The Other Detroit

Wunderkammer Magazine recently commissioned me to write a piece on Detroit for their Politics and Society section. I took the opportunity to write about a side of the city that gets significantly less attention in the popular media—the “other” Detroit, if you will. It ended up being a bit too long to post here in its entirety, but it’s worth a read nonetheless.

An excerpt:

I take Interstate 96 eastbound from Ann Arbor. It’s the first warm day of 2008, and the combination of a bright sun and light breeze makes for a beautiful spring afternoon. After 35 miles of Midwestern nothing, I reach the city limits of Detroit. Small, decrepit housing lines the edges of the Southfield Freeway as I approach the exit for North Rosedale, a neighborhood located on the northwest side of the city. As I pull into the local Community House and park—the only privately owned park in the city—the smell of freshly cut grass is almost intrusive. A youth softball game is underway, and parents lounge in folding chairs. Along the edges of the park, residents—predominantly African-Americans—walk their dogs by large, single-family English Tudors. Almost without exception, each two-story house on each tree-lined street adorns a perfectly manicured lawn and a large wooden front door. It’s a middle-class oasis. A distinctly suburban feel, in fact. But it’s not the suburbs. It’s Detroit.

[...]

North Rosedale Park is the anti-slum. A middle-class majority remained after racial turnover, separating North Rosedale from countless other urban neighborhoods throughout the country. Homes are large, and social cohesion throughout the neighborhood is strong. Residents are tremendously proud of their neighborhood, and perhaps more importantly, committed to the city they call home.

[...]

No story or investigative report has captured this side of Detroit, the North Rosedale side. It’s not the bombed out train station, nor is it the urban prairie. It’s not the empty factory, nor is it the large housing project. It’s not the homeless man pushing his cart down a desolate downtown, nor is it the young woman waiting in line for a welfare check.

No, it’s the daily struggle of the urban middle class, the plight of a forgotten population. It’s the neighborhood where Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm lived briefly before ultimately moving to the suburbs. It’s half a mile from where Detroit historian Thomas Sugrue grew up, a neighborhood his parents hoped to one day “be wealthy enough” to call home. It’s the tree-lined streets, the well-maintained community park. It’s the colorful gardens and golden retrievers. It’s the uneasy, yet unwavering middle class in an otherwise unsettling and unsure urban abyss.

It’s the other Detroit.

Special thanks to my editor, Dara Lind, for her encouraging comments and thoughtful critiques.

The Unintentional Effects of Seemingly Mundane Public Policy

Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, and Ryan Avent recently engaged in a fascinating back and forth discussion regarding the role of highways in the development of contemporary American suburbs.

The precise causality—did highway construction cause suburbanization?—is, of course, debatable. But the discussion points to a larger connection between metropolitan development, inequality, and seemingly mundane, unrelated public policy.

Interstate highway construction owes its development to Cold War paranoia and military mobilization. With the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the federal government devised a transportation plan that would facilitate easy travel for military equipment and soldiers. An extensive highway system, coupled with the affordable production of automobiles and within the context of a consumer-driven economic culture, precipitated suburban housing development.

Of course, that doesn’t exactly explain the racialization of suburban residential patterns. Indeed, it was purposive, intentional, deliberate policies—particularly red-lining and other discriminatory lending policies facilitated by the Federal Housing Authority and officially sanctioned by the federal government—that laid the groundwork for a metropolitan environment initially typified by “chocolate cities, vanilla suburbs.” Within the context of deindustrialization, decentralization, and other impersonal (read: non-deliberately racial) changes in the urban economy, the basis for metropolitan inequality is clear.

That’s not to discount the role of overt racism—you know, like block-busting, racial steering by real estate agents, violent defense of urban and suburban neighborhoods against black “invasion,” and so on—in the creation of racially homogenous suburban neighborhoods. These processes have been well documented by many talented historians. Not to mention racially-charged, failed political struggles over issues like busing and policing that precipitated white flight. And labor market struggles, played out in employment practices and labor union policies. But racism alone can’t explain metropolitan development and residential patterns. No, racism and racial animus shape, and are in turn shaped by, public policy.

