core seem little concerned about the population loss in the city's poorer areas, whether it's driven by black outmigration or the halt of Mexican inmigration. In fact, many may view it as a necessity in the city's furious move to join the League of Dominating Global Metro Titans. But however you want to state it, currently Chicago, a majority-minority city, is headed toward being smaller, whiter and wealthier.

Chicago's rather unique position is causing all sorts of reactions, including varied ones from yours truly. The Atlantic published an excellent article on Chicago's bifurcation, which noted that Chicago's booming Loop and lakefront neighborhoods are doing as well as any American coastal city. Sadly, however, the boom simply isn't reaching those currently not plugged into the growth network, and middle-class, working-class and low-income minority residents are leaving Chicago in huge numbers. As for me, I've alternately praised Chicago, tried to understand the isolation of its troubled areas, and a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/petesaunders1/2018/03/08/chicago-the-american-metropolitan-platypus/#25ff1eaf49c0">wondered out loud how so much good and bad could exist simultaneously in the very same city.

I've been noting the economic and demographic changes of Rust Belt cities for a long time, and what we're seeing in Chicago, in retrospect, isn't unique. It's apparent in virtually all Rust Belt cities to some extent; a recent piece in CityLab notes that one upscale condo building in St. Louis is more valuable than some entire low-income neighborhoods there. If anything, we're getting to the point where we can possibly conclude that Rust Belt bifurcation is a feature, not a bug.

That led to a rather provocative comment from me:

I think Chicago and Detroit are on similar paths, or converging, but the stories play out differently in each city. In Detroit people are celebrating the city’s downtown rebound but are wary of what’s next for the city’s neighborhoods. In Chicago people love the Loop and north lakefront, but wonder why its boom hasn’t touched more of the city. I’m beginning to believe both will follow a similar trajectory that most will later discover to be truly Rust Belt-ian in character:

1) Booming and growing new economy cores and inner neighborhoods;

2) Collapsing and emptying outer neighborhoods, formerly housing (mostly black) manufacturing workers

Stretch this trajectory out. Chicago, Detroit and Rust Belt cities like them will ultimately be smaller and whiter, maybe not with a white majority but with a plurality. They’ll also be noted for having a “no man’s land” between the booming and collapsing areas. Why? Because there’s always going to be some trepidation about moving into “sketchy” areas in Rust Belt cities that surpasses that of the coastal cities, and people facing that choice would prefer to either build up the strong areas (YIMBYism) or move into depopulated “sketchy” spots.

The dissents to my comment boiled down into two types:

1) You're crazy. There's no way Chicago and Detroit are comparable in any way.
2) Only a third of Chicago is struggling. The wealthiest third is booming, the middle third is stable.

As I said in the comments, I think Chicago boosters tend to overestimate what's happening in Chicago, and underestimate the scale of revival in Detroit and other Rust Belt cities. I don't mean to suggest that Detroit is on the leaderboard for top booming cities in the 2020's, or that Chicago is on the precipice of collapse. I do mean to suggest that Detroit's revival is real and could continue to remake much of the city, while there are legitimate questions regarding the ability of Chicago's global economy sectors to revitalize even more of the city.

In 2016 I ran some data on Chicago's 77 Community Areas, and grouped them in various categories based on their socio-demographic data. I did a map that highlighted the community types in Chicago:

Accompanied by a description of types:

Gentrified Communities (dark green): Former middle and working-class neighborhoods that have firmly become well-to-do neighborhoods over the last 30 years or so. Home to a substantial amount of Chicago's walkable urbanism inventory. Transit supported and amenity rich.

Gentrifying Communities (light green): Historically similar to the adjacent gentrified communities, but part of a second or third wave of growth that emanated from the first group. Almost as affluent and educated as the first group, and quickly catching up, but not quite there yet.

Frontline Communities (yellow): Largely working-class neighborhoods that may be experiencing development pressure generated in the gentrified/gentrifying communities. People in the above two areas may identify with communities here as places for authentic ethnic dining or shopping. Less wealthy and with more minorities than the gentrified/gentrifying communities, but less than those on its outer flank. In Chicago, at least, fear of the prospects of gentrification here may exceed reality.

Stable Prosperous Communities (gold): Middle-class neighborhoods that sprouted in the city at the advent of the suburban era and have changed little since. Single-family home oriented and auto-oriented. In Chicago, home to many city workers who must remain in the city due to residency requirements. Rapidly growing older in its makeup.

Transitioning Communities (orange): Structurally similar to the stable prosperous communities, but more deeply impacted by one or two transitions. Some are receiving a large influx of new minority residents, largely Latino. Others are experiencing a huge outflow of middle-class families, largely African-American. Those experiencing the Latino influx are becoming younger and less affluent; those experiencing the African-American outmigration are being hollowed out, leaving behind large numbers of older and younger less affluent residents.

Isolated Communities (brown): Impoverished areas of the city. Middle-class white residents left here in the '50s and '60s, replaced by middle-class and working-class blacks who bore the brunt of job loss in the subsequent decades. Plenty of walkable urbanism exists here, but demolition means it's fading away.

