Detroit: A sustainable city
is not a segregated one
MAX KUANG / DAILY
BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer
B-SIDE LEAD
We rarely agree on what
exactly gentrification means.
To some, it merely suggests the
improvement of a neighborhood.
To others, the word inherently
implies displacement. It could
also suggest the forced removal
of
lower
income
peoples
from a neighborhood due to
economic push factors brought
on by middle class investment.
But
is
it
gentrification
if
there’s improvement with no
displacement? Can only poorer
neighborhoods
be
subject
to gentrification? And, most
importantly, is gentrification
really so bad after all for cities
like Detroit?
In a phone interview with
The Daily, Joel Stone, a senior
curator at the Detroit Historical
Society,
said
“The
word
gentrification has a negative
connotation.” Though the word
itself was only popularized in
the ’70s, it seemed to me that
many people’s perceptions of
the word was no different from
what people before the ’70s
would have merely described
as “development.” But this isn’t
all gentrification is. Since its
introduction into mainstream
media,
“gentrification”
has
always
carried
racist
and
classist
undertones
that
“development” doesn’t.
“Historically,
there
have
always
been
lower
income
people in places around the
city that have been displaced,”
Stone
said.
This
shouldn’t
come as a surprise. One such
example of this is the Brush
Park
neighborhood.
Now
part
of
Detroit’s
midtown,
Brush Park was once entirely
farmlands.
Under
pressure
from developers, these farmers
were forced to sell their land
and move further out from the
city center. This feels different
from what we would consider
gentrification today, though.
White farmers moving out to
what we now accept as the
suburbs to make way for the
city to grow? Isn’t this how all
American cities came about?
Stone then cited a photo
in
the
Detroit
Historical
Museum’s collection of the
General Motors building going
up alongside tenement houses
in the 1920s. In a neighborhood
once considered on the wrong
side of the tracks, GM single-
handedly redefined a new city
center (called “New Center”)
over the course of the next few
decades.
“Did that improve the area?
It did. Did it make that part of
Detroit’s history? Absolutely.
Did they remove lower income
people? Absolutely,” Stone said.
What differentiates Detroit’s
current gentrification and the
Brush Park case? In the Brush
Park
example,
low-density
land on the edge of a booming
city was replaced with new,
medium-density
housing.
People
were
displaced
and
emotional damage was surely
done, but less so than in the
higher-density
displacement
of the residents of the New
Center. Wasn’t the medium-
density housing there already
comprising
a
viable
city
neighborhood?
What
right
did GM have to displace these
lower-income
immigrant
families from the city they were
trying to make succeed in?
“I suppose there are people
who would argue, ‘Were they
(the neighborhoods) viable? Or
were they barely surviving?’
In which case the influx of
new
renters,
renters
with
more money may be raising
the viability standard,” Stone
said, describing both historical
and present-day examples of
gentrification. This is the issue
at hand in Detroit. In a city
where the poverty rate differs
significantly between the city’s
core
and
the
metropolitan
area as a whole — 36 percent
and 15 percent respectively —
isn’t middle class investment
a welcome change? Not if it
creates a city blatantly divided
by race, and certainly not if it
forces minority families that
have been sustaining the city
for almost a century now to
move out all together.
To
discuss
the
more
personal effects of poverty
and gentrification in Detroit,
I spoke with Otiyah Ross-
Chapman, youth and young
adult
ministry
chairperson
at the Conant Avenue United
Methodist Church in Conant
Gardens,
Detroit.
Ross-
Chapman said she’s yet to see
any examples of gentrification
in the neighborhood, which
is located just south of 7 Mile
Road. What she does see,
however, is the struggle many
neighborhood
residents
go
through to put food on the
table on a regular basis. At a
local level, she believes that
anchoring neighbors in the
church and investing in youth
are the two ways to deter gang
violence and elevate residents
to a higher ground than they
currently stand on.
“If you reach out to the
children, then eventually you’ll
get their parents. We have
programs that allow children to
come off the street, like the arts
program allows for the children
to come off the street rather
than run to the gangs so they
can come and work on their
art. And we have a summer
program for when they’re out
of school and they’re hungry.
It’s called a ‘meet up and eat
up’ program … and that allows
for them to come out and get
something to eat and allows
for them to learn academically
as well as have social skills,”
Ross-Chapman said.