Highways made residential development both feasible and desirable in the outer metropolitan fringes, as a suburban populace could easily commute to employment opportunities located within the urban core. It doesn’t exactly explain why individuals and business eventually fled from the inner city (we can thank zoning and tax subsidies for that), but it does illuminate the structure that made such residential patterns possible. It created social and physical distance from which many suburban homeowners could leverage political power, acquire economic resources, and cement inequality.

A policy as simple as highway construction—intended to make military mobility across the nation easier—can nevertheless have dramatic, unintended consequences. Mundane policy may not directly cause, by itself, resulting patterns of disparity; most social phenomena are, after all, multi-causal. Still, it can lay the groundwork—the structure—from which metropolitan inequality materializes.

Direct cause, in this context, matters less than unintentional effect.

Congestion, Isolation, and the Goal of Mass Transit

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser offered one of the more asinine metropolitan policy editorials I’ve ever read in Friday’s Boston Globe. Glaeser argues that federal transportation funding should be focused on places that “need it”—namely, dense localities with congestion problems. The Obama administration’s plans to construct regional transportation systems in the South don’t fit Glaeser’s criteria for necessary transit, since, I guess, they aren’t in the densely populated Northeast.

But the goal of public transit isn’t simply about alleviating congestion—or, at least it shouldn’t be. This is a terribly passive strategy of urban planning, simply following residential patterns and retroactively rigging the structure of transportation to maximize efficient mobility. It denies the reality that some people need better access to transportation because they have no other means to get around. If you don’t live in a densely populated or resource-rich neighborhood, there’s a high probability that you don’t have great access to public transportation. And there’s an equally high probability that your socioeconomic status and social/geographic isolation necessitates sound public transportation options in order to find employment or other social services.

Public transit exists to transport the public, and should therefore reflect the transportation needs of the populace. So, if residents in under-populated urban neighborhoods are without adequate access to public transportation, these are the exact areas where light rail lines need to be built. This really isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. Public transportation should be expanded to areas where the public needs transportation. Glaeser’s analysis, ignorant to this basic definition of mass transit, represents utility maximization gone horribly awry. Something is very clearly—and very noticeably—missing in his writing.

Let me put this bluntly: The economic solutions that Glaser proposes are ethically and morally vacant. They deny actual people humanity beyond the realm of statistical variables. With Glaeser, social realities are made into vague abstractions. Discussions of “housing” somehow lose sight of the fact that, well, “housing” boils down to “people that live in houses.” Similarly, his discussion of “mass transit” in the Globe is without an acknowledgement of who exactly the “masses” that require “mass transit” are.

Glaeser opens with the line “Mass transit needs mass to work,” implying that mass transit construction follows the masses and should simply reflect where the most people are. With the initial growth of suburbia in the 1950s, and the continued pioneerism into exurbia today, we know this to be unequivocally false. Federally subsidized highway construction created a structure that filtered housing and commercial development into certain (racially exclusive) regions. Mass transit didn’t respond to some nascent need for suburban sprawl. No, transit construction manufactured popular demand. Historically, transit has rarely been a response to popular need, and has instead laid the groundwork for residential patterns and determined the geography of opportunity.

As Richard Layman details in his blog Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, metropolitan transportation policy shouldn’t be considered a zero-sum game. We need mass transit to alleviate congestion, sure, but we also need it to connect socially isolated folks to middle class institutions and areas of employment. Glaeser’s proposal would further marginalize communities with already low baselines of collective efficacy and political power. It’s places like Detroit—a city with severe social isolation and a profound disconnect from its neighboring suburbs—that desperately need public transit options and energy efficient light rail systems. But, of course, Glaeser would never support mass transit in Detroit. He doesn’t even understand why anyone still lives there.

If we take Glaeser’s suggestions at face value—following the masses and easing their mobility—we will undoubtedly reinforce the current ecological structure of stratification and inequality. In other words, such a policy would keep poor, isolated populations poor and isolated.

At the end of his editorial, Glaser succinctly argues, “A rational transportation program would target money to the areas that have the most congestion [emphasis added]." Maybe so. But that certainly isn’t the most equitable policy decision we could make.

Sometimes, Even the Players Have to Watch From the Sidelines.

Legendary Detroit Tiger Alan Trammell made a career playing baseball at Old Tiger Stadium. But as the stadium’s demolition reached a close last week, the legendary player turned casual spectator, standing by as the stands came crashing down and the field turned to rubble.