And I finished it off with a table that shows how the subregions stack up demographically:

When Chicago boosters bristle at any comparison of Chicago with Detroit, I think it's in part because few seem to recognize how economically isolated some parts of the city are. There's a general understanding that whatever mental image one has of the South and West sides, they're struggling; however, the transitioning communities southwest and far south sides are truly on the precipice, and without investment could spiral downward. And with no new influx of migrants, and an economy that seems to be missing vast numbers of the city's residents, free fall may be closer than you think.

One thing I'd say about Detroit. There are few illusions about that city's place among its residents. Those inside the small global economy core of downtown, Midtown, Corktown, Woodbridge and a handful of other neighborhoods know that what they're experiencing is the exception and not the rule. Those on the outside -- everywhere else in Detroit -- know exactly how isolated they are from the city's revival. If anything, that could lead to a meaningful discussion in the city that will encourage greater economic and social inclusion.

Right now, Chicago's doing well. But not doing as well as many think. And it's misplaced hubris could lead to greater problems.

This piece originally appeared on The Corner Side Yard.

Photo: Bungalow homes in Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Auburn Gresham is one of many community areas in a state of transition -- middle-class blacks are moving away, leading to neighborhood destablization. Source: marketurbanismreport.com

Detroit -- The Movie

Pete Saunders — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 01:33:38 -0400

I guess there was always going to be a difference between the Detroit film I wanted and the Detroit film that was produced.

"Detroit", the new big-budget exploration by director Kathryn Bigelow that goes into the details of one of Motor City's most defining events, came out this weekend to strong critical acclaim but less than outstanding popular success. As a native Detroiter I was intrigued from the outset about the film's premise and how it would present such a tense and difficult subject -- and if the film could offer any potential for resolving the issues that still plague the city 50 years later. In an attempt to connect 1967 Detroit to present-day concerns over police brutality, the film succeeds in making us feel brutality, but fall just short of explaining how it became a tool of oppression and how it can be undone.

As someone whose absolute earliest memory is of watching National Guardsmen drive down residential streets in fatigues and pointing rifles, while in my mother's arms, I had envisioned a film that would provide context for the uprising. One that would provide meaning. I envisioned an epic, sweeping, panoramic film that would establish the economic and social roots of the riot. Possibly develop the perspectives of people on multiple sides of the uprising -- police, looters, white and black riot resisters, dispassionate suburbanites. Something that would acknowledge that before 1967, there was 1943, there was 1941, there was 1925, and a host of other indignities large and small. The film begins with that potential, but loses it along the way.

The film starts with a well done animated montage that describes, basically, how the cauldron that would eventually explode was built. But it does so in a way that doesn't convey the sense of desperation felt by many blacks, nor is particularly specific to Detroit. Blacks moved up from the South for jobs. They were confined to the worst neighborhoods and the worst jobs. Efforts by blacks to gain better housing and better economic opportunity were met with resistance -- sometimes procedural and administrative, others visceral and violent -- by the white majority. That's the case in hundreds of cities nationwide, but I feel as if Detroit still needs more context.

The film then moves into the event that spurred the riot itself -- the police raid of a Vietnam War veteran's welcome home party at a "blind pig", or unlicensed after-hours club. The montage may seem sanitized, but the raid itself and the start of the riot seems very real.

We then see the first three days of the disturbance played out. Looting, buildings burning, exasperated black residents in conflict with overwhelmed, but quite angry, Detroit police officers, state police, and National Guardsmen. Perhaps as a metaphor for dreams dashed and never realized, we're introduced to a group of young black singers known as the Dramatics (a real group, dramatized) hoping to make it big with a performance to Motown executives at Detroit's Fox Theater, but police tell guests to evacuate the theater just prior to their performance.

Then the film sharply narrows its focus to its depiction of events at the Algiers Motel. In fact, a strong case could be made that the film should have been named "Algiers" instead of "Detroit", because of its focus. But any film that would try to tackle a topic as significant as Detroit's 1967 conflict would have to have the city's name in it. Spoiler alert for those who wish to see the film (but the film is based on actual and easily found events): the Algiers Motel incident was a deeply tragic and brutal injustice in which police officers killed three young black men and severely beat five other men and (white) women. Police respond to a perceived sniper attack coming from the motel by seizing it, gathering its occupants and then engaging in truly evil torture and intimidation. Police were later acquitted on all charges in the murders and beatings, but never served on the Detroit police force again.

The Algiers Motel scenes, making up almost half of the film, extremely violent, claustrophobic, and visceral. It is hard to watch. Without question, if one wants to see what it looks like to be under the control of a deranged sociopath, this is the film. But is this what racism is? Or all that racism is? Did it require hundreds of thousands of similarly deranged people to terrorize Detroit's black community? Not at all. And that's where the film fails. It reduces racism to the violent actions of deranged individuals, who have no regard for the lives of the people they're supposed to protect.

The racism that led to the conflict in 1967 was far more subtle, until it wasn't. Redlining, urban renewal, interstate highway construction, job and educational disparities, and more -- they weren't practices explicitly tailored to diminish black progress, but those who supported them knew they did the trick. And all it took to support them was a nod of agreement.

