Grassroots campaigns getting their hands dirty for Detroit

by Martin Oliver February 23, 2016

Of the cities in the “rust belt” running across the American northeast, Detroit has been hit the hardest. Yet hidden behind the enormous economic challenges and ruined buildings, there is a resilient, collaborative, artistic and entrepreneurial spirit that is slowly steering it towards a brighter future.

The largest city in the state of Michigan, Detroit made a name for itself in the 20th century as a manufacturing hub for the Automotive giants Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. In 1960, it was America’s richest city.

In the booming 1950s, Detroit saw an aggressive shift towards freeway construction and car dependency. As residents relocated to the outlying suburbs, the city’s tax base eroded, setting the scene for later economic troubles. Recent decades have seen a devastating loss of the manufacturing sector from Detroit, with a major factor being the auto industry’s decline and decentralisation.

Detroit’s predicament is reflected in a population that has been continuously falling from 1.9 million in 1950 to 0.7 million today. The unemployment rate is 14.5 per cent, compared to a US average of 6.3 per cent. Among American cities, it has the highest proportion of residents (36 per cent) living below the poverty line. With only about half of property taxes being paid, it’s hardly surprising that Detroit went bankrupt in 2013.

Urban decay

Deterioration of Detroit’s inner suburbs coupled with a 1967 race riot contributed to the “white flight” trend, as Caucasian families fled to the outlying areas. Today, the city is highly racially segregated, with African Americans and minorities tending to congregate in the more central areas.

Detroit’s predicament is reflected in a population that has been continuously falling from 1.9 million in 1950 to 0.7 million today

A major cause of urban decline was a practice known as “redlining”. Large banks made it impossible for people in some lower socioeconomic areas to obtain a loan, until this unethical discrimination was prohibited in 1977. As whole neighbourhoods fell into decay, they became progressively more dangerous. Some abandoned houses were adopted by drug users, and some were destroyed via arson.

As the city depopulated, churches, office buildings, hotels, factories and hospitals were abandoned. Some of these were demolished, while others have since been renovated. Many remain empty today.

Problems that face modern Detroit include 80,000 abandoned houses, and the illegal dumping of garbage in vacant lots. In some inner suburbs, a sparse population makes it uneconomic to provide urban services. Violent crime, often gang-related, tops the league table of larger American cities. Many people have stayed because they feel they have no other choice.

Finding solutions

The revitalisation of Detroit requires a bold solution to the problem of abandoned properties. Motor City Blight Busters is a hands-on grassroots group that repairs salvageable dwellings to later sell or rent out, while demolishing the rest and saving usable building materials. It has constructed more than 100 new houses, boarded up other abandoned buildings and organised neighbourhood clean-ups.

Meanwhile, a greater number of empty houses are demolished by wreckers on behalf of the city, and in this case the materials are generally hauled off to landfill. The social business Reclaim Detroit focuses on diverting this waste from landfills and creating jobs — along with multiple other benefits — in the process. While a city demolition job takes 36 minutes, Reclaim Detroit estimates that its deconstruction and salvage jobs require six to 10 days. Costs are higher, but six times more employment is created.

Detroit is proactively using land banking: a government-driven mechanism for bringing vacant, abandoned or foreclosed properties back into productive use. Government-owned lots are regularly sold for as little as a few hundred dollars. The privately administered online platform Why Don’t We Own This? provides useful details about all property in the city, including its ownership, zoning and tax status.

About 30 per cent of lots, totalling more than 100 square kilometres, are vacant — more than in any other US city. Through the Detroit council’s Adopt-a-Lot program, land is offered on a free annual lease for purposes such as gardening or growing food. The northern suburban city of Warren is allowing homeowners to buy adjacent government-owned lots for a dollar in return for maintaining them.

Getting their hands dirty

To some visionaries, this surfeit of empty space is a canvas on which to get inspired, and there is a sense of possibility that is absent in more ordered and affluent places. One aspiration is to transform Detroit into America’s greenest city. The Detroit Future City future-planning framework is looking at devoting sparsely populated areas to other uses such as farming, apple orchards, retention ponds and other environmental purposes. Without any human help, swathes of land are returning to forest.

Detroit is responding to its challenges through an upsurge of self-reliance. Community gardens are springing up in disused lots with the help of the community group Greening of Detroit and the urban farming compost business Detroit Dirt. With little more than half the population of Adelaide, the city boasts more than 400 community farms and gardens, and many more in backyards.

Detroit is responding to its challenges through an upsurge of self-reliance. Community gardens are springing up in disused lots with the help of the community groups

These initiatives are especially important in Detroit’s “food deserts” — pockets of the city where affordable and nutritious food is difficult to find, especially for non-car owners. For the black community living in these deserts, processed food is more easily available and a poor diet is causing a prevalence of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

In addition to improving food security, urban gardens boost the local food economy and are an important community-building tool. The Gleaners Community Food Bank has a small urban farm behind its storefront, and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen is supplied by another 0.6ha organic farm. An entrepreneur named Jeff Adams is developing a vertical hydroponic growing system in an abandoned warehouse located in the blighted neighbourhood of Brightmoor.

A DIY culture

As one of the world’s first post-industrial cities, Detroit is making baby steps towards a sharing society that is very different from the consumer utopia of the mid-20th century. Progressives, activists and entrepreneurs have been relocating there, especially in the aftermath of the 2010 US Social Forum held in the city.