There’s something profoundly touching about this photo. Something tragically beautiful about a man peering through the fences, saying goodbye to the structure that once defined his life. Something that is almost too moving for words. Something deeply depressing, yet surprisingly inspiring. Something debilitating, yet invigorating.

A lot of “de-” words epitomize Rust Belt decay: depopulation, decentralization, deindustrialization. Common images include abandoned homes, vacant land, and the jobless. When most of us think of cities like Detroit, we imagine an urban abyss. When many of us envision the post-industrial Midwest, we picture an urban wasteland.

Yet, in a very real sense, this photo captures urban decline better than any other image in the popular imagination could. As policymakers debate urban “shrinkage,” this is the image we need to consider. This is the scene we need to recall as our civic leaders use an army of bulldozers to plow through under-populated urban neighborhoods. This is the moment we need to remember when we debate what to do in America’s cities. This moment, this player turned spectator, captures the gravity and magnitude of urban decline. This photo sets the tone for our discussions, and study, of urban America.

The face of urban decline isn’t really a face. No, it’s an old ball player, watching his former stadium crumble to pieces. The contradictions of this photo—a former star peering through a fence, a historical landmark turned to rubble, a touching moment emerging from decay—define urban decline. The rise and fall of an American city, captured in one brief, fleeting moment. A picture almost too moving for words.

Nationwide Urban “Shrinkage” and the Pittsburgh Paradox

This may be one of the few times that Flint, Michigan provides a model for U.S. domestic policy. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a dubious model. According to the UK Telegraph, the Obama administration plans to replicate Flint’s “urban shrinkage” concept throughout the nation, demolishing vacant homes and replacing them with open green space.

I wrote about the general premise of urban shrinkage a few weeks ago. The basic idea is that neighborhood blight (in the form of vacant homes) spreads like an infectious disease. It’s kind of like a tipping point; after a few houses become vacant and deteriorate, the rest of the block declines like a series of dominoes. Of course, there isn’t a whole lot of empirical evidence on exactly how the process works, but it’s pretty intuitive. Continued population decline, particularly in the Rust Belt, is only making this pattern more common. As a result, many civic leaders are shrinking urban landmass in order to offset dramatic population decline and increasing blight.

Genesee County in Michigan—containing the city of Flint—has established the Genesee County Land Bank Authority (GCLBA) to oversee the shrinking of Flint and other urban areas. The “land bank” approach targets areas comprised solely of vacant homes and other empty lots. The GCLBA then goes through a lengthy process of acquisition that hands ownership of foreclosed properties over to the land bank. The homes are demolished, and the resulting empty lots are “redeveloped, handed to neighbors, or returned to nature,” according to the head of the GCLBA. The dominant trend, however, is to return the vacant areas into undeveloped land and thus reduce the size of the city’s populated landmass.

Admittedly, I was a little flippant when I initially wrote about this issue (though, when am I not just a touch irreverent?). I’ve thought about it more, and I’m willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt—for now, at least. The plans for acquisition and redevelopment are so vague that it would be premature to levy any judgments. Part of me wants to see the rehabilitation and revitalization of existing homes and neighborhoods, but another part of me recognizes the utility of starting over. The real debates will occur over what to do with the newly empty green spaces. If—and only if—we can specify a clear vision of redevelopment, I might be able to get on board with urban shrinkage. If the plan follows a community-based approach, similar to the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative’s successful bid for eminent domain here in Boston in the 1990s, I may support the policy.

Still, I have some reservations. The Telegraph reported that the Obama administration has their eyes on shrinking 15 urban centers, including Syracuse, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. The inclusion of Pittsburgh is slightly troubling. It’s just a little paradoxical to include a city in this economic recovery plan that supposedly has one of the strongest performing metropolitan economies (according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution). Pittsburgh has certainly suffered incredible population decline; in 1950, Pittsburgh was ranked number 12 among U.S. cities in total population, but plummeted to number 52 by the 2000 Census. That said, you'd think that one of the strongest metropolitan economies would be able to redevelop existing land on their own.