In an attempt to find a connection between the tragedy of Detroit then and recent police killings, from Ferguson to Baltimore to St. Paul, we lost out on a chance to develop greater meaning and understanding of what happened 50 years ago.

For what it's worth, it seems the film, or the process of completing the film, or the healing powers of time itself, has had a redemptive impact for residents of metro Detroit. The 1967 conflict kicked off a decade of controversy in Detroit -- the Algiers Motel trials, a contentious mayoral race for control of the city, tense fights over metro-level school busing, all while the auto industry slipped into decline and violent crime moved steadily upward. Many white residents fled the city during that time and afterward, believing "one day our city was fine, and the next it was on fire", and never looked back. But more are beginning to acknowledge a sense of pain and loss from their dislocation from the city. If the film has that effect on Detroiters, then it's succeeded despite its flaws.

This piece originally appeared on The Corner Side Yard.

Photo: Actors Will Poulter (left) and Anthony Mackie in a scene from "Detroit". Source: parlemag.com

The Precariat Shoppe

John Sanphillippo — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 01:33:38 -0400

The precariat is a term coined to describe the segment of the population that lives without security or predictability. These days it often refers to the former American middle class that’s currently experiencing reduced circumstances. There’s always been a precariat, but it usually includes a minor subset of the population that no one really likes or cares about. Indentured Irish servants, black slaves, Jewish and Italian sweatshop workers, Mexican field hands, Puerto Rican cleaning ladies… It’s a long list. People are up in arms now because the “wrong people” have fallen in to the precariat that didn’t used to “belong” there. There’s been a sudden realization that sometimes the structure of the economy itself institutionalizes their personal decline. Shocking! I’m not a political animal so I’ll leave those discussions to others to hash out. Instead, I’m interested in how people adapt to the circumstances they find themselves in.

We're all familiar with the ice cream man whose truck rolls around with the happy music playing on hot summer days. This one is in Detroit – and it’s an ice cream lady. She bought an old delivery vehicle, did a bit of hand painting, fitted it with chest freezers, and opened for business. It’s a fast, low cost, and flexible way to get a business off the ground even in the most challenging economic environments.

The ubiquitous food truck fills the gap between the cost, complexity, and risk of opening a brick and mortar restaurant vs. working for someone else. A well constructed food truck isn’t necessarily cheap, but it’s within the reach of many more people than anything in a building. This one is in Los Angeles.

Here’s a twist on the mobile shop theme that’s a direct result of rising commercial rents. This woman ran a successful second hand clothing boutique for many years and was driven out when her shop rent hit $5,400 a month. You have to sell a lot of schmatta to make that nut. Now she follows various fairs and pubic gatherings with her merchandise in a repurposed school bus. She goes directly to where her customers are most likely to find her. As I’ve heard many times from shopkeepers around the world – it’s not how much money you earn, it’s how much you have left over after all the thieves are paid.

Here’s a mobile veterinary clinic. Dogs, cats, horses… As the cost of a medical degree, insurance, and real estate have skyrocketed even doctors are taking a long hard look at the whole medical office building situation. The transition from a practice with a full team of professionals to a solo gig in a tricked out custom van can be described as a positive lifestyle change, but it’s almost certainly about money.

I stumbled on this mobile grocery store complete with fresh produce, real bread, and dairy products. The offerings and prices were substantially better than what can be found at the alternative in this location – a classic food desert where people without access to a car have little choice but to buy low quality industrial food-like products at inflated prices at gas stations.

Down the street I found a similar grocery truck. I chatted with the family that runs the business. There was a need in the community to bring in groceries as well as an opportunity to make money. The usual chain stores on the main arterial road don’t always work well for either customers or potential shopkeepers. The trucks do. They arrive exactly when and where they’re needed and stock what people want. I noticed health department certificates and Weights and Measures seals. Both trucks were Grade A.

Here’s a mobile woodworker’s tool shop. These are specialty items not typically found in most hardware stores. This man has a relationship with various brick and mortar lumber yards who find his presence good for business. Social media alerts customers of his schedule. Mobile shops have the ability to specialize and cover a wider territory more economically than a stationary establishment burdened with overhead and a limited static customer base.

The irony here is that all around the parking lots that host occasional mobile vendors are empty buildings that once housed chain pharmacies, banks, and such. Sometimes new buildings are constructed to house updated versions of the same stores in the same town. Sometimes there’s simply less need for physical operations as activity migrates to the interwebs. But repurposing the vacated spaces is hard. The size, configuration, and cost of these places is fundamentally at odds with the creation of new small scale mom and pop enterprises. The numbers don’t add up. I’ve had nearly everyone I talked to tell me some version of the same story. The combination of expenses, regulations, and the culture of distant corporate management is all agressively hostile to their efforts. And taking on a single employee is often the difference between making money and failing within the first year.