At a time when the city government is barely able to afford some essential services, Detroit has seen a burgeoning DIY culture where the community is stepping in and finding ways to creatively fill the gaps. A grassroots collaborative society is starting to emerge. Examples include:

The Georgia Street Community Collective regularly holding giveaways of essential items such as coats and school backpacks
Food Not Bombs offering a free weekly meal to the homeless and people in economic hardship
A skillshare centre for food and natural health known as The People’s Kitchen
Volunteers from a diverse range of groups insulating 20 low-income earners’ homes for free in December 2013 by draught-proofing and wrapping pipes
Back Alley Bikes, a non-profit cycle reuse and repair workshop. Detroit is flat and has very little traffic away from the main roads. Cycling groups are proliferating
Five TimeBank complementary currency systems running within metropolitan Detroit. Very simple to operate, TimeBanking matches needs with resources and skills, and builds community far more effectively than the mainstream economy. It is very beneficial for low income earners
Overgrown public parks and playgrounds being maintained by the Detroit Mower Gang as an unpaid community service

Revitalisation through the arts

The aesthetics of ruined buildings are ugly and uninspiring. In such an environment, artistic creativity humanises the surroundings and makes them more habitable, inspiring others to do something similar. A recent small-scale project has involved the construction of makeshift bus shelters featuring beautiful and colourful artwork, made from materials recovered from abandoned houses. These were left at bus stops to make the often long wait more comfortable.

Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope are an artistic couple who bought a house for US$1900 (AU$2000/NZ$2200) near the historic inner suburb of Hamtramck and added solar panels and a wind generator. After being decorated in pastel colours, it became the inspiration for the Power House Project, a burgeoning neighbourhood artistic community that has since attracted 23 artists and designers. The area was going downhill with an increase in crime and vandalism, and the Power House initiative was an attempt to halt the slide. The couple have worked diligently to find occupiers for abandoned houses in order to prevent them from being demolished.

A few blocks away, a former meat-packing plant was undergoing a radical transformation into an experimental arts venue. Graem Whyte and Faina Lerman called their new home Popps Packing, renovated a nearby abandoned storefront to become Popps Emporium and have recently turned another empty house into guest accommodation. The area has become a magnet for new residents, including creatives, helping the process of neighbourhood revitalisation.

On the east side of the city, local resident Tyree Guyton runs the Heidelberg Project. This open-air art environment features bizarre collections of discarded objects and coloured circles painted on the footpaths and roads. In addition to being a tourist attraction, Heidelberg also offers art education to children. Responding to a spate of recent arson attacks targeting the Project’s art-decorated houses, Guyton said, “Living in this city, you can’t give up.”

Jerry Paffendorf is a young nerd who bought a couple of empty houses in a forsaken empty space facing the city’s most spectacular empty building, the 18-storey Grand Central Station. While one of the houses has since required demolition, the second is being lovingly restored by a committed volunteer team and has been painted with the message “The Dream is Now” with a dayglo mural underneath reassuring us that “It’s OK”. Named the Imagination Station, the project has ambitious future plans involving media and the arts.

Small business opportunities

While the retail life of most cities is dominated by corporate chains, in Detroit the void they left as they exited poorer neighbourhoods is presenting great opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

In a largely African-American neighbourhood with 22 liquor stores and only one Grocery, Peaches and Greens is a mobile fruit and vegetable van that travels around, playing R&B music and delivering to nearby residents, of whom about half own a car.

Ponyride is a creative incubator and co-working centre for artists and socially conscious entrepreneurs housed in a large 3000-square-metre warehouse. In exchange for very cheap rent, tenants are required to provide free skill-sharing workshops to the surrounding community.

In Brightmoor, Alicia and John George spent five years renovating an abandoned shop using recycled flooring to create the Motor City Java House. Today, it is the only coffee shop for miles. In addition to persuading coffee addicts to settle in the blighted neighbourhood, it has attracted a cluster of businesses to a rundown retail strip.

Bottom-up, not top-down

Alongside community leaders striving to keep their neighbourhoods afloat is a city government that is frequently considered inept, with mayors who are disproportionately likely to be jailed for corruption. However, the city has successfully revitalised its Downtown area, with the 9km Detroit International Riverfront project featuring shops, residential high-rises and parkland.

One area of contention is the Detroit Future City framework, under which seven neighbourhoods with numerous vacant lots, including Brightmoor, have been targeted for “gradual depopulation” with a view to encouraging residents to move to more populated suburbs.

A contrasting grassroots vision being pursued in Detroit involves community land trusts: mechanisms for bringing development under community control while keeping housing affordable. In Boston, such a trust has successfully turned around the impoverished Dudley Street neighbourhood, which had similar blight problems to those found in Detroit.

Behind Detroit’s dereliction is a spirit of rebirth and optimism, which is receiving increasing attention from the media. Today’s regeneration is only possible because some people hung on during the toughest decades of the 1970s and 1980s when crime hit a peak. Encouragingly, some former residents who fled 30 years ago are now feeling inspired to return. However, in the words of business innovation consultant Josh McManus, we should not forget that Detroit is a “very real place” and not “Disneyland for hipsters”.