Detroit, MI, was once among the richest cities in the United States. Seventy years ago, Detroit was known as the “factory for the arsenal of democracy,” home to the American auto industry, and the nation’s center for industry and manufacturing.
Detroit is now emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history. The conditions that led to Detroit’s decline are similar to those that impact central cities in many parts of the United States: loss of manufacturing industries, migration of middle class families to the suburbs or distant exurbs, disinvestment both by government and the private sector in schools and infrastructure, and faulty management decisions by municipal leaders.
Following the 2008 economic recession, this once industrial and economic powerhouse on the Great Lakes with magnificent historical, cultural, religious and sports legacies was in very dire straits. In 2012, the American auto manufacturers and their supporting industries, many of which still resided in southeast Michigan, were making a comeback after avoiding bankruptcy through a massive infusion of federal dollars and other federal support mechanisms. Yet, the financial stability of the City of Detroit came apart and the State of Michigan appointed an “emergency manager” to take over operations of the city.
Since 1950, the population of Detroit had fallen from 1.8 million to 700,000. Once the home of two of the Big Three automakers, by 2013 only two car factories remained within Detroit’s city limits. Decades of municipal debt, assumed to support building and infrastructure projects and city services, left the city with staggering financial obligations, which was further compounded by a legacy of pension obligations to municipal employees. This left the city of Detroit with no option other than to declare bankruptcy and begin a restructuring process. The courts accepted a “plan of adjustment” to allow Detroit to emerge from bankruptcy in November 2014.
The causes of Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy were many, but one central theme is evident: Detroit lacked the economic resiliency needed to weather national economic downturns, a condition faced by many older U.S. cities. Lessons gained from Detroit’s downfall and emerging revitalization can be useful to many cities, including Baltimore.
“Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell.” – Marvin Gaye
Ten Key Facts About Detroit (Re-Posted from The Economic Collapse Blog)
1) In 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.
2) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit. Today, there are less than 27,000.
3) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.
4) There are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.
5) About one-third of Detroit’s 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
6) It is estimated that 47 percent of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
7) Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.
8) 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
9) Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, but over the past 60 years the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.
10) The city of Detroit is now very heavily dependent on the tax revenue it pulls in from the casinos in the city. Right now, Detroit is bringing in about 11 million dollars a month in tax revenue from the casinos.
Detroit’s Challenge
The task before the city is enormous and unprecedented for an American city of this size. This collapse was far reaching in scope, comprising the very institutions that define a city and its history. The city considered selling valued municipal assets, including prized art collections, zoo animals, parks and cultural facilities, as well as eliminating or transferring city services to neighborhoods and businesses. The scope of the collapse is a complex matter. This 2013 New York Times article describes an assortment of contributing factors over several decades that led to the debt that propelled the City of Detroit to file for bankruptcy.
To a city that had grown and prospered in the 20th century, arm-in-arm with the rising prominence of the automobile in American life, the collapse of these industries and related loss of economic prosperity highlighted the need for more economic diversity.
Campus Martius Park
Fortunately, public and private sector leaders emerged in Detroit who were willing to confront the difficult circumstances, and along with court supervision, to weigh priorities and make the tough decisions necessary to bring the city back from this default. To fail was not an option to the many thousands of residents, small businesses and cultural institutions within Detroit. All options were on the table to restore stability.
While city leaders and the corporate sector wrestled over ways to “keep the lights on,” nonprofit organizers and planning professionals went into communities seeking bottom up solutions to address the myriad challenges faced by Detroit residents, not the least of which were the thousands of vacant and abandoned houses and structures in all parts of the city.
Detroit Future City Strategic Framework
Planning professionals in the city and Detroit region took on this challenge and initiated a citywide process to develop a strategic plan for Detroit that builds on its many assets and addresses the new realities. This pioneering planning process resulted in the Detroit Strategic Framework, which articulated a shared vision for Detroit’s future and recommended specific actions and policies for reaching the collective goals to achieve that future.
Blueprint For Detroit’s Future
The vision resulted from a 24-month-long public process that drew upon interactions among Detroit residents and civic leaders from both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, who together formed a broad-based group of community experts. From the results of this citywide public engagement effort, in turn, a team of technical experts crafted and refined the vision, rendered specific strategies for reaching it, shared their work publicly at key points, and shaped it in response to changing information and community feedback throughout the process. Full Detroit Future City Strategic Framework Book
The Planning Elements – Detroit’s Integrated Approach to Transforming the City and its Neighborhoods
Economic Growth
The Economic Growth element proposes strategies to grow Detroit’s economy for all Detroiters by supporting economic sectors that have already shown success in job creation, including education and medical employment, digital and creative jobs, industrial employment and entrepreneurship. These sectors have potential to attract new residents and businesses.
Land Use
The Land Use element offers strategies that account for current realities and preferred futures and follow a strategic framework based on a variety of characteristics, the most important of which is vacancy. Three land use typologies – neighborhood, industrial and landscape – provide the future vision for land use, and development types illustrate physical development within the typologies.
City Systems
The City Systems element addresses reforms to city service delivery systems, including water, waste, energy, lighting and transportation.
Neighborhood
The Neighborhood element provides strategies to “create a diverse range of neighborhood styles and choices that will appeal to a wide variety of people, while also strengthening all neighborhoods across the city.” This section addresses quality-of-life issues with citywide strategies designed to work in all neighborhoods.