Here’s one example of the challenges of opening a brick and mortar shop even if you have a generous budget. A prosperous California winery decided to open a tasting room in town to promote its products. The building had been a family paint store since the 1950s. The 2008 financial crash forced it to close. The new owners gave the old nondescript concrete block building a designer facelift. But it was a bumpy road. The climate controlled warehouse in the back was subject to a design review board that spent months rejecting the proposed color of the structure. White was preferred by the owner since it reflected heat most effectively. Evidently pure white was not in keeping with the character of the community. There was a back and forth with the oversight committee over various shades of off white, beige, and creme anglaise. Each time the committee rejected a color the process had to start all over again which delayed the opening of the shop by several weeks – which all costs money.

The fire marshal insisted on the installation of this bit of plumbing that cost $65,000. I can’t think of anything more flammable than 1950s era paint – not even wine – yet somehow the building managed not to burn for sixty odd years. But no new business could open in this spot until this valve was installed. And then there was the requirement that each seat and stool in the tasting room have a corresponding parking spot on site while not interfering with the ability of a giant fire truck to completely encircle the entire property.

Here’s the other end of the spectrum. A mother and daughter sell cold drinks at a busy bus stop from an ice chest. Totally ADA compliant!

But the award for creative entrepreneurial capitalism goes to this mobile video game kiosk that regularly parks outside a San Francisco bar on weekend evenings. Comfortably liquified patrons settle in to folding chairs and play electronic games on the sidewalk. Free! (But please keep the tips coming.) It’s been in the same spot for so long the bar owners must not mind. This is how you work a side hustle when you’re part of the precariat.

This piece first appeared on Granola Shotgun.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He's a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

How Does Housing Stock Affect Urban Revitalization?

Aaron M. Renn — Sat, 10 Jun 2017 01:33:38 -0400

The second of Pete Saunders’ nine reasons why Detroit failed is “poor housing stock,” particularly its overweighting towards small, early postwar cottages. Here’s a sample:

Here’s what Pete had to say:

Detroit may be well-known for its so-called ruins, but much of the city is relentlessly covered with small, Cape Cod-style, 3-bedroom and one-bath single family homes on slabs that are not in keeping with contemporary standards for size and quality…..The truth, however, is that Detroit may have one of the greatest concentrations of post-World War II tract housing of any major U.S. city….True, Detroit has more than its share of abandoned ruins that negatively impact housing prices. But it also has many more homes that simply don’t generate the demand that higher quality housing would. That is a major contributor to the city’s abundance of very cheap housing.

I have often been struck by the same thing in Philadelphia. There are some districts of great buildings, but most of the city is made up of mile after mile of two-story, very small row houses. Here’s a snap I took in the Kensington neighborhood that provides a sample.

This is decent density of these to be sure. However, keep in mind that most of these row houses contain a single unit. The Upper West Side brownstone I live in has been converted into ten units. Also, many of these rowhouse units are extremely shallow. Here’s a picture I found online that illustrates a typical depth.

Photo credit: Flickr/pwbaker CC BY-NC 2.0

As it happens, there has been some redevelopment activity in Kensington, both in residential and industrial spaces. (Some neighborhoods nearby are seeing significant redevelopment).

Someone I know recently bought and renovated a rowhouse in the neighborhood, so I got to tour it. It’s a two-bedroom unit, but very small. It’s barely bigger than your average one bedroom apartment. Unsurprisingly, the person who bought it is in her 20s and single.

As nice as this unit was, it’s basically a starter home, much like those Detroit Cape Cods. Cities need to have housing like that, but if it is overwhelmingly dominant, that’s not healthy.

It’s similar to how so many downtowns are seeing tons of Millennial targeting apartment construction. Older families can have trouble finding housing in these areas because there isn’t great housing to take you through your full lifecycle.

Philadelphia should be fine in the near term. The city has great bones and I really find it compelling in a lot of ways. But I wonder if this type of housing stock is one reason the city has seen less demand than other old major tier one urban centers with great transit.

I put out a poll on Twitter about this and most people didn’t seem to agree with me on the potential negative of being overweight very small rowhouses. We will see how this plays out for Philly.

Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and an economic development columnist for Governing magazine. He focuses on ways to help America’s cities thrive in an ever more complex, competitive, globalized, and diverse twenty-first century. During Renn’s 15-year career in management and technology consulting, he was a partner at Accenture and held several technology strategy roles and directed multimillion-dollar global technology implementations. He has contributed to The Guardian, Forbes.com, and numerous other publications. Renn holds a B.S. from Indiana University, where he coauthored an early social-networking platform in 1991.

This piece originally appeared on Urbanophile.

Top photo by Aaron M. Renn.

Detroit's Recovery? Oh Yeah, It's Real Alright

Pete Saunders — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 09:50:05 -0500

So it seems the debate has begun. There's been enough progress in Detroit to discuss whether its rebound is for real, or not.

Two academics, Laura Reese of Michigan State University and Gary Sands of Wayne State University, wrote a piece for the Atlantic a couple weeks ago to counter the spreading narrative of Detroit's comeback. The article notes the Motor City's rebound has caught the attention of the national media and parts of academia, but they aren't so certain that the trend is real, or if it is, whether it's indeed sustainable. From the article:

"These rosy descriptions were not consistent with the reality of what we continued to see in many Detroit neighborhoods. To provide perspective on Detroit’s comeback story, we examined trends in a variety of indicators including population, poverty, income disparities, business recovery, unemployment, residential sales prices and vacancies, and crime.

