Toni Griffin: A new vision for rebuilding Detroit

52,786 views ・ 2013-12-16

TED


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By 2010, Detroit had become the poster child
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for an American city in crisis.
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There was a housing collapse,
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an auto industry collapse,
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and the population had plummeted by 25 percent
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between 2000 and 2010,
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and many people were beginning to write it off,
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as it had topped the list of American shrinking cities.
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By 2010, I had also been asked by
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the Kresge Foundation and the city of Detroit
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to join them in leading a citywide planning process
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for the city to create a shared vision for its future.
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I come to this work
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as an architect and an urban planner,
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and I've spent my career working in other contested cities,
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like Chicago, my hometown;
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Harlem, which is my current home;
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Washington, D.C.; and Newark, New Jersey.
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All of these cities, to me, still had a number
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of unresolved issues related to urban justice,
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issues of equity, inclusion and access.
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Now by 2010, as well,
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popular design magazines were also beginning
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to take a closer look at cities like Detroit,
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and devoting whole issues to "fixing the city."
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I was asked by a good friend, Fred Bernstein,
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to do an interview for the October issue
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of Architect magazine,
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and he and I kind of had a good chuckle
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when we saw the magazine released with the title,
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"Can This Planner Save Detroit?"
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So I'm smiling with a little bit of embarrassment right now,
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because obviously, it's completely absurd
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that a single person, let alone a planner,
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could save a city.
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But I'm also smiling because I thought it represented
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a sense of hopefulness that our profession
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could play a role in helping the city to think about
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how it would recover from its severe crisis.
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So I'd like to spend a little bit of time this afternoon
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and tell you a little bit about our process
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for fixing the city, a little bit about Detroit,
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and I want to do that through the voices of Detroiters.
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So we began our process in September of 2010.
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It's just after a special mayoral election,
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and word has gotten out that there is going to be
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this citywide planning process,
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which brings a lot of anxiety and fears
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among Detroiters.
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We had planned to hold a number of community meetings in rooms like this
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to introduce the planning process,
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and people came out from all over the city,
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including areas that were stable neighborhoods,
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as well as areas that were beginning to see
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a lot of vacancy.
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And most of our audience was representative
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of the 82 percent African-American population
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in the city at that time.
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So obviously, we have a Q&A portion of our program,
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and people line up to mics to ask questions.
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Many of them step very firmly to the mic,
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put their hands across their chest, and go,
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"I know you people are trying to move me out of my house, right?"
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So that question is really powerful,
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and it was certainly powerful to us in the moment,
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when you connect it to the stories
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that some Detroiters had,
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and actually a lot of African-Americans'
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families have had
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that are living in Midwestern cities like Detroit.
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Many of them told us the stories about
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how they came to own their home
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through their grandparents or great-grandparents,
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who were one of 1.6 million people who migrated
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from the rural South to the industrial North,
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as depicted in this painting by Jacob Lawrence,
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"The Great Migration."
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They came to Detroit for a better way of life.
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Many found work in the automobile industry,
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the Ford Motor Company, as depicted in this mural
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by Diego Rivera in the Detroit Institute of Art.
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The fruits of their labors would afford them a home,
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for many the first piece of property that they would ever know,
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and a community with other first-time
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African-American home buyers.
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The first couple of decades of their life in the North
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is quite well, up until about 1950,
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which coincides with the city's peak population
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at 1.8 million people.
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Now it's at this time that Detroit begins to see
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a second kind of migration,
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a migration to the suburbs.
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Between 1950 and 2000,
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the region grows by 30 percent.
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But this time, the migration leaves
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African-Americans in place,
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as families and businesses flee the city,
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leaving the city pretty desolate of people
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as well as jobs.
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During that same period, between 1950 and 2000, 2010,
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the city loses 60 percent of its population,
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and today it hovers at above 700,000.
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The audience members who come and talk to us that night
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tell us the stories of what it's like to live in a city
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with such depleted population.
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Many tell us that they're one of only a few homes
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on their block that are occupied,
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and that they can see several abandoned homes
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from where they sit on their porches.
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Citywide, there are 80,000 vacant homes.
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They can also see vacant property.
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They're beginning to see illegal activities
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on these properties, like illegal dumping,
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and they know that because the city has lost so much population,
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their costs for water, electricity, gas are rising,
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because there are not enough people to pay property taxes
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to help support the services that they need.
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Citywide, there are about 100,000 vacant parcels.
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Now, to quickly give you all a sense of a scale,
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because I know that sounds like a big number,
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but I don't think you quite understand until you look at the city map.
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So the city is 139 square miles.
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You can fit Boston, San Francisco,
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and the island of Manhattan
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within its footprint.
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So if we take all of that vacant and abandoned property
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and we smush it together,
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it looks like about 20 square miles,
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and that's roughly equivalent to the size
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of the island we're sitting on today, Manhattan,
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at 22 square miles.
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So it's a lot of vacancy.
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Now some of our audience members
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also tell us about some of the positive things
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that are happening in their communities,
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and many of them are banding together
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to take control of some of the vacant lots,
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and they're starting community gardens,
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which are creating a great sense of community stewardship,
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but they're very, very clear to tell us
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that this is not enough,
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that they want to see their neighborhoods
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return to the way that their grandparents had found them.
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Now there's been a lot of speculation since 2010
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about what to do with the vacant property,
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and a lot of that speculation has been around community gardening,
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or what we call urban agriculture.
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So many people would say to us,
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"What if you just take all that vacant land and you could make it farmland?
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It can provide fresh foods,
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and it can put Detroiters back to work too."
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When I hear that story,
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I always imagine the folks from the Great Migration
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rolling over in their graves,
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because you can imagine that they didn't sacrifice
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moving from the South to the North
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to create a better life for their families,
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only to see their great-grandchildren return to an agrarian lifestyle,
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especially in a city where they came
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with little less than a high school education
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or even a grammar school education
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and were able to afford the basic elements
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of the American dream:
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steady work and a home that they owned.
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Now, there's a third wave of migration
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happening in Detroit:
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a new ascendant of cultural entrepreneurs.
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These folks see that same vacant land
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and those same abandoned homes
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as opportunity for new,
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entrepreneurial ideas and profit,
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so much so that former models
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can move to Detroit,
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buy property, start successful
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businesses and restaurants,
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and become successful community activists in their neighborhood,
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bringing about very positive change.
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Similarly, we have small manufacturing companies
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making conscious decisions to relocate to the city.
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This company, Shinola, which is a luxury watch
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and bicycle company,
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deliberately chose to relocate to Detroit,
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and they quote themselves by saying
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they were drawn to the global brand of Detroit's innovation.
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And they also knew that they can tap into a workforce
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that was still very skilled in how to make things.
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Now we have community stewardship
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happening in neighborhoods,
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we have cultural entrepreneurs making decisions
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to move to the city and create enterprises,
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and we have businesses relocating,
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and this is all in the context
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of what is no secret to us all,
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a city that's under the control
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of an emergency manager,
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and just this July filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
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So 2010, we started this process, and by 2013,
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we released Detroit Future City,
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which was our strategic plan to guide the city
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into a better and more prosperous
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and more sustainable existence --
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not what it was, but what it could be,
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looking at new ways of economic growth,
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new forms of land use,
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more sustainable and denser neighborhoods,
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a reconfigured infrastructure and city service system,
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and a heightened capacity for civic leaders
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to take action and implement change.
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Three key imperatives were really important
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to our work.
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One was that the city itself wasn't necessarily too large,
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but the economy was too small.
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There are only 27 jobs per 100 people in Detroit,
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very different from a Denver or an Atlanta or a Philadelphia
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that are anywhere between 35 to 70 jobs per 100 people.
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Secondly, there had to be an acceptance
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that we were not going to be able to use
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all of this vacant land in the way that we had before
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and maybe for some time to come.
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It wasn't going to be our traditional residential neighborhoods
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as we had before,
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and urban agriculture, while a very productive
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and successful intervention happening in Detroit,
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was not the only answer,
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that what we had to do is look at these areas
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where we had significant vacancy
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but still had a significant number of population
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of what could be new, productive, innovative,
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and entrepreneurial uses
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that could stabilize those communities,
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where still nearly 300,000 residents lived.
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So we came up with one neighborhood typology --
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there are several -- called a live-make neighborhood,
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where folks could reappropriate
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abandoned structures
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and turn them into entrepreneurial enterprises,
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with a specific emphasis on looking at the, again,
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majority 82 percent African-American population.
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So they, too, could take businesses
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that they maybe were doing out of their home
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and grow them to more prosperous industries
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and actually acquire property so they were actually
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property owners as well as business owners
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in the communities with which they resided.
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Then we also wanted to look at other ways
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of using land in addition to growing food
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and transforming landscape into
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much more productive uses,
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so that it could be used for storm water management, for example,
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by using surface lakes and retention ponds,
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that created neighborhood amenities,
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places of recreation,
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and actually helped to elevate
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adjacent property levels.
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Or we could use it as research plots,
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where we can use it to remediate contaminated soils,
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or we could use it to generate energy.
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So the descendants of the Great Migration
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could either become precision watchmakers at Shinola,
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like Willie H., who was featured in one of their ads last year,
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or they can actually grow a business
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that would service companies like Shinola.
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The good news is, there is a future
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for the next generation of Detroiters,
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both those there now and those that want to come.
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So no thank you, Mayor Menino,
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who recently was quoted as saying,
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"I'd blow up the place and start over."
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There are very important people,
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business and land assets in Detroit,
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and there are real opportunities there.
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So while Detroit might not be what it was,
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Detroit will not die.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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