Land and Building Assets
The Land and Building Assets element calls for the public agencies that hold land to align their missions with the aspirations of the city, and creates an integrated, collective approach to land and buildings in the city, regardless of ownership.
Civic Capacity
Civic Capacity is the foundation of all of the planning elements and the single most important factor in determining successful implementation of the Strategic Framework. Detroit Future City is committed to participatory implementation, in which the organization and its partners engage in multiple layers of activity simultaneously, from individuals and neighborhoods, to sector-based changes and systemic reforms.
Detroit’s Transit Future – The M-1 Rail Line
A key element of Detroit’s revitalization process involves public and private transit infrastructure investments.
In October 2014, USDOT awarded a $12.2 million TIGER grant to Detroit’s M-1 streetcar line, which is intended to be the first link in a future streetcar network. This federal funding supplements funds from Detroit’s private and philanthropic community, which has committed over $120 million to design, build and operate a public streetcar line. Construction began on the M-1 Rail Line, also known as the “Woodward Avenue Streetcar,” on July 28, 2014. This 3.3-mile (5.3 km) streetcar line, with 20 stations serving 12 locations, will run from downtown Detroit to Grand Boulevard in New Center and connect with the AMTRAK station. The M-1 streetcar is expected to generate significant economic development along the corridor. The M-1 streetcar line is just one part of the transportation and economic transformation of Detroit and the region.
Streetcar line under construction
Quicken Loans, owned by Detroit area philanthropist Dan Gilbert, committed $10 million to the $140 million project and recently secured naming rights for the line. Construction is on schedule, and the line is expected to be in operation in late 2016.
“I come from Detroit where it’s rough and I’m not a smooth talker.” — Eminem
The Center for Community Progress – Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference 2015
The Center for Community Progress held its Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference, “Beyond Blight: Building a Bold Movement,” May 19-21, 2015, at the Detroit Renaissance Center. Detroit was chosen for this event because the city is the epicenter in the nationwide battle against building vacancy and abandonment. The boldness, creativity and energy of neighborhood organizations, philanthropic foundations and civic leaders in Detroit has moved the city to the forefront nationally, providing ideas, inspiration and strategies to cities throughout the country that are battling blight and seeking to reshape their communities into vibrant and stable neighborhoods.
Many successful messages and case studies were conveyed at this conference on topics including land banking, urban agriculture, neighborhood revitalization tax credits, creative neighborhood placemaking strategies, urban land trusts and a variety of tools to tackle residential, commercial and industrial building abandonment. Key themes centered on strategies to transform vacant properties into neighborhood and citywide assets, avoid residential and business displacement, and revitalize neighborhoods through equity-based approaches.
Neighborhood success stories ran the gamut from successful community development corporation efforts in Cleveland, OH, to neighborhood empowering community agriculture initiatives in Jackson, MS, and from innovative community placemaking efforts to neighborhood art projects.
Attendees and speakers came from communities throughout the U.S. Central to most sessions was a “bottom up,” community-based approach to revitalizing neighborhoods that is now blossoming in Detroit and other cities facing similar issues.
Potter, social activist and professor Theaster Gates made one of the most powerful presentations at the conference. His experiences in “neighborhood reshaping” on the south side of Chicago provided attendees with a fresh way to look at issues and experiences related to transforming abandoned buildings into community hubs that connect and inspire those who still live there, as well as draw new people and energy to the neighborhood.
In the above TED video, Gates describes his efforts to build a “miniature Versailles” in Chicago, and he shares his fervent belief that culture can be a catalyst for social transformation in any city, anywhere. Theaster Gates offers an inspiring set of experiences that can be used to empower civic and elected leaders and planners who are passionate about creating a better future for their blocks, their neighborhoods and for the economic core of their cities.
TED Video: Theaster Gates – “How to revive a neighborhood: with imagination, beauty and art”
Jun 05, 2015 @ 12:00:46
Well researched and on point, Dave. Though there are a plethora of nuanced conditions that conspired to make Detroit’s downfall particularly unique, it still remains our greatest example of the frailty of place, a humble reminder that all we plan for and build is not permanent.
Jun 05, 2015 @ 14:58:02
Since Detroit is a pro-labor, Democratic, mostly black city, many Americans experience a measure of schadenfreude about its decline. However, Detroit manufactured America’s most iconic product and foremost symbol of American industrial might, so Detroit’s collapse is nothing short of a national tragedy. The nation cannot legitimately claim preeminence as long as Detroit remains a city of ruins.
People who believe that what happened to Detroit cannot happen to their towns are whistling past the graveyard. Check out the map at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/peak-income/ (“Most Americans’ best days are behind them,” by Darla Cameron and Ted Mellnik, published Dec. 12, 2014). According to the accompanying text, “Median household income peaked at least 15 years ago in 81 percent of U.S. counties. That means that when incomes are adjusted for inflation, most middle class households are actually earning less money than they did years ago.”
Jun 10, 2015 @ 18:19:42
Thank you for your article on Detroit. As you know, there are a great many challenges facing Detroit, and we’ve not had the redevelopment interest in the City since the end of Federal Urban Renewal in the 1960s until now. The public policy discussion is nascent here in the City, but there is a long history of self-reliance because of the decades of municipal dysfunction. In my 45+/- year long life, I’ve heard time and again about a resurgence, and it is finally taking root.
Great summary of Detroit’s path forward | Holland Planning Innovations
Jun 15, 2015 @ 11:46:18