Is right-sizing the right fix?--BY SUZETTE HACKNEY, FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

July 19, 2009
Strategy aims to shrink city to help solve budget issues

On Detroit's near east side, just a stone's throw away from the hulking and abandoned Packard Plant, sits a neighborhood with overgrown fields, dumped trash, toppled trees and collapsed structures.

Three women perch on a porch having Bible study, while another woman chats on the phone from her porch farther down the street. Their homes are two of the few inhabited ones in a five-block radius, and both offer a wretched view. Their neighborhood represents a growing number of Detroit enclaves that are ripe to be stripped, scrubbed and made over.

Urban planners insist -- and Detroit's political leaders are beginning to acknowledge -- that the city cannot continue to function as if nearly 2 million people still live there. That tax base is long gone, taking with it the money required to maintain city services and a crumbling infrastructure.

"Detroit once had 1.8 million people, and it's not likely that that number is going to come back in the next two to three decades -- if ever," said Dan Kildee, Genesee County treasurer and a national advocate for downsizing initiatives.

Experts say a downsized Detroit is doable, if these steps are taken:
Create a new city master plan, a blueprint for future development and the regreening of the landscape.

Identify which parts of the city are most suitable for habitation and development.
Develop an execution plan that acknowledges any right-sizing will take 25 to 50 years and should be done in 5-year increments to accommodate budget constraints.

Take a full inventory of all city-owned parcels and develop a plan to clear, clean and assemble them into usable shape.

Establish state and federal alliances with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Reserve Board to pursue block grants that could be used to relocate residents.

Build a partnership with private investors willing to support Detroit's future.

Bing aches for residents
Former Mayor Dennis Archer and other city stakeholders began talking about right-sizing Detroit 15 years ago, when they touted tripling the city's green space and reshaping neighborhoods through demolition and relocation.

That was when the city still had about 1 million people.

Now, three mayors later, in a city with at least 100,000 fewer inhabitants and a budget deficit of $200 million to $300 million, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is scrambling to find creative ways to save money on city services. It's a daunting task.

Bing said he first plans to strengthen some of Detroit's neighborhoods by using part of the $47 million the city received from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program -- funded by HUD -- to demolish vacant structures, especially near schools.

But right-sizing will take time.

"This type of program will take a great deal of community input, work and research," he said in a statement.

On C-SPAN last week, Bing said there is room for growth in the city, though not geographically and not predicated on the auto industry.

"We got 140 square miles in our city and we are probably only productively using about half of that space," he said. "We are going to have a lot of property that we have got to figure out what we are going to do as we go five to 10 years down the road."

On the campaign trail, Bing, who used to live in Franklin in Oakland County, often described his travels through Detroit's depressed neighborhoods: one or two houses remaining on an entire city block; dilapidated storefronts; overgrown lots and fields. He said he actually ached for the residents who had to live among the squalor.

And he promised to do something.

Urban planners and other experts say Bing has few options other than right-sizing if Detroit is to flourish anytime soon.

'It could be better'
Officials in former industrial strongholds such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis, Tenn., also have more land than people, more responsibilities than resources.

A report published in 2007 by the Brookings Institution focused on the economic health and residential well-being of 65 of the country's cities that have experienced slow business and employment growth, diminished tax bases and concentrated poverty.

Detroit served as the poster child of a city that has been victimized by globalization and technological change.

"While older industrial cities' residential and business base has contracted over the past several decades, their physical footprints have not," the report said, noting that the thousands of abandoned buildings and vacant, often contaminated lots left behind in these cities act as a drag on neighboring property values.

Detroit City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel said a high-level commission made up of residents, planning professionals, economists and other academics should be appointed to examine right-sizing Detroit.

"It is overdue to begin this serious discussion and serious planning, but now it's married with dealing with this collapse of the service delivery system," she said. "Some neighborhoods have been able to withstand the cancer of blight ... and others haven't. We're throwing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars away in these areas and still have a deteriorating quality of life."

Still, Jean Parham, 68, who lives in a desolate area on the city's east side, says even if her neighborhood is considered expendable, she would not relocate. Parham's home sits alone on her block. It is in disrepair, but she has planted flowers and takes pride in her garden.

"I refuse to move unless the Lord says so," said Parham. "It should be an individual decision if you prefer to move somewhere.

"To me, this is my home and my neighborhood. It could be better. It should be better. But it's not one person's fault that it's not. Everybody has responsibility, even if it's to pick up the paper that's in front of your house."

A new master plan
Detroit adopted its last official master plan in 1992, and much of that plan focuses on repopulating and rebuilding the city to its former size. The document has been amended for additional downtown developments, such as casinos, riverfront businesses and restaurants.

Cockrel, a former urban planner, says "transformational leadership that is fearless" is necessary to steer the complicated work that would be required to downsize Detroit. She also cautions that Detroit cannot function in a vacuum, and the region and state may need overall reinvention as competition increases and revenue-sharing sources decline.

While previous mayors have acknowledged that Detroit's master plan is outdated and have explored ways to reshape the city's layout, no one has pulled the trigger. The reasons are threefold, said John Mogk, a Wayne State University law professor and urban-planning expert.
Detroit has, for the most part, been a city in distress for the past 20 years. Elected officials have had to prop up a cash-strapped, crumbling, crime-ridden and, at times, corrupt municipality. With so many pressing issues, Mogk said, former mayors became mired in day-to-day survival mode.

Most elected officials are unwilling to take the backlash and acrimony that comes when areas of a city are designated for open space. Residents don't take kindly to being told they must pick up and move because their home and neighborhood aren't worthy of existing.

Planning, resident relocation and land assembly requires money, and Detroit is broke. To further complicate fiscal matters, the Michigan Constitution was recently amended to take the power of eminent domain for economic development out of the hands of crumbling city governments. That means one of the city's only tools to acquire land would be to buy it.

That's a concept that suits Rochelle Johnson.

"I want to move -- if the city wants it they can have it," said Johnson, 43, who lives with her 16-year-old daughter, Rachel, in the same east-side neighborhood as Parham. "But I need help finding a place. It's dangerous down here, and there's no one around to be with or talk to."

Contact SUZETTE HACKNEY: 313-222-6614 or sh ackney@freepress.com

Additional Facts
Genesee Co. land bank
Dan Kildee, Genesee County treasurer, spearheaded the Genesee County Land Bank, now Flint's biggest landowner.

The land bank is a public authority that takes ownership of thousands of parcels of property seized by the government for unpaid property taxes and resells them. Since its 2002 founding, the land bank has sold more than 1,550 properties and raised $6 million through the sales. The money is then used to fix up blighted areas in Flint by greening vacant lots, demolishing abandoned houses and creating pocket parks.

Kildee said Detroit would be well served to adopt a similar program, especially because the city is fiscally challenged. He also has lobbied the Obama administration, as well as George W. Bush's administration, to consider using the land-bank model on a national scale.

Kildee has visited Detroit to advise city and county officials on land banks in the past six months. He said he'd be happy to sit down with Mayor Dave Bing to discuss the concept.