What makes a place worth fighting for?
Last week, the documentary Jane Jacob: Battle for the City was screened at the Detroit FREEP Film Festival. The film brings Jane Jacobs’ epic battle for the city of New York against the “master builder” Robert Moses into modern context. The world has never been more urban with millions of people moving to cities each year. Jacobs’ the Life and Death of Great American Cities is as relevant as the day she penned it. The failure of public housing projects, the immense destruction caused by modern highway systems, the razing of buildings to make way for new urban strategies are all cautionary tales that designers are familiar with. The film resonates as a reminder for those in power to be critical of big plans that aren’t backed by a community. Complex urban issues cannot be solved with a singular solution and old cannot be correlated with the bad or broken.
Many outsiders may look at Detroit and think that it is a broken system. The people are too spread out and we would be better off consolidating and starting over. The Detroit neighborhood isn’t broken. It just needs people to believe, invest and fight for it. The neighborhood needs a champion.
The City Planning Department under the leadership of Maurice Cox has positioned itself to be the champion for the neighborhoods. Neighborhood framework plans combine business corridors strategies with adaptive resuse and open space planning. Jacobs’ legacy is seen particularly in the city’s desire for “20 minute neighborhoods” a goal for each citizen to be able to walk to grocery stores, workplaces, schools and places of worship. The planning department takes a holistic look at a place that does not offer a singular solution.
The Livernois-McNichols area is the focal point of the Major’s neighborhood revitalization effort. The city hopes to bring a renewed sense of civic and urban life to the neighborhood through intentional planning. Last fall, the city announced an RFP for the Fitzgerald neighborhood that is bordered by the intersection of Livernois and 6 mile. The resulting neighborhood plan employs a land stewardship approach in which community members care for 192 formerly vacant lots that will be reprogrammed as gardens or community gathering spaces. Blighted homes will be removed and 115 homes will be renovated to create a “blight free quarter square mile” and attract new families. A greenway is planned to connect the institution of Marygrove College and the University of Detroit Mercy and tie resources back into the community. A slide deck explaining the Fitzgerald Revitalization project can be viewed here.
In a coordinated effort, the City of Detroit and Live6 Alliance have worked to strengthen and invest in the city’s Avenue of Fashion, historically a stronghold for African-American businesses and entrepreneurship. Live6 Alliance promotes the equitable development of Livernois-McNichols through community engagement. Live6 brings together residents and institutional personnel once a month for a community conversation series called Speakeasy: A dialogue among neighbors. These sessions record community perspectives on development and give real time feedback that can be translated into plans.
The lot by lot approach taken by the city is respectful of existing formal and informal community structures. It builds off of the infrastructure that has already been laid. It is a big win for Jane Jacobs.