There
are
also
other
programs
the
church
is
involved in.
“We have a youth program
where we do dance, step and
choir. So that allows them to
get in touch with their musical
side, if they love to sing or if
they love to drop beats, you
know, whatever. And they can
live you know, not live the
lifestyle they’re living now
because eventually we want
them to do better. He changed
their hearts, and made them
into better citizens,” Ross-
Chapman said.
Local
change
like
this
seems to contrast with the
public’s visions of Detroit’s
revitalization.
Quicken
Loans founder Dan Gilbert’s
investment
in
Detroit’s
downtown
since
2010
—
which involves $5.6 billion
spent across over about 100
properties and the employment
of 17,000 people — has led to
unprecedented growth in the
Woodward
Avenue
area
of
downtown. But it’s unclear just
how much of this investment
is
reaching
neighborhoods
beyond downtown.
According to an editorial
in
The
Detroit
News,
“In
2000, there were over 100,000
African American families in
Detroit who earned $40,000 or
more. In 2016, after adjusting
for
inflation,
there
were
only 44,000.” This makes a
difference in a city where 79
percent of the population is
African American, according to
the 2010 U.S. Census (and even
more so in Conant Gardens,
where 93 percent of residents
identify as such). And it doesn’t
seem that Gilbert’s investment
is
helping.
According
to
City Lab, jobs for Detroiters
decreased from 46,309 in 2007
to 29,875 in 2014, while jobs for
non-Detroiters increased from
75,000 to 88,000 over that same
period. This reflects a general
trend of educated, middle-class
people
moving
to
Detroit’s
suburbs for higher standards
of living, and the resultant
drainage of cash flow from the
inner city.
While
the
greater
trend
has
been
towards
this
suburbanization, contemporary
examples
of
gentrification
and
inner-city
development
do exist. Joel Stone cites the
development of Cass Corridor,
Corktown,
Woodbridge
and
several others as examples of
places where the stabilization
of
downtown
has
pushed
development
beyond
its
borders.
When
I
asked
if
the
commercial
activity
that’s
happening
downtown
and
along Woodward spilled out
into the adjacent communities
at all, Stone replied yes.
“I would say now that the
downtown has been stabilized,
it’s encouraging entrepreneurs
to invest in those ancillary
neighborhoods.
In
other
words, if somebody invests
in a beautiful building on
Woodward or in a historic
building on Cass, it encourages
people to invest in the building
next to and around it, and, you
know, they’re putting up new
buildings where there weren’t,
where
there
were
parking
lots. Now there are brand new
apartment buildings, and once
you get those in and it stabilizes
the block or stabilizes three or
four blocks, that encourages
people to invest their time,
their effort, their money in the
blocks adjacent to that. It’s kind
of a ripple effect. So maybe the
folks who lived on Cass have
been able to find housing three
or four blocks further away,
but that also means in another
four or five years, assuming we
remain on the same trajectory,
that they may be looking for
new housing in another five or
ten years,” Stone said.
If
a
block
does
become
revitalized
and
‘stabilized’,
a lot of people may point to
the fact that it doesn’t take
going very far in Detroit to
find new housing. It only
takes a few blocks just because
that downtown area is so
concentrated, and Stone agrees.
“There
were
parts
of
Brooklyn
that
got
so
run
down that they probably had a
similar (situation), but theirs
has
happened
faster,
and
now so much of Brooklyn is
taken up you can’t say that’s
the possibility … in Detroit I
noticed they just opened the
Saint Regis building, which
is great. That was a gorgeous,
gorgeous building, it needed
help … and, if you used to live
in Saint Regis or in a building
near there, you probably only
have to go a few blocks to find
a place that has a rent that you
can afford,” Stone said.
It may be happening more
slowly than in other cities, but
surely, Detroit’s downtown is
gentrifying. And not all of the
city’s talent is moving out either.
According to Alan Mallach,
“Since 2010, Detroit has seen an
increase of 8,000 in the number
of people 25 to 34 with a college
degree living in the city. That’s
a
change
after
the
steady
decline of this group up to
2010, but it’s small compared to
Pittsburgh (15,000), Baltimore
(24,000), Philadelphia (44,000)
and many other cities.” Alan
Mallach is the author of “The
Divided
City:
Poverty
and
Prosperity in Urban America”
and a senior fellow at the Center
for Community Progress in
Washington, D.C.