The “Pittsburgh Paradox,” so to speak, points to my underlying uneasiness with urban shrinkage. How can Pittsburgh—the supposed model for Rust Belt resurgence—require urban shrinkage? Either the Brooking Institution’s measurement of economic vitality is faulty, or urban shrinkage is a haphazard band-aid for urban decline. If shrinkage is part of our economic recovery plan, why does one of our nations strongest metropolitan economies need the help? Something’s not right here. I'm just a little weary of an economic recovery policy applied applied indiscriminately in cities with both weak and strong performing economies. If Pittsburgh requires urban shrinkage, other cities must require a lot more.

I expressed optimism yesterday in my discussion of the interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities—a new federal initiative that coordinates economic, transportation, housing, and environmental policies in a single, unified effort. Yet “urban shrinkage” looks like the regressive counterpart to the Partnership’s progressive goals and proposals. Shrinking landmass without a clear plan for redevelopment just seems like a hasty, reactionary response to a much larger problem. We don’t build stronger communities by trimming the fat and pretending like it never existed. No, we create economically sustainable communities and metropolitan regions with innovative policy that builds urban neighborhoods. Demolition (read: shrinkage) can be a start on the path to economic recovery, but that can’t be where we stop.

Metropolitan policy isn’t a zero-sum game; we don’t need to destroy some neighborhoods just to preserve others.

The Genius of Interagency Metropolitan Policy

The Obama administration took metropolitan policy in an incredibly innovative direction last week. In what may prove to be a groundbreaking meeting, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the secretaries of Transportation and Housing & Urban Development all appeared together to discuss the future of American economic, environmental, and transit policies.

These leaders came together at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, working out the skeleton for an exciting new partnership. They set three important—though admittedly broad and slightly vague—proposals to govern a new, unified vision of metropolitan policy. First, they established “livability principles” related to transportation choices, affordable housing, economic competitiveness, and stronger communities and neighborhoods. In effect this “proposal” was less of an actual initiative and more of a basic mission statement for the new partnership—a pretty solid mission statement if you ask me.

The next two proposals were far more specific, and far more impressive. First, they set an agenda to integrate transportation, land use, and economic development plans to account for future metropolitan growth. This may prove to be a massive anti-sprawl initiative. Land-use zoning is a major contributor to suburban sprawl, as zoning regulations delineate where residential and commercial spaces are located. Suburban zoning patterns typically establish swaths of land for commercial-only use (which generally become strip malls) and others for residential-only use (which generally become dead-end cul-de-sacs). This creates car-dependent communities that are neither environmentally efficient nor walkable. Nor are they economically sustainable, a fact that is becoming increasingly clear as former exurbs transition into vacant wastelands. A more economically sustainable option includes metropolitan transit systems and mixed-use zoning. Indeed, this points to (arguably) the best aspect of New Urbanism and Smart Growth; mixed-use land zoning is an incredibly effective way to counteract the inefficiencies of suburban sprawl. This coordinated effort would increase mass transit across metropolitan regions, and facilitate walkable urban design so as to preserve a “community” aesthetic.

The final proposal was a plan to redefine “affordable housing” based on transportation availability and energy costs. This makes so much sense I almost can’t believe they came up with it on their own. Far too many “affordable” housing developments are disconnected from reliable transportation, thus negatively influencing their actual affordability. Moreover, many of these homes are incredibly energy inefficient, again affecting their actual affordability. The impact of this small policy change may prove dramatic: If energy costs and transportation access are figured into the cost of living, many so-called affordable housing developments may lose that government distinction. If this happens, the government would be faced with two options: They can either construct more affordable housing, or they can increase transportation availability and reduce energy costs. You can’t really go wrong with either of these choices, and I suspect they would take the smart route and do both.

In many respects this is scary "big government;" just another big federal agency looking to institute sweeping, nationwide policy. But this partnership also counteracts the inefficient communication networks inherent in most bureaucracies. Call it the paradox of big government: Sure, it’s government consolidation and heavily bureaucratic, but it also facilitates information transmission between departments with unprecedented efficiency. They’re coordinating their efforts, which is really the best way to make a substantial impact.

In my opinion, this is government at its best. With one unified, coordinated effort, they are planning to improve access to affordable housing, offer more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while simultaneously protecting the environment. They recognized a problem in metropolitan America, tied it to our continued economic recovery plans, and are taking steps to institute national policy. I can sum up my thoughts on this ambitious project with one word: Wow. It’s nice to have a former community organizer in the White House.