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