In
accordance
with
Joel
Stone’s analysis, Mallach’s book
also points to Cass Corridor,
Corktown,
Woodbridge
and
Downtown
as
the
neighborhoods where poorer
people are being supplanted
by higher rents the most.
Additionally,
supporting
Stone’s ripple effect theory,
Mallach claims that “future
gentrification
elsewhere
is
likely
to
be
slow
and
incremental, affecting mainly
blocks right next to the ones
that are already gentrified.”
So where does this leave
neighborhoods
like
Conant
Gardens? The slow, incremental
crawl of development from
downtown
seems
incredibly
distant from the urban farms,
vacant lots and boarded up
homes
that
now
comprise
Detroit’s
former
working-
class
and
middle-class
neighborhoods. The aims of
Gilbert, founder of a mortgage
lending company, seem even
more distant. This is all in great
contrast to the “blank slate”
idea of Detroit that the media
paints. Yes, there are $5,000
homes in Detroit. No, they don’t
seem likely to be developed any
time soon.
Even
if
development
continued at its current rate
for another few decades, it
would make two cities: One
Black and one white. In order
to form a sustainable city
economy, Detroiters — and that
means the majority African
American families that have
been sustaining the city for
decades — would need to gain
an additional 100,000 jobs on
top of the supposed 30,000 to
40,000 they currently hold,
according to Laura A. Reece,
professor of political science
and director of the Global
Urban
Studies
Program
at
Michigan State University.
It’s
unclear
whether
the
development
of
downtown
would ever be able to spur a
turnaround like this. Public
investment in education and
career development has failed
in the past, and who’s to say
this where the money would go?
The ball is in Gilbert’s court.
Detroit’s Black middle class
needs to come back, and it’s
anchor people like Otiyah Ross-
Chapman
that
are
fighting
for this. We can’t sit back and
act like Detroit’s coming back
when it’s not coming back for
everyone. A sustainable city is
not a segregated one. While the
city’s downtown comes back
and public funds accumulate,
Detroit’s poorer communities
need leaders to propel the
next generation toward a more
equitable future.
‘Bandana’
MadGibbs
RCA Records
SINGLE REVIEW: ‘BANDANA’
Freddie Gibbs and Madlib
have been hip hop’s most
iconic
contemporary
duo
since Piñata released almost
five years ago (and has aged
like a fine wine since then).
In 2016, Madlib announced a
follow-up, Bandana, with little
information other than that it
would feature rejected beats
from Kanye West’s The Life of
Pablo. The only thing fans have
had to go on since then has been
cryptic Instagram pictures of
Gibbs and Madlib in the studio.
Finally, the album rollout has
begun: Bandana’s debut single
“Flat Tummy Tea” dropped
in February. On Mar. 5, the
duo dropped the titular single
“Bandana” featuring Jamaican
dancehall artist Assassin.
The continuity in sound
between
Piñata
and
its
upcoming successor is clear
right from the beginning of
“Bandana,” with trademark-
Madlib drums that echo Piñata’s
opening track, “Supplier.” An
eerie vocal sample and ghostly
sound effects are layered over
a spacey pad, making for a beat
that conjures images of an alien
invasion. Gibbs delivers his
verse with fiery, painting a grim
picture of his gang-affiliated
days slinging crack in Gary,
Indiana. Gibbs’s lyrics are dense,
filled with metaphors and slang
that mirror the complexity of
Madlib’s production.
Assassin, best known (outside
of Jamaica) for his features on
Kanye West’s “I’m In It” and
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker
the Berry,” is a phenomenal
guest: His ad-libs and reverbing
backup vocals bring a menacing
mood to the track, and his
Jamaican-slang-filled
verse
carries over the energy from
Gibbs’s.
“Bandana,” simply put, goes
hard. The moody instrumental
and
direct
lyrics
(“I
ain’t
bullshittin’,” as Gibbs says) are
uncharacteristic of a single:
They make for what sounds like
a deep-album cut, something
that will sound even better in the
context of the whole record. If
“Bandana” is any indicator, the
eponymous album will be well
worth the long wait.
— Dylan Yono, Daily Arts
Writer
RCA
ALEXIS RANKIN / DAILY
What right did GM have to displace
these lower-income immigrant families
from the city they were trying to
succeed in?
6B — Thursday, March 14, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com