Two major conclusions emerged from our data. First, by a number of measures Detroit continues to decline, and even when positive change has occurred, growth has been much less robust than many narratives would suggest. Second, within the city recovery has been highly uneven, resulting in increasing inequality."

In response to this article, blogger Lyman Stone added his take on Detroit's recovery. He seems to agree with Reese and Sands that, whatever is happening in Detroit, it's not touching growing numbers of city residents, and therefore it's not exactly a comeback:

"I tend to be on team “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” Saving Detroit is likely to be extremely costly while still holding a high risk of failure, in my opinion. But this view is predicated on a certain perspective of what it means to succeed. To some, success means population decline stops. To some, success means fewer empty buildings. To some, success means balanced municipal finances. To some, success means increasing employment. To me, I tend to think success means that huge population outflows will stop, and that population will begin to rise. Others may espouse other views, but I tend to think a locality’s ability to provide prosperity only matters in a general equilibrium framework, so a place that makes locals rich by culling the herd of non-rich locals is not “succeeding.” Success means that you offer prosperity to a rising share of the general population."

However, Stone notes that there are some positive demographic trends that are evident in Detroit, and seems to make the case that if Detroit is to get out of its hole, it's at least stopping digging.

The City Observatory's Joe Cortright took a positive spin on Detroit in the Atlantic, going against the grain of both pieces and suggesting that Detroit's comeback shouldn't be dismissed:

"Is Detroit “back?” As best I can tell, no one’s making that argument. The likelihood that the city will restore the industrial heyday of the U.S. auto industry, replete with a profitable oligopoly and powerful unions that negotiate high wages for modestly skilled work, just isn’t in the cards...

That said, there’s clear evidence that Detroit has stanched the economic hemorrhage. After a decade of year-over-year job losses, Wayne County has chalked up five consecutive years of year-over-year job growth. True, the county is still down more than 150,000 jobs from its peak, but it has gained back 50,000 jobs in the past five years."

Honestly, I think each of the pieces -- indeed, most people -- underestimate the depths of Detroit's collapse, and therefore underestimate the significance of its current recovery. Detroit's collapse was not simply an economic one, but a cultural, social and demographic one as well. It lost virtually all connections with the networks of wealth and information that drive economic growth, and the city had such a pervasive negative perception that it was effectively erased from the minds of many. What's happening now is Detroit is reconnecting itself to the national and international network of cities, slowly returning to life among the living. This is a necessary step for Detroit before any rebound that improves the lives of the majority its residents.

I view things this way. While Detroit suffered immensely from the restructuring and decline of the auto industry, it likely suffered even more from demographic collapse. Four years ago, I wrote a piece that showed the strength of the city's demographic vacuum. It's not just that the city lost jobs and people moved. People soured on Detroit in ways no other major city experienced, and left behind a city of concentrated poverty. I've often brought this graphic out, and it still amazes me:

To his credit, Joe Cortright gets this in his article. Where Reese and Sands argue that Detroit's economic boost in the downtown and Midtown areas and some select nearby neighborhoods is raising income inequality, Cortright responds with a comment from the Brooking Institution's Alan Berube: "Detroit does not have an income inequality problem—it has a poverty problem. It’s hard to imagine that the city will do better over time without more high-income individuals."

And that's indeed the critical first step for Detroit. It has to once again attract a critical mass of middle income and upper income residents who are ready, willing and able to invest in the city, before it can effectively take on its greater economic challenges. The post Great Recession recovery we're witnessing now means the city is getting closer to being able to take on greater tasks.

Top photo source tomabouttown.wordpress.com

Detroit’s New Streetlights Show Service Rebuilding in Action

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 00:38:23 -0500

I’ve been arguing that one thing struggling post-industrial cities need to do is take care of their own business, doing things like addressing legacy liabilities and rebuilding of core public services.

Last week I write about Buffalo doing just this by completely re-writing its zoning code and creating a new land use map of the city to bring its planning ordinances up to date for the 21st century.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic at the New York Times, recently wrote a feature on another good example: the replacement of Detroit’s entire street light inventory.

Detroit had 88,000 street lights, but only about half of them worked. Many of them were ridiculously old, some dating to the early 20th century I believe. Many of these were historic and charming as a result, but alas they didn’t work and couldn’t be maintained either. What’s more, thieves kept stealing the wire out of them for the copper.

The new system consists of 65,000 new LED lamps. As the Times puts it:

Let’s hope that if anyone writes a history of Detroit’s rejuvenation, a chapter is devoted to the lights returning. Like picking up the trash, fixing potholes and responding to emergencies, these efforts signal that no matter where you live in Detroit, you are no longer forgotten — that government here can finally keep its basic promises.

