May 09, 2018

Recovery for all: Detroit’s development motto

located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

Last Monday, Detroit was officially removed from Budget Oversight, as the federal and Michigan State governments placed the city in charge of its own finances for the first time since declaring bankruptcy five years ago. Once a prosperous hub of automakers, Detroit has experienced a steady decline for decades. Ravaged by racial tensions, deepening poverty, and an ongoing exodus of residents, the city’s prospects for regrowth seemed rather bleak. Yet, last week’s decision to grant Detroit financial autonomy constitutes an important milestone in its road to recovery and indicates the city is headed in a (some would say – miraculously) positive direction.

But what’s behind the Midwestern city’s gradual revival? Unlike the Wall Street crash of 2008, it’s not a generous, instantaneous funnelling of federal cash that saved the day. Rather, there are two major factors contributing to the city’s sprouting: the opportunity it has to begin reconstruction from scratch, combined with a calculated, transparent, and holistic development mechanism –spearheaded by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Planning Director Maurice Cox – which utilises this opportunity to promote equitable growth. City officials are particularly adamant to bridge the enormous chasm between wealthy and poor neighbourhoods and ensure that development spurts don’t result in gentrification.

In most large American cities, development is contracted to private companies; while they take on the expenses and save taxpayers’ dime, their primary goal is making a profit, which inevitably propels them to build luxury complexes only the wealthy can enjoy. This happens across Brooklyn, for instance, which gradually rids itself of lower-income residents who cannot afford to stay in their native neighbourhoods due to prohibitively expensive construction (and the changing landscape that follows it).

In Detroit, on the other hand, the city collaborates closely with private developers to make sure that resources are fairly distributed between projects for members of all classes and that the character of the neighbourhoods doesn’t change in the process of revival. One such developer is Dan Gilbert, who made it his mission to ensure that members of each community are hired to work on development projects in their respective areas, and that the new businesses that are sprouting serve the local population. In a gesture rare for major developers, Gilbert chose to embark on a path that delays the projects’ profitability for the sake of equality.

Furthermore, in an ambitious move, city officials decided to redraw Detroit’s zoning boundaries and lump together bustling neighbourhoods with empty swaths of land. In collaboration with nonprofits, the city intends to convert such empty lands into parks, orchards, and sustainable “bioretention gardens”, which will benefit neighbourhoods across the socioeconomic spectrum. By doing so, the city doesn’t only ensure the quality of life of its residents and engages in environmentally responsible development, but also reduces the chance of real estate price surges by creating land rich neighbourhoods; this, in turn, prevents gentrification.

Detroit’s journey towards recovery is far from being over, crime, and inequality levels remain palpable issues. However, as it takes steps towards revival, the city constitutes a source of inspiration to metropolises across the country, proving that development can be both profitable and fair, and that there is a way to use it as a means of making urban life more equitable.