Detroit

The race riots of Detroit in 1967 were among the most deadly in all of American history, leaving 43 people dead after five bloody days of conflict between the police / National Guard and African Americans. In addition there were:

1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed

Why did this happen? What turned the city of Detroit into a physical battlefield? The answer, besides the obvious answer of racism, is it coupled with never-ending police brutality, inadequate housing and very few adequate job opportunities.

African Americans started to populate Detriot’s Lower East side during and after WWII, because of the automobile industry and the promise of a fairly high-paying job. This city grew in physical size to accommodate new residents, but confining black people to only a few neighborhoods. Every Detroit neighborhood with even a tiny African American population was rated “D” or hazardous by federal appraisers and colored red on HOLC (Home Owner’s Loan Corporation) security maps. With these densely packed areas, living conditions became poor, with disease, poverty, and crime spreading quickly, and turning the neighborhoods into slums.

With a large amount of the African American population moving into the city and beginning to take homes in traditionally “white neighborhoods” the fabric of the inner-city began to change to almost all minority citizens. White people started to flee to the suburbs not only because of their blatant racism but also because their property values were drastically declining (thanks to the HOLC maps) – taking their tax money and job opportunities with them. Companies followed their workers to the suburbs, leaving the city without a tax base to care for the roads, provide funding for schools, or provide basic protection to the citizens.

In response to the slums and because of the “need” to turn the City into an even more car-dominated area, the city decided to clear the slums and place highways directly on top of them – removing the issue. The problem with this – among many, is that it forced the households with the least resources to move at a time when the city’s tight housing market could not accommodate them. With so much investment into suburban life, and the complete neglect of the inner-city, people began to leave consistently until the call for bankruptcy in 2013.

With such a high amount of devastation in Detroit and with neighborhood communities that still to this day, have more resources and money than the city, one has to wonder, what can be done to revitalize D-town?

1. One idea is to turn all of the abandoned areas into farmlands. In the lots where houses used to be, the grass has grown over and some residents have started community gardens to harvest fresh fruits and vegetables. Or, within the typical 30’ by 90’ grid people are purchasing multiple lots and using one for storage, or building over two lots. This approach fills in space, but it doesn’t really downsize the city.

2. Another idea would be to collapse the vast space of Detroit into a smaller area. This would involve moving people to condense the population. This would help with utility fees, street lights wouldn’t have to run all over the whole area, water lines that only service a few families now could be turned off, and the city services could better maintain the urban space.

3. One last thing they could do would be to break the city up into smaller more manageable cities. Instead of having one huge city that few people seemingly live in, there could be multiple small to medium sized cities that all would have their own services and would split the burden of rebuilding and revitalizing up between those new entities.