…

This is where the new lights come in. They’re spread all across town. The project cost $185 million, paid by the city and the state. The Public Lighting Authority of Detroit, backed by the mayor, received a critical assist from the Obama administration: Energy Department experts advised local officials to swap out the old, costly, broken-down sodium lamps, which vandals had been stripping bare for copper wire.

They recommended LED technology. Investments by the Obama administration in energy-efficient lighting have reduced costs, making LEDs feasible for a city like Detroit. Three years ago, nearly half the 88,000 streetlights in the city were out of commission. The more potent LED lights allow the authority to replace those 88,000 old fixtures with 65,000 new ones, strong enough for you to read one of those glossy magazines after dark.

Detroit said that it needed to actually deliver high quality services to its residents. Streetlighting is literally a high visibility service. And unlike some human services areas or economic development, it’s a straightforward piece of physical infrastructure that should be well within the ability of the city to actually deliver. And the new lighting authority did deliver:

The whole thing came in under budget and on time. When was the last time anyone could say that about a major infrastructure project in Detroit? “An example of how good government should work,” as Lorna L. Thomas, chairwoman of the lighting authority, put it at the switch-flipping ceremony.

It’s also an example of how one smart urban-design decision can have ripple effects. Some residents here grumbled about fewer lights. That said, the stronger new ones turn out to save Detroit nearly $3 million in electric bills. They use aluminum wiring, which nobody wants to strip, discouraging crime. The technology even cuts carbon emissions by more than 40,000 tons a year — equivalent to “taking 11,000 cars off of your streets,” [said Shaun Donovan].

Part of creating a willingness to spend more money on government is recreating a sense that government is actually competent. Delivering a project on time, under budget, that will save millions in operating costs, reduce theft, and be more environmentally friendly is a step in the right direction.

I’m not the biggest fan of LEDs and might be with the grumblers on wanting a higher density solution. But my preferences for gold level services aren’t always realistic. This appears to be a high quality, cost effective solution the city should feel good about. Other post-industrial cities should take note.

Click over to read the rest of the Times piece.

Image via Laura McDermott/The New York Times

Carrier and the Commonwealth

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 00:33:38 -0500

I was asked by Fortune to contribute a piece about Trump’s Carrier deal. They had gotten a lot of people criticizing it and were looking for someone who would give a different perspective. I think many of the criticisms are valid in a sense, but miss the larger context. So I wrote the piece which is now online. Here’s an excerpt:

Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that one of the keys to America’s unique success was its sense of enlightened self-interest. Americans worked and competed hard for themselves, their families, and their businesses, but they understood that a purely selfish mindset was self-destructive in the long term. Tocqueville observed inDemocracy in America, “Each American knows when to sacrifice some of his private interests to save the rest; we [the French] want to save everything, and often we lose it all.

Businessmen once understood this link between national, local, and personal success. The men of the Commercial Club of Chicago who commissioned Daniel Burnham to create his famed 1909 plan for that city had personal fortunes deeply tied to Chicago. They needed the city as a whole to succeed for them to succeed. Likewise, General Motors CEO Charles Erwin Wilson once famously said, “For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” He understood that his company’s fortune and America’s were intertwined: GM couldn’t make any money if no one could afford to buy its cars.

…

As these restrictions were lifted, these businesses left enlightened self-interest behind in favor of quarterly profits. They forgot their community in favor of global capital. Their business models evolved to delink profits and executive compensation from broad-based American prosperity. They could take a portfolio view of local communities and even countries. It was all very economically efficient. These firms and their managers could thrive even while much of America fell into ruin. Or so they thought.

Click through to read the whole thing.

Some people were a bit critical, saying, “Why not say this when Obama bailed out the auto industry?” or “Why is it only good when Trump does it?” In fact, I’ve actually written on this theme before.

Back in November 2008, shortly after Obama’s election, I posted a piece in which I criticized the auto companies’ management and came out in favor of a federally backed restructuring of the auto industry. While I am critical of some aspects of how Obama handled this, the idea of bailing out the car companies was something I was on record as supporting before it happened. Here are some excerpts from that:

Even if you assume a lot of this [auto company management behavior] is exaggerated for effect or outright BS, I’ve heard so many similar type things from people who’ve been associated with the auto industry that there must be a kernel of truth in it somewhere. I lead with this because it is so common to blame the UAW and its $73/hour or some such wage packages for the problems facing the Big Three. And indeed in the modern era that is not sustainable. But there has been particularly little focus on the management excesses of the auto industry, and the corporate cultures of those companies, and by analogy that of Detroit.

…

I’ve seen estimates that 2-3 million jobs could be lost and that chaos would ensue if the auto makers went bankrupt. That’s probably true if GM, Ford, and Chrysler just waltz down to the court house and file. But it is not the case if they have a government sponsored, pre-packaged bankruptcy.

…

Even so, we can’t lose track of the fact that there are real human beings, labor and management, with real trauma in their lives. Even if they are at least partially to blame for the mess they are in, that doesn’t mean they deserve what they are getting. It’s like a Greek tragedy: the suffering is disproportionate to the crime. And there but for the grace of God go you and I. I also work in a restructuring industry, and may yet join the auto workers in their pain.

The stories you hear in the Detroit papers are heartbreaking. One that really stuck with me was about people losing their life’s possessions when they couldn’t pay the rental fees on storage lockers. People who had already lost their homes to foreclosure put their possessions in storage, only to lose them too as the storage companies auctioned them to pay the bills. I’m not an emotional guy, but this makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think this should be happening in a country like America. People who made decisions in good faith, who showed up to work every day, who did the right things to care for their families, shouldn’t be left to lose everything because of the action of economic forces they can’t understand or control. Not in America. That’s why we absolutely need a federal safety net program here. Michigan alone can’t fund this.

I probably anticipated more of a bite the bullet approach than actually happened (which is one reason restructuring is still ongoing), and my views have probably changed somewhat in eight years, but clearly the same general themes are present.

Where I would take issue with Trump, is in the idea of “bringing the jobs back” as the theme. This sort of nostalgia for a bygone idyllic era that never really was is powerful in the Midwest. It’s very backwards looking and based on a language of resentment. I can understand why the appeal to this works rhetorically, but as an actual policy goal it’s not realistic. The ship has already sailed too far to return to the harbor. That doesn’t mean we should double down on the status quo, but we’ll have to chart a different path forward to the future, not roll back the clock. (Fortunately, Trump’s working class supporters seem realistic on this point and don’t expect him to literally do every single thing he said).

This perhaps explains why I’m more positive on intervention to save existing jobs than to try to lure new ones. That and the difference in the price tags. It’s one thing to try to preserve actually existing businesses already woven into the fabric of the community, but it’s another to try to speculatively create something new. I’m not under any illusion that we’ll get rid of economic incentives, but it does seem excessive to me to spend, say, $750 million (corruptly, as it appears to have turned out) to lure a solar panel factory to Buffalo. I’m ok with the idea of spending a billion dollars of state money in Buffalo, but there have to be better ways to do it. (Mayor Stephanie Miner of Syracuse said if she had a billion, she’d spend three fourths of it to fix her city’s water pipes – a prescient pledge made prior to the Flint debacle).

It’s also the case that we need to be willing to face the unpleasant reality that many communities are poorly positioned for the future economy. That doesn’t mean abandoning them, but we do have to level with them. And those communities, not just the federal government, also need to be willing to make some changes.

But all that doesn’t mean that simply pushing forward with more of what we’ve already been doing is a viable option. Trump understood that, and beyond the politics of it, the Carrier deal was a symbol that he intends to pursue a new direction.

Update: In line with these themes, a commenter pointed me at this recent blog post by South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Photo: By Carrier Corporation (http://www.teamworkmarinesxm.com/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A Capital Improvement and Revitalization Idea for Detroit

Pete Saunders — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 01:04:27 -0400

You may have heard that Detroit is in the midst of a modest but enduring revival in and around its downtown. Residents and businesses are returning to the city, filling long-vacant skyscrapers, prompting new commercial development and revitalizing adjacent old neighborhoods. As a former Detroiter I'm excited to see the turnaround. After so many false starts, Detroit's post-bankruptcy rebound seems very real.

However, there seems to be a growing awareness that the city's current revival has its limits. On one hand, what's happening now in Detroit could be considered a rather elongated recovery for the city instead of growth, as the city races to catch up with cities that have had a 20-year head start on urban revitalization. One could argue that the Motor City is slowing losing its taint, and the investment that's coming to the city now is investment that never left, or never left at such a scale, in other cities. Maybe its reclamation rather than revitalization.

But more broadly speaking, there's a sentiment that the city's revival hasn't been inclusive. In a majority-black city, startlingly few African-Americans appear to be involved in the rebound, either as developers, homebuyers or even consumers of new amenities. Because of this, two vastly different kinds of fears seem to trouble much of the city's black community -- the revitalization could burn through the city like a wildfire and lead to widespread displacement, or the rebound could peter out before it has a chance to transform even more of the city.

How can that be? Maybe because people and businesses are coming back not because of an economic change in the city, but a socio/cultural one. Detroit is still the Motor City, and that won't change anytime soon. Detroit will remain the headquarters of American auto production and be a key manufacturing center for generations to come, and it will continue to ride the wave of manufacturing ebbs and flows. That's why I say the economy is driving little of what's happening in Detroit today. The Big Three are only eight years away from a true existential threat, and are still in the process of righting the ship. By my eyes, Detroit still hasn't found a new economic raison d'etre that could vault it into the next phase of its development.

As the fears that drove white and middle-class flight from the city from the 1960's onward recede into the distant memory, many people are willing to reconsider Detroit and return.

Detroit is at an interesting juncture in its history. After 125 years of focusing on its national and global economic prominence and leaving city-building behind, maybe now Detroit can focus on being a thriving, livable city. For everyone. There is an opportunity for Detroit to build on its rich urban design legacy to include more of the city, and more of its people, in its revival. There is an opportunity to set the stage for good -- even innovative -- urban development in the Motor City as the city continues to search for a new economic catalyst.

I believe the city should undertake a capital improvement/revitalization plan that utilizes its grand arterial streets -- Gratiot, Woodward Grand River and Michigan avenues -- and Grand Boulevard, the parkway necklace around the city's inner core, as assets and foundations for growth. After that, the city could extend similar improvements to the locations where the arterial streets intersect with the defunct Detroit Terminal Railroad, further out from the city center. Finally, the improvements could be extended even further outward to Detroit's other boulevard necklace, Outer Drive, near the city limits. Just as interstate highway development had the net impact of opening up outer bands of suburbia to city residents, this plan could open up languishing parts of the city for revitalization.

Here's the five-phase process:

• Transform Gratiot, Woodward, Grand River and Michigan avenues into true boulevards -- landscaped medians, streetscaping, wide sidewalks, bike lanes, etc. -- from their sources in downtown Detroit to their intersections with Grand Boulevard.

• Establish public squares where each new boulevard intersects with Grand Boulevard.

• Develop a connected greenway along the path of the former Detroit Terminal Railroad.

• Extend boulevard treatment along Gratiot, Woodward, Grand River and Michigan avenues to a new terminus at Outer Drive.

• Complete and connect Outer Drive where necessary, and establish new public squares where the boulevards intersect with Outer Drive.

Each step of the plan would include zoning changes along the affected areas with the intent of increasing residential and commercial development choice, and send a signal that the city is ready for transformation.

Here's how this project would look conceptually, looking at the entirety of Detroit:

First, please excuse my crude Microsoft Paint illustration. Hey, it serves its purpose. Second, let's consider the broad areas of the city highlighted in various colors. The green areas are the downtown and downtown-adjacent areas that have been experiencing a pretty significant rebound over the last 5-10 years. In fact, you could say that revitalization took hold there with the opening of the Comerica Park baseball stadium in 2000 and the Ford Field football stadium in 2002. This area also includes the Midtown area north of downtown that includes Wayne State University and a host of city cultural institutions. The orange areas are the parts of the city that capture the dystopian imagination of Detroit. This area is quite -- but not totally -- abandoned, where much of the city's older residential and industrial treasures have been lost. There's still some intact neighborhoods that have a solid walkable foundation, but they're often disconnected from each other by some serious abandonment. The yellow areas are the areas that might be described as imperiled; they could soon look like the orange zone if action isn't taken, and in fact some parts of it (like the Brightmoor neighborhood, on the far west side, are quite abandoned already). The gray or uncolored areas on the far northeast and northwest edges of the city represent the most stable residential neighborhoods of the city, but they, too, are threatened by the challenges experienced by the rest of the city.

When you hear Detroiters expressing concern that downtown revitalization isn't reaching the neighborhoods, they often come from the yellow and gray/uncolored areas, with fewer and fewer voices coming from the relatively open orange areas. Viewed this way it can be understood that people see the city's rebound as having a low ceiling; there is a half-empty quarter that sits between them and the promise of revitalization.

My idea is to utilize strategic infrastructure investment and zoning reform to attract new development to key corridors, utilizing the city's radial network. The radial blue lines on the map emanating from their intersection downtown represent (clockwise, from the left) Michigan, Grand River, Woodward and Gratiot avenues. The blue line that connects them, just outside the green revitalization area, is Grand Boulevard. The blue line that connects the radial streets further out is Outer Drive. The green stars represent public squares or plazas that could be built, and the light green circles indicate an approximate extent of impact outward from the squares or plazas. The green line that serves as the dividing line between the yellow and orange areas is the Detroit Terminal Railroad, and it would become a connecting trail.

Detroit was blessed early on with an excellent radial street system, but it quickly abandoned it as growth took hold in the early 20th century. Detroit missed an opportunity for grand public spaces at the same time that other cities were incorporating them into their urban fabric -- and those public spaces became the foundation for their rebound. Consider this image, where Grand River Avenue intersects with Grand Boulevard:

Or, worse yet, where Gratiot Avenue and Grand Boulevard meet:

This was a missed opportunity for Detroit to have majestic entryways into neighborhoods beyond the city center. This was also a missed opportunity to develop areas that could become more mixed use and multifamily in character, as opposed to the dominant single-family home city that Detroit is today.

If Detroit had the foresight 100 years ago to make strategic infrastructure investments, it could have put in place something like Chicago's Logan Square, located at Milwaukee Avenue and Logan Boulevard (also a radial street and boulevard intersection):

Or Logan Circle, in Washington, DC:

The public squares on the radial avenues could have the effect of drawing development and revitalization outward from the city center, as has happened in Chicago and DC. This could continue outward to the DTR trail and Outer Drive, if the city sees success in such a measure, finds the appropriate resources and desires to extend it further.

Detroit should certainly see the merits of such an investment. The city renovated and rededicated a new Campus Martius Park in 2004, and it has become a focal point for downtown revitalization.

Without a doubt, this would be a costly measure, maybe even a folly for a city just out of municipal bankruptcy and still struggling to provide basic city services. that's why I would envision this as a long term proposal, perhaps a 10-year project.

That's the basis of the idea. I'll follow up with more details soon.

Top photo: detroit.